Related:

• Using International Law to Protect Property Rights and International Investment
• International Law, Libertarian Principles, and the Russia-Ukraine War
• KOL250 | International Law Through a Libertarian Lens (PFS 2018)
• Review of Higgins, Problems and Process: International Law and How We Use It (1995)
• Hoppe: Marx was “Essentially Correct”

Fascinating recent lecture by Antonios Tzanakopoulos, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Oxford, ¹ for the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at Cambridge University: “‘Marxist Insights for International Law’ – Prof Antonios Tzanakopoulos, University of Oxford.” (apple podcasts)

See also:

• Antonios Tzanakopoulos, “The Master’s Tools and the Master’s House: Marxist Insights for International Law,” The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Europe, Anne van Aaken, Pierre d’Argent, Lauri Mälksoo, Johann Justus Vasel, eds (Oxford University Press, 2024), pp. 351–375 (summarized below)
• The Right to Be Free from Economic Coercion
• Economic Warfare
• The International Court of Justice and the Concept of Aggression https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2587722
• other papers at his SSRN page.

Summary and transcript below. [continue reading…]

1. Coincidentally, one of my friends, Dan Sarooshi, is as well. [↩]

My elaborations of the Rothbard-Evers title-transfer theory of contract (in “The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract” and  “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” chap. 9 of Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston: Papinian Press, 2023)) are illustrated graphically in A Libertarian Theory of Contract (pdf; images below), prepared by Conza with an AI assist (Google’s NotebookLM I believe).

Re the performance bond solution mentioned on p. 8, see:

• KOL463 | Contracts, Usury, Fractional-Reserve Banking with André Simoni
• The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract, Part IV.A
• LIBERTARIAN ANSWER MAN: Smart Contracts (re escrow)
• KOL338 | Human Action Podcast Ep. 308 with Jeff Deist: Rothbard on Punishment, Property, and Contract (re escrow)

[continue reading…]

A 1987 article in Liberty Magazine, John C. Green & James L. Guth, “The Sociology of Libertarians,” Liberty (September-October, 1987),  p. 5, inspired a poll in the July, 1988 issue, “The Liberty Poll: Who We Are and What We Think” (p. 37) which queried readers on various beliefs and six “moral problems.” That issue also included  comments by Liberty‘s editors, “The Meaning of the Liberty Poll” (p. 49), including a comment by Rothbard, “What’s Wrong with the Liberty Poll; or, How I Became a Libertarian,” Liberty (July, 1998), p. 52. 

This was followed up by a second poll in the February, 1999 issue, “The Liberty Poll” (p. 11), and ten years later in the June, 2008 issue with a third poll. See Mark Rand, “The Liberty Poll Results: Who We Are and What We Think,” Liberty (June, 2008), p. 29.

Ross Overbeek, “Moral Absolutes, Truth, and Liberty,” also writing in the June, 2008 issue, summarized the polls’ six ethical dilemmas: [continue reading…]

As mentioned at Liberty Magazine Archives, I have am now hosting all back print issues of Liberty online. Enjoy! (But only if you oppose copyright!)

Most of us principled, anti-state libertarians are deed admirers of Rothbard. Hoppe has written glowingly of Rothbard’s singular genius, assessment I share. As Hoppe has written,

And there was a certain amount of, I would say, jealousy, because, I mean, Rothbard was enormously bright. I’ve met bright people in my life, but the only person I’ve met whom I would consider to be a genius was Rothbard. He could tell you the the content of every book in his library. And that wasan enormous library. Whenever you would ask him about any strange subject, he could give you some suggestions on what to read. You felt like a little, urn, uneducated person if you talked to him. So jealousy played a big role in explaining why it was that he was not treated like a genius, as he should have been treated. [continue reading…]

From the Property and Freedom Society:

PFS 2026 Annual Meeting—Speakers and Topics

PFS 2026, the Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society, hosted by Drs. Gülçin & Hans Hoppe, will be held in Bodrum, Turkey, at the Hotel Karia Princess from Thursday, September 17, 2026 to Tuesday, September 22, 2026. As the inaugural meeting was held in 2006 and the 2020 meeting was canceled due to covid restrictions, this will be the twentieth annual meeting of the PFS held over the past twenty years. [continue reading…]

For years I’ve remembered Woody Allen was rumored to have said he once visited the country but didn’t like it because there was no scenery. But internet searches could not find or verify this.

I just happened to stumble across it in Richard Kostelanetz, “I’ll Take Manhattan,” Liberty (Jan. 1995) (pdf), pp. 43–44. Sub-titled “City air makes men free,” it has the line I’ve been remembering all these years: [continue reading…]

The PFS will publish a collection of tributes to and commentary on Rothbard, on the occasion of his 100th birthday on March 2, 2026, from several longtime PFS members, including many who knew him personally.

The commentary will be published on the PFS website on March 2, and later this year as a small book, Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (forthcoming 2026). Further details here.

The Spring 2024 issue of The Independent Review (Vol 28, no. 4) contains a symposium dedicated to Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (first published over 50 years ago, in 1973), with the following contributions:

• A Vision of a Productive Free Society: Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, by Robert M. Whaples
• For a New Liberty after Fifty Years, by David Gordon
• Libertarianism, Oversimplified, by Matt Zwolinski
• Seeing the State through For a New Liberty, by Jason Lee Byas
• Privatize the Public Sector: Murray Rothbard’s Stateless Libertarian Society, by Randall G. Holcombe
• Conservation, Ecology, and Growth in For a New Liberty, by Peter C. Earle, Ryan M. Yonk
• Murray Rothbard on War and Foreign Policy, by Christopher J. Coyne, Yuliya Yatsyshina

[continue reading…]

LewRockwell.com Blog Flashback. See also Panhandling Middle-Class Kids.

Big Charity
By Stephan Kinsella
September 15, 2009

Roderick Long in a recent post asks us to consider the following proposition: “1. Big business and big government are (for the most part) natural allies.” As I noted there, “Do you mean big business as it exists in today’s world, or big business per se? If the former, you have a point (and from my quick read I don’t disagree with any of your other points). But to argue for the latter interpretation would imply that there could be no big business in a free society.” [continue reading…]

Recent paper: Wojciech Gamrot, “The Labor Theory Of Property Does Not Mandate Easements,” Social Communication 27, no. 2 (2025): 59–68.

Abstract:

Some libertarian theorists advocate for recognizing easements by necessity. In specific circumstances they would guarantee the right of passage through the land that is already owned. One popular argument in favor of such easements concerns a situation where landowners’ exercise of their property rights prevents others from entering non homesteaded areas and taking them into ownership. The argument holds that a firstcomer who mixed labor with some parcel that blocks access to unowned land de facto owns that land as well. It is argued that such a property right is self-contradictory because the only legitimate method of original appropriation is labor mixing and the firstcomer actually acquires the virgin land without doing so.  Easements of necessity are then postulated as a means to rectify this alleged contradiction. In the present paper this argument in favor of easements is examined and refuted.

[continue reading…]