Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 331.
This is my appearance on Phil Gibson’s podcast A Boy Named Pseu. Youtube video:
From Phil’s shownotes:
Stephan Kinsella is an attorney and libertarian writer. We discuss:
- Libertarianism
- Patents
- Trademarks
- Intellectual Property
- Economics [See Knowledge vs. Calculation]
- Bitcoin
- and then some…
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:51:56 — 128.1MB)
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 330.
Lift Talks #2 — With Kinsella & Sammeroff.
Grok summary shownotes: In this episode of Lift Talks [0:00–26:36], Stephan Kinsella and Anthony Sammeroff recount their Telluride skiing trip with humor and libertarian flair. They start by discussing a catered dinner party [1:02–2:23], where mask mandates were dismissed, and vaccine reactions sparked debate, reflecting their data-driven skepticism. Their conversation shifts to political labels [4:09–5:03], criticizing “liberals” and “progressives” while noting a natural affinity with conservatives over Democrats. They recap their journey from Houston to Auburn, Alabama [6:23–9:43], meeting libertarian figures like Jeff Barr and Roderick Long, and share gossip about factionalism in libertarian circles [10:00–12:45]. On the slopes, they enjoy fast runs like the Enchanted Forest [25:38–26:36], blending personal anecdotes with critiques of cultural norms.
Grok detailed shownotes and Transcript below.
Update: mentioned in KOL462 | CouchStreams After Hours on Break the Cycle with Joshua Smith (2021).
Two libertarian blokes on a ski vacation. Filmed Wednesday, March 31, 2021, Telluride Ski Resort.
Part 1: KOL329 | Lift Talks #1 With Kinsella & Sammeroff
Cross-posted on Scottish Liberty podcast.
Bonus video:
Three day skiing video compilation telluride March 2021
all right here’s lift talk number two starting off with a few photos this is anthony and peggy
anthony and peggy and david at the bar across the street this is us in the hot tub
after one of our days skiing anthony like a greek god in the hot tub
and don’t look at his junk me in the hot tub um and here we go
all right it’s wednesday our last ski day that’s right someone woke up at noon jesus i wonder who that could have been
yeah yeah anyway so we’re going skiing late for some reason why don’t you tell them all what
happened no let’s just let them wonder um so what the funny thing is right this
guy’s like uh he’s like i don’t know what happened this morning and i’m like i know and his friends are like what what what
and it’s like you were a lazy [ __ ] so we had we had a nice dinner party
last night which was incredible yeah we had a chef come in can you put the pictures over the video yeah i can do that so um you know what
we should do let’s oh so i put it on twitter i said you know we had a dinner party catered
to telluride for eight people three people were cooking and they asked us if they wanted
if we wanted them to wear masks and we said none of us are massacres so we don’t give a [ __ ] and so when the guy showed up they were
happy you could tell not to have to wear a mask plus they said all three of them got in i think in our crowd i think five of us
have gotten the uh the vaccine already anyway um everyone who gets the vaccine is telling
me they’ve had a horrible act reaction to the vaccine yeah i do i’m just saying that i’m anti-vaxx i’m just
saying that yeah i had it i admitted i admit it for 12 hours i’m just not saying that yeah i know i
know and i’m not i’m not saying the opposite but uh but the guy said i said how many of
your clients want you to wear the mask he says one percent like barely you are the one person yeah
but the point is no one no one believes it’s [ __ ] everyone’s like don’t worry about us we don’t care well that’s
what if you go out and you speak to people on the street from colorado they seem like they’re really into it
do you know what i want well climate climate change deniers and what else
they call you they call you a denier if you don’t agree with them i want to be like cover data denier
because when you look at the data it shows that lockdowns aren’t effective and mass mandates aren’t effective
so anyone who disagrees with us we just call them data deniers yeah that seems to be quite successful
liberty deniers but they don’t care about they also like to say you’re anti-science if you disagree with them
the ironic thing about being called anti-science says it’s always when you’re asking for more
science that you get called out can’t have enough science yeah i’m always like can you give me
some more science please yeah someone calls me anti-science i’d like i’d like some more objective data
please to prove that your policy is effective oh you’re anti-science
but i wasn’t done talking about this morning because it was hilarious oh so this morning uh
what was here well i worked i got up at eight and i worked and then still at 12
cancels downstairs in a ski jacket and helmet being like yeah come
on samurai come on let’s go and i’m like i can’t believe that i’m the one being blamed for us being when i’ve been
on eight weeks i’ve been up for four hours why didn’t you go with david and peggy i considered
that but then i thought well the thing is i thought that you like yesterday you took
forever to get ready to go after you got it so i thought it would be like yesterday
but actually you were so embarrassed of being late up late that you were like snappy no i i wanted to get something you know
my last night some toast in the toaster not realizing that you were you were like you just you just
meander around like a like kind of a random little i didn’t
so you were saying you’re talking with our host david and peggy and uh you’re saying they were ranting about the liberal takeover america yeah i made
the point that the liberal takeover of america i don’t even like it that you guys call them
liberals i i like but i don’t even like when they get called progressives either yeah but because progress quickly
are things about the end let me make the point the point is there’s something about the natural
affinity or connection between conservatives and libertarians because when you talk to someone like that they don’t quite speak our language but
we can talk but if you talk to a democrat like there’s no common ground almost i understand that but i didn’t think
that was the case when i first became a libertarian around 2008
maybe somewhat uh because i felt like i was more aligned with the labour
rules because they were actually you know against the war and against the surveillance state the
patriot act and all that stuff but now the left have got so bad that i find myself finding way more common
cause with people that i wouldn’t have even imagined myself being aligned with
15 years ago it’s quite crazy [ __ ] hey so um all right well we have to get up
we’re going to get off at the good left talk all right good luck talk good in lifting this is my poodle bella getting spayed
while i was uh skiing in telluride okay we’re discussing potential topics for this segment of lift talks dude
number two i also you’re fletcher how about your body parts i mean your body parts are all over the place you got your winger
hanging out everywhere you’re farting all the time i have had been suffering from
all my oh my my my my sweet chubby friends from las vegas would say you’re farting because you’re on a vegan
diet that’s a problem and you’re not going to be able to get some chick pregnant you’re going to grab roman boobs the funny thing is uh
i only got the flatulence when i started observing the american diet and eating all this crap do you know
what else i put on 11 pounds since coming to houston texas
now i don’t want to lose all 11 because i actually think it was a little bit lower than i wanted to be
but i do want to lose six of them so i don’t think it’s the vegan stuff i think it’s all the bread
and the [ __ ] cheese and the uh all the smelly stinky so let’s recount our trip
so far first yeah you got to houston uh i picked you up and took i said let’s go to auburn so you went to
auburn before that we went out just chilling we you had a we had a year as a
non-alcoholic beverage i had one or two rums what was that i picked you up in
houston yeah the night before we went to albert we just chose where we go
yeah and we got the worst service probably spoke for six or seven hours yeah you asked that black girl you tried
to get the phone number the hot black chick because you haven’t had you have not had a black woman yet that’s true yeah i was trying to get
your your your ethnic female completist i i’m still hoping to get a black bone
before i leave the thing is you can’t black one black bone black blackboard i mean put a black
check the thing is you’re not allowed to say that because apparently you’re racist
but see if you say i don’t want to [ __ ] black chicks then you’re also racist yeah no matter what you want to do i was
there the other night at the stand-up comedy and i made friends with some african-americans and i got baked in the
back of their truck even though i wasn’t smoking the weed they just hot boxed me and i got really stoned
anyway then the black chick there she was a half black half hispanic she kept on insisting that i had to bone
girls with other races in order to experience the world she sounds like my kind of girl like
she was her and her boyfriend they were pretty cool and some other people she’s like insisted that i had to have
sex with people of other races it’s like funny she’s i should have told her to introduce me to her good
looking friends sorry i got i i i’m never done talking about girls let’s recap our trip
oh i was going to talk about rights theory actually i’m not joking but um wright’s theory okay well let’s
first i want to recap so i pick you up we have a night then you decided to kind of last minute to go
to auburn with me so we go to auburn a few days later yeah lots of cool people and we had fun we
met my boys jeff barr and league lodi and jim yohi and some other guys there and i met some all the musicians celebrities celebrities some celebrities
oh yeah i forgot to mention on the podcast my finest moment i turned to jeff herbiner and i was like hey
this is funny because i know you but you don’t know me and jeff herbert’s like well actually i’ve heard you on the tom
wood show a couple of times i’m like how does this [ __ ] know who i am and also how does he recognize
what i look like your voice is pretty distinctive i know but it’s pretty nice that jeff harper recognized me
i also had a little chat with you yeah we had fun there we had some nice dinners too remember that place we went to out in the 20 my
place 20 miles away wasn’t that cool yeah like one night the thai soup wasn’t too hot
yeah but the but the company was good you don’t go to auburn for thai soup i tell you that you had a friend that was like
you know he’s the [ __ ] poster of the group it’s really funny because i usually post [ __ ] was it lee
lee or was it yeah jeff’s not a [ __ ] poster for sure it was the guy that always says stuff
just to be obnoxious exactly yeah that’s usually my role but since he fulfilled it and you’re in his
country i couldn’t top him so i just let him be the obnoxious [ __ ] oh we met roderick long one night for
dinner that was yeah i invited rodrigo around he said he was first winning on grass at mises institute
that was almost you stefan you almost got kicked out of the lisa no one can no one can npc me
[ __ ] no no one can’t rp and gmail is phoenix communicated apart from
uh joe stromberg uh tucker why is your phone right oh there’s a long story there i wasn’t
involved in it he and i were good friends he went with me he went to korea in 2000 with me and hans and that group i told you about
for the muni conference which is another interesting story and we were friends and and then he got
he kind of he got he left me his own bad terms i think something to do with his wife
hanging around there too much but i had nothing to do with it i was like you know a lawyer in houston i’m not even involved people love
libertarian gossip but i have to say i wish that we could all just get along
well so stromberg like he leaves and a couple years later i sent him a note because i hadn’t heard him in a while
and he sent me this nasty horrible nasty bite of letterback like attacking me for for siding with mises
with his wife something and i had i had no idea what he’s even talking about he like [ __ ] i don’t even know what’s
going on yeah i’m just a lawyer in houston man i’m not over there in auburn setting policies yet anyway i don’t really believe that
roderick long has been excommunicated i think he just thinks he has i’m pretty sure if he sent a nice email
now i think yeah the story he described sounded like he got cancelled for that talk and by the way i got canceled one
time for a cato talk i got invited to a cato talk about three years ago to do an ip debate
and with like it was me and one other guy versus two other guys it was two versus two and i was surprised i got
the fight because of the bad blood between cato and the mises types i just couldn’t believe it and so like
about a month before it happened i’d already bought my plane tickets and everything and i bought business class which they
were only going to pay for coach but i paid the extra right so i bought a business last flight and then they they said oh sorry stuff
and we’ve had a change we have to change rotate the panel out so we won’t be needing you basically they yeah cato canceled you
no i know exactly what happened someone in higher up in cato the left hand wasn’t talking yeah right they said what the [ __ ] you’re having kasella come talk
you gotta disinvite him now and so they did it and then the guy that invited me was apologetic
so i didn’t burn him in public but i did burn everyone else but but he stood he stood in my place but
anyway so i had a bunch of cato guys that just won’t go on top with show because they’re afraid of being
ex-immunity from cato and they have no problem with tom woods but they just don’t do it because kate’s
or mental but oh no factionation i remember what i was gonna say they weren’t gonna pay for anything but
i said okay i’ll come up anyway i’ll pay i’ll go there on my own dime i was gonna pay for my own way so i booked my ticket and then when they
canceled on me i said well dudes i already bought a [ __ ] ticket so they paid me they re they reimbursed
me for the ticket i bought so basically cato would not pay me to go but they paid me not to go
yes literally isn’t that funny it’s amazing the things that you find out in left talks
yeah so sorry i didn’t mean to get um but let’s talk about roger getting uh yeah i like roderick and also i think
he’s quite an original thinker i do think he has some weird views culturally which i don’t necessarily
agree with but that’s not really um grounds for discounting
some of the fantastic work he’s done i don’t think anyone has done that i
know but they should let him miss this because he’s a good speaker do you think i should rejoin his journal i mean his institute the c4ss i quit it
because kevin carson wanted to said he wanted to behead corporate executives and since my wife
is one i didn’t want to really endorse that message you know what i’m saying that’s funny i can’t believe that your
wife is uh heartless greedy he’s bleeding the
blood of children and feast her fiendish appetite for blood she let me go skating with my buddies that’s not too heartless
she’s pretty cool i know she was killing the phone and stefan was like yeah so should i stay out a day longer she was
like you can if you want i don’t need your engineer whatever you want enjoy yourself babe
she’s like most most guys when a wife says that they’re suspicious of like yeah what the hell did that mean
the process of clearing the condoms at the bends from her other physicists
as soon as she hung up she got on the phone she goes hey you can stay another night why is she getting on the phone if he’s
staying maybe he’s at work she’s not gonna she’s not gonna cheat him cheat on me with a
loser you could all bring up gonna cheat on me with the guy with the job yeah that
er that works more than four or five hours a week yeah freaking lazy who’s not poor [ __ ] how do you say poor
per se no one understands huh
what are you petting a [ __ ] cat all right we have to dismount this is a
long [ __ ] lift what’s the end of the so we did auburn alabama oh and then we came back and i actually
forgot i was going skiing like a week later but well you know i guess it did occur to me because i didn’t i i assume there’s no
[ __ ] way you know how to ski a middle-class guy from scotland are you kidding me but so i just said i’m going skiing do
you happen to ski and you’re like hell yeah my dad skis well at first i said i didn’t ask you if your dad skis dude i need to have you
ski i’m not taking a novice again this time i want to [ __ ] ski yeah that’s the thing you said yeah i’m
like you’re right you are a wiry little monkey all right see you guys on the next level
all right that was that was a [ __ ] awesome run what’d you say good welcome back for some less insight baseball and
more just us talking about our lives um but i wanted to say something though uh
so first of all you predict this will be a a popular episode but i i don’t like it could be a disaster but
we’ll see i think i’m worried the audio the audio may suck because you don’t speak up enough i think it will be
popular because if you do libertarian theory every show does libertarian theory
but when you just chill out and chat people like oh i’m really getting to know stuff we could sell right now
do you think it will rehabilitate my [ __ ] image you’re not the thing is you’re not as
much of an [ __ ] in real life as you are online but you’re still a bit of an [ __ ]
hey which is a point i posted some picture on facebook of us doing our [ __ ] baller
[ __ ] and someone asked i’ll take a picture take your marbles your models up
and someone said someone left me a comment a cheeky [ __ ] comment
what the hell can you don’t do one thing oh i’m kind of don’t just take your goggles up like
instead of being a [ __ ] why are you being a [ __ ] i don’t know someone did someone gave you a hard time
on what now yeah he left a comment being like hey anthony how did i get our skiing holiday with stephen
i’m like [ __ ] you know how you watch this video this is the next best thing i i just
left a comment like uh be friends with them
why don’t you ask concealer how do you get a skiing holiday with me is he higher up that’s how you don’t get
a ski trip with consola by asking them to have a ski trail i mean jesus are you higher up on the
fifth chain than me or something just because you wrote a seminal book on an intellectual i do miss my little my
little my little my little travel buddy one for oh [ __ ] so that makes me travel but
no if he was here it’d be it’d be like the trio it would be dangerous man because you and he’d be out trolling for
poontang like he’s always got a horny eye like does he oh yeah
yeah so just my eye that’s horny thing so so we so let’s continue our
story so we fly to denver and you you decided to go the night before to see some people yeah i decided to go the
night before too but then we never ended up meeting up because your boy jd bergeron or whatever bazaar bergeron
bertrand something some first name he’s a french dude and so he wanted he invited me to tag along too but then i
was going to meet up with my buddy chris semino and also karen and harlow’s and her husband and the guy said i don’t have room i’m
like yeah no it wasn’t really him it was his friends were coming over to cook and he didn’t want to add two more
people because he didn’t know if they’d be happy and i don’t understand that but he’s stupid we didn’t need to eat them
i think at the end of the day actually um they would have been quite happy to cook for you as well well the thing is
you’re making it sound bad but no it’s not it’s just interesting excuse me i we did actually invite you to come over
several times and you were like i’m too tired oh by the time you dinner yeah
but anyway so we saved the airport hotel which was which was really nice and then we almost missed our [ __ ] flight what did you think about
the breakfast it was the guy was slow and american and and we had a quite a funny chat about
cultural differences as this dude kept on coming over and asking me if i was finished and like
while you’re eating well i was eating i’m like no i’m not [ __ ] finished like the second time i
really snapped at him he was like i think you were justified to be honest yeah i wasn’t embarrassed it was appropriate at the time you were
like okay man chill but i think i said like he came over and he was like are you i’m actually literally had the
butter in my hand yeah and i was about to spread it in the bread and it was like yes yes you’re finished
and i’d already said i was like dude no i’m not finished i snapped at him and he was like okay
okay and then he heard me bitching about him to stefan and he looked unhappy about me bitching
but these [ __ ] have to learn somehow and stefan was like oh yeah it’s funny in europe
because it takes forever for the guy to come at the italian referendum because here we want to clear it off as
quickly as possible but for us europeans like us speaking to my girlfriend or about this prayer
and it was like but but don’t let that he’s he’s still available
lady just because he said girlfriend he’s still available don’t forget that she said
she was like because someone brought the check and i asked if that was rigged i don’t know if they can hear me yeah
the microphone doesn’t change dude okay i asked her if that was rude because that’s rude in the uk and she
was like no they just want to make sure that you know that they care they’re on it you’re not leaving your
way because in the europe because in the uk i feel like they were trying to kick me at the restaurant
if they brought the check without me asking for it of course we don’t even call it the check we call it the bell
so then we then we then we flew the next day no we flew
that we flew that morning to telluride but remember we couldn’t find freaking key lime air so we almost
missed our flight because we were screwing around the airport herring carrying luggage for 45 minutes finally got off oh yeah
that was funny it’s all the places really stressful i was stressing out but that’s an example where stress is
good because it forced me to stay busy and find the solution i don’t know i think you need to be more
effective [ __ ] off right but here here’s what
passed me off i looked at the depart shirts on the television and i told him the name of the airline that we were
going on and he continued to speak to the useless waste of space
i swear to god we had him before i don’t know i never heard of here
i bought my [ __ ] ticket from you uh you never heard of the airline that you
gave me a ticket to fly on yeah they’re completely they’re completely useless but
but stefan still didn’t trust me and still had to go because i still don’t understand your reasoning you found denver air
well did you see the flight numbers that what it was i went over to the departure screen and i looked down to find our
flight yeah and beside our flight it said the name of the airline okay now i see imagine that so anyway we
had a flight which was fine except he almost got kicked off because he those stewardess had to warn him three
times and she said i’ll have to report it to the captain we already told them this story i know so i’m skipping over so then we landed
and then his buddy his buddy lindsay burgess and her boyfriend hernan who live in
telluride coincidentally picked us up took us to the hot springs which is clothing optional and anthony
of course didn’t have a bathing suit so went junk out and uh then we sat in the sweat lodge with the indian man i think we talked
about the storm stolen you do a good indian accent brother today
our forefathers used to bang stone
but it was funny how when he said white men made us worship religion but then the white man made us thank god
we used to say we used to take stone and water because we are made of stone and water and then but he didn’t seem like bitter
about it he was like well white men he didn’t he wasn’t resenting the fact that white man made him worship god
yeah but he’s just telling the story he was just trying to educate us he was totally cool with it he seemed
like happy all happy indians happy native americans whatever you call
it but then the white man what then and he ate all the buffalo and
what the else did he do he gave us blankets with kovit 19.
so so then we had a nice dinner peggy cooks it’s a vegetarian dinner in your honor uh and we had dinner with that other lady
stayed and snapped at us or started to early yeah and uh and then
for everyone to start because that’s how it was raised but then the lady of the house started eating so i
started eating i copied her and the lady to my right [ __ ]
what do you call people like that who interfere unnecessarily anyway she was like oh you can’t eat
until david sits down that motherfucker’s cool he’s chilling he doesn’t mind
anyway plus by the way i saw you know i’ve read actually etiquette books and the the rule in the etiquette book from
emily baldrige or whatever emily post whatever as soon as one person starts eating then you then you can
then you can start eating something like that i mean you don’t have to wait for multiple people well anyway i thought if it’s good
enough for the lady of the house it’s good enough for me and if not take it up with peggy clearly
she’s just a rude [ __ ] but the second the second uh i liked her she always speaks no i like the other lady two
chests i like how she speaks her mind she’s quite funny but uh but then the second course came and she she snapped at me for or she
scowled to me for not for starting too early now i’ve simply never heard that rule have you ever in europe is that a rule
where okay i understand the rule but when the dinner’s first served you wait for everyone to start getting plated till
everyone sat down at the table right but for the second course do you have to wait
yeah well the thing is i’ve never heard that the funny thing is usually people go oh don’t wait for me to start
eating nowadays whereas i’ve been in a situation where my friends family just
all right we gotta get give me permission to start eating and wrap it up my brother i thought they were the ones being rude that’s what i’m
saying all right bye and now a few diversionary photo shots me and
t-boy on the lift and yet another of me and t-boy on the left him doing is
a gape look back to the show and now our brief video
clip of us skiing some glade skiing through the trees not too tight but anthony and i both did well no
wrecks just yet i believe this was the enchanted forest
run and don’t worry audio listeners this little skiing clip is almost over
[Applause]
so [Applause]
so [Music] [Applause]
yo and one final photo of anthony before
we resume lift talks okay we’re on lift four now we’re gonna go meet
david and peggy we need to find out we need to find out how to get to nine from here i think you turn left let’s
see nine nine i want to do some blacks
hey do you speak german it cannot be deutsch no stupid
okay where’s no dude you’re on the wrong [ __ ] page turn around that’s the black and the ball back okay suck a dick
not in your life okay lift forward find four is that four yeah
there’s four now five nine what’s nine where’s nine okay so
we’re on four heading to meet dave and peggy over there about the blacks on nine and uh i just had and i thought
you know we’re going back on thursday so tomorrow’s today’s our last day skiing and i thought what the hell we’re here already we’ve
got a free place to stay wife said it’s cool if i come back friday so i’m going to stay another day
and gregory’s first thing you know i don’t know if i can do it i’m too poor and i’m like uh all right well you can
go home you can go home early then i’m saying he’s like you don’t think i’m gonna be left out
you know i can be talked into anything eh that’s not what i sound like
no with access my name’s not gregory either i keep confusing with anthony gregory
because you’re anthony of sorts and i always call him gregory
can you just be gregory and make it easier on me i don’t like that dude it’s like it’s like when these transsexual transgender people want you
to relearn the pronoun it’s like i’d like to but it’s just too difficult so
let me just go with my conventional my pronoun is master of time space in the universe my
pronoun is lis like for libertarians majesty anthony samroff anyhoo it’s like i just
can’t say no he’s like i can’t like that song from the musical i’m just a girl that can’t say no except
for i’m just a guy that can’t say no you’re gonna do it to adventure you’re gonna do it it’s actually me who suggested it first yesterday if you
recall you’re gonna be like uh yeah i’m gonna have to juggle some appointments around i do i do i need to move my clients
i hope they’re accommodating i’m gonna have to work the weekend for you kinsella i’d like to see people at the
weekend what’s this crawfish boiler you want me to go to on sunday oh yeah a libertarian that lives a little bit
south of houston invited us and i thought is it like at his house or something
yeah i think so will there be other libertarians there i don’t know well the thing is i thought i’d actually
bring you along as a secret guest that said can i have a plus one so he’ll probably think i’m bringing a lady actually i’m just praying let me ask you
a question who is this guy he’s he’s just he’s obviously a fan of the podcast
okay so and how far where does he live is this going on in public no just how
far from here we’re recording yeah how far does he look like an hour and a half in the car hour and a half
maybe not that far are you [ __ ] crazy maybe it’s only 40 minutes i don’t know i need to look like i mean
it’s barely worth driving 40 minutes to get crawfish but if you add libertarian to the mixture that makes it only worth driving 10 minutes
that’s true that’s about as long as there’s like a positive tongue and a negative tug well it’s definitely you definitely only
last 10 minutes with a positive tug if you know what i mean i’m hanging highly
okay
oh is that what is that what it was i didn’t i didn’t follow your your insinuations there oh all right we’ll go we got a dismount
this dismount this that’s what she said we gotta stick the landing on this one
all right bye all right we’re on the lift nine it wasn’t like we’re talking about the dinner party it wasn’t like intimidating
fancy right no that’s one of the things i was worried about like you know etiquette in the old days when you were
an aristocrat if you didn’t hold your silverware sorry i’m copying american
well you call it cutlery of course what you call a silverware people would know whether you were an aristocrat or not by
how you held your silverware or if you if you could be rich but you might have just become rich in which
case you wouldn’t know how to hold the silverware and they would judge you i didn’t know if there was all these protocols
that i wasn’t aware of that i should have been following but um one of the the girl that was
there mixing the cocktails told me secretly and not to tell anyone that i was her favorite
so i guess i charmed her over unfortunately her husband put a baby in her so that’s for our
cheeky bastard i know it’s okay we’re friends on facebook you already friended her she friended me
you’re so gregarious i like to make friends what’s her name leah something right yeah she’s a very lovely person
i don’t mind being friend zoned by her because she’s got a baby i’ve had some friends before in the past that are kind
of uh well actually they’re they’re european well people have already doubted your story when you said
i had some friends before in the past no the emphasis is in the past they know steffy’s a lovable little
fuzzball like rush limbaugh anyway um it was actually my brother’s ex-partner who was a dutch ambassador
he was extremely arrogant extremely socialist and whenever we would go to a restaurant
we would start chatting up to help he would get totally disgusted by us like don’t don’t talk to the help that’s so funny
that he was a socialist and he had that elitism isn’t it he was also and he submitted
he’s dead now so i can talk about him but uh i remember we were i was in capri with him i remember capri italy 1999 or 2000
and uh we were talking and uh madeleine albright came up
because she she was in the news and she had just it had just been revealed that she was jewish or something right
um like she didn’t know she was jewish but she just found out or something it was in the news and so robert said something like as if
you needed as if you needed proof to know that or like implying that you could have just looked at her and known that
which is this hyper jew aware european mentality i don’t know i hear a lot in the u is it
well remember you and i were talking about george bison the other day and i i’d known him for years i didn’t even know he was jewish and you you were right so
you noticed it and i didn’t say that’s a european thing yeah i know but you guys have your judors up all the time the thing is i’m from a jewish
household i don’t care you always have a [ __ ] excuse but i’m i’m obviously more aware because i’m
always like noticed when people are jewish europeans are more aware of it and i think upper crest
americans are but where i’m not a procrastinator well i’m self-made so we don’t give a [ __ ]
about what your background is yeah and i like that annoys some people but i don’t care no one cared at that
party either it was all in my head i was like worried that party the one we had last night what do
you mean like i don’t think i’m broke i don’t think i’m broke but i do think i’m the first
sorry the most impoverished person in telluride oh yeah i am broke after this holiday
though thanks a lot the thing is you live a modest lifestyle but and you live hand-to-mouth in a sense like you’re always making your
money but you’re earning money and you’re living on it and i love you she’s living in modest existence i love my life you’re just not
accumulating tons of cash yet yeah so people by all means uh donate to scottish liberty podcast or
buy like a 100 copies of my book and [ __ ] like that take your take your goggles up let’s get
a better picture send your mother sent your aunt to me for therapy
no i’m keeping them down because the sun is blowing in my eyes i just want to take a picture oh can you
take a picture with your film yes but my uh hearts open your eyes on
three one two three okay yeah you can take a picture while you
film i tell you you didn’t study engineering no what useless degree did you get
i majored in music and philosophy okay have you ever studied the suzuki music
teaching method no it’s kind of like the montessori of
music i was a good piano tutor the kids loved
me and that’s why their parents love me
but i prefer being a i actually felt like i was being bad when i quit teaching piano
because i thought i’m very talented at teaching and i felt like i was doing the world as
a service by not teaching piano but i feel like there being a therapist so higher calling in a
way but i like being a good influence on kids i like kids yeah so did michael jackson
because see if you’re like a really good tutor or a really good teacher to a kid when you teach them something and you’re
nice to them they remember you for the rest of their life as a positive influence as like an
adult that wasn’t an [ __ ] to them correct i also like to treat kids like adults
like i treat them as much as an adult as i can but you don’t treat me like an adult
i’m sure i do i just usually like an adult who doesn’t
quite know how to uh wipe his own earth
[Laughter]
this is all going on this show real quick no cuts no this is a blooper no it’s definitely
not how’d you like to ski down that [ __ ] hey look at this crazy dude
look at that that’s not allowed all right let’s let’s ski some blacks
now or as you as you would say reds we’re going to conquer some reds another
couple of picks i was trying to get anthony to uh raise his goggles and open his eyes but
the sun was so bright so he rolled his eyes in a funny way and here’s a little a little short clip of anthony skiing and
i think peggy too with me filming yes there we have it
followed by a couple of samurai action shots mid ski yes my beautiful iphone
recording on full display
and a cool shot on top of the mountain in portrait mode with a little fuzzy summer off in the background and then with the background removed and a cool
effect courtesy apple thank you okay that was a badass run that was amazing it’s a run called
plunge and if you’re in ever and tell your ride i recommend you take the plunge it is
super it’s really really good it’s nice and steep not many bumps but you can take some of
the side if you want and uh you can go really fast if you’re skillful enough
yeah i am skillful enough all right solomon just happened right so i get these guys to go ahead a
little bit because i just want to i just want to go at ridiculous speeds now
so stefan’s pretty fast but his friends like to go leisurely and they’re also more
their forms better than mine anyway i thought i saw stefan over to the side so i
i skied up behind the sky and
what’d you say he’s american and america did it’s like
what what’s up you [ __ ] something yeah what up you
[Laughter]
like it was nothing i was just like what up you [ __ ] [ __ ]
and what did he say he turned around and he was like saying what and then what’d you do it
was like he’s like still even after he said say what it
still took me a few seconds to recognize that this wasn’t you
and i just had to first i kind of burst that laughing i just apologize and i said i’m so sorry i
thought you were my friend you’re wearing a sandwich i
[Laughter]
i think he was ready for a fight say what but but also i said it so matter-of-factly
that it’s conceivable that he actually misheard me so i turned right into mosquito way i
was laughing my ass so that was my entertainment for the day
okay do you think i should tell david and peggy sure why not
they’re a little bit more conservative than us do you think they’ll laugh
uh yeah i think they’re continually bemused by us just because we’re nato’s compared to
them radicals anarchists how can you get to
like that age and like you’ve never even thought or heard about these things and like they’re not like hostile they’re like
well i just never heard of that i never thought of it like that like libertarian stuff it’s like how can you be in your 60s and
like that’s not being critical i know i’m not i’m just saying most people are like that and like but most people aren’t that
intellectually curious i know why is that well i think that
usually it comes out of some needs i don’t know in your case but in my case
like i had a crazy irrational parent and one that was let’s say
not open to reason and even though they were fairly reasonable in other ways once
they had an opinion they like to keep their opinion so i feel like i over develop my sense of
my reasoning faculty my need for consistency to navigate that especially my mum because
it’s like you keep on trying to figure it out so that you can avoid getting in trouble and it’s like if you’ve got my kind of
mind like your amp up yeah i’m put up and that doesn’t work so example more and you keep on amping it up
but i don’t know in other people’s case it seems the minority of people who are like determined to find out the
truth which makes me think that there must be either some events
or an environment that creates that creates a tendency to want to look
for it and then you go on from there like most of the really deep people i know are
suffering or have suffered and i think that’s because evolution
doesn’t make mistakes and doesn’t waste you know plants and animals don’t have organs and
organelles they don’t need being self-reflective is extremely
costly i got your organelle it’s extremely costly and energy and
efficient so why would someone be self-aware unless they need it to be
i don’t know if you got the end of that because you’re [ __ ] around with your face i think the microphone can hear airwaves no matter which direction i’m
pointing well i’m dropping some deep [ __ ] here i know that’s why i’m flipping it like to show
the world it’s flippy trippy i see hey your turn why do you think why do you think you’ve got such uh over
were you uh were you vaccine injured or something i don’t know if i was vaccine injured
i think i was vaccinated injured no i don’t think so
because if i’m injured it’s scary to think what i would have been if i wasn’t injured but maybe you’re better i am better
deliberately injure people so that they become libertarians yeah i was bitten by a radioactive rothbard well that’s what someone said on
facebook that’s pretty funny
i don’t know but i think we decided to stay another day if we can work out the flights [ __ ] a why not for sure
[ __ ] that’s what i see not racist wait what was that moon unit
song about valley girls like okay fine for sure for sure she’s a valley
girl and there is no cure wow the girl valley remember that i don’t know that
chin oh i gotta play it all right bye a couple of more snaps of uh
me and anthony on the lift having fun okay so you just said uh you could do
this this lit this run a bunch of times if it only had a high speed lift and i’m like oh
four four first four then last night with dave and peggy are talking they have a beautiful house
in telluride like within walking distance of the gondola and peggy’s like yeah well we’re on the
dark side of telluride yes he’s like everyone says it first when we see where our house says
they’re like oh well that’s the dark side of town i was like that is the most first world problem i’ve ever heard in
my life oh no my beautiful several million dollar house yeah that that i’m able to rent when i’m
not skiing it just so happens to be oh which is five minutes walk from the gondola
i should add just happens to be in the dark side of the town oh angels are crying
who are you poor peggy but we love you i know girls like to be teased
yeah girls just want to have fun someone should do a song about that i
know all right i gotta play it now i gotta play it okay so there was a guy that i stopped
besides stefan or at least what i thought was stefan way off the side of the
and it still took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t stefan even after the guy
said it i just want to apologize and say i’m sorry i thought you were my friend
you got some more jackos but i laughed i laughed and laughed and he was like okay okay
like he more or less gestured for me to clear off but it was quite impossible that he wouldn’t under i’ve understood what i
said because it’s hard to hear what people say i’ll say that again it’s like talking to
sometimes concella does this thing where he just goes off into his own world and you’re trying to tell him about
something but it’s like talking to a [ __ ] wall
i used to live with a guy that did that my friend george he’s a great jazz piano player and he’s
also an amazing cook but sometimes he just goes off into george world and you’re like
hello [Laughter] and then and then um
and then he gets annoyed at you for being like hello because he thinks you’re diminishing him
as a human being all right so we’re done you want to tell them about the little misadventure we
just had okay so we’re st we have to take the lift the the gondola home back because
the lifts have all closed so the line is crazy long because the idiots will only put one party at a time
into the sixth person so sometimes a gondola goes up with one person he’s got a capacity of six so
this is creating a ball what do we wait like 25 minutes in line maybe yeah appropriately so this this skinny girl wearing pajamas in
front of us in line and a weird weird kind of like uh what do you call that hair she had
ah so she’s like great guy in the front you know she was a hip she probably
she’s kind of like i have the funny thing is she’s like the kind of new age happies i hung around with in my early
twenties and used to have a soft spot for her but now just make me dry drive me absolutely nothing so she uh
she said anthony kind of got in her space and she’s like what the hell dude and he kind of backed up and she’s just
she goes could you kind of give me some space because i have cancer and you’re not wearing a mask dude
yeah she wasn’t even like she wasn’t even that uh you said it quite like assertively and
direct whereas she was kind of more liberal passive aggressive
the thing is i got in her space because i thought her and her boyfriend were exiting the line because he basically
went over the barrier i was like oh sorry i thought you guys were leaving the light and she’s like
she’s like i have yeah she could have said i have cancer as an afterthought yeah and i turned to
kinsella and i’m like i think she just lied to me and i thought no because that’s a pretty heavy thing to drop however
she probably is a democrat and they do lie at the time
what the [ __ ] i guess you’re risking your life for a gondola ride down to town you should be so sh you should be
self-isolating stop raising the case rate you’re selfish
it’s bad that you have cancer but don’t make us live like we have it too yeah i know why you just stay at home and die like
the
[Laughter] this is taking a pretty dark turn but you know it’s just gal’s humor we like
to make fun of people it doesn’t mean we actually yeah but but to your credit you then you gave her six feet space the whole i
yeah i stayed just in case she really has cancer do you know what
if she loves people wearing masks that much then she should go to a kkk right you know one of those mass
balls where everyone plays dude i thought about buying one of those there’s a like black death plague that looks like
the that’s right the doctors are actually war back then that those are awesome would that be cool to wear around
like sibling says oh you could have like have it hanging on your back and someone said put your mask on you can whip it out
someone says put your mask on and you whip it out without the mask not whip it out you
whip it out you rip it out in public earlier on you can sell a glass
what was it that you said we were having a coffee and you’re like something something let’s i wasn’t
really that funny after all he was like [ __ ] me and i’m like i like you more as a friend
i know it was very bad it didn’t really be a repeating i admit but these are left talks yeah it’s a
mixed bag you get what you get you get what you pay for yeah which is here he melds nothing i
need to clarify well what was the thing that i said when i said that i was heavily implying that blah
blah then you said something funny insinuating yeah and yeah
you can edit this bit out if you want this one’s pretty look at look how pretty we’re leaving tomorrow we decided not to
stay another day yeah i can say because i wrecked twice today the first time was really bad it was on
a black and he just tumbled for ages that was not good
i’ll tumble for you i’ll turn before you then the second time was quite
surprising because you went you just what happened you just went over your edge can you sing
seeing something good i used to be able to sing just sing one song seeing something i can join in with you let’s
let’s try it you start the song in all harmonies silent night
holy night all
[Music] holy
[Music] sleep in heavenly
peace in heavenly peace
that was terrible we could do a heavy metal version you can stop that i thought love was only
look how cool what a nice little town poor peggy lives on the dark side
she lives on the dark side of town she does
because we are made of snow and trees if you think about it those three have cellulose and we have
cells and the eagle flies in tree nest and tree
and eagle is our symbol snow is made of water we drink water and underneath the snow
is stone and we are made of stone we are made
we thank you we thank you we thank you
and white man stole the name of the ancient god and called his skeleton no but tell
we were waiting in this freaking line and then the thing stopped twice and we’re like what it takes one [ __ ] what’d you say it
takes like all the things there’s one [ __ ] to set everyone back
and then you’re like wouldn’t it be funny if it was an actual reach and then i didn’t i don’t know if it would be funny or not everyone’s going
for me even though i was just generic we have to dismount we might have a final lift talk in the
hot tub but this may be the penultimate clip sayonara we thank youtube audience stone and
water audience aloha there we go every day he has trouble taking these infernal boots off [ __ ] you well let’s see
oh your mother this is your fault if you haven’t filmed that i wouldn’t
have hurt myself you [ __ ] we’re not allowed to say that on youtube anymore they take videos down for the
f-word of course you can call someone a complete and utter ass looking scumbag piece of [ __ ] who
would sell his own grandmother for uh injection of heroin
from an aids infectious prostitute [Laughter]
you’re gonna miss your call dumbass you’re allowed to call someone that one
youtuber you got your boot off pretty good this time yeah well done well done on [ __ ] deck
where you going i don’t know where you going let’s see what you’re doing here
he’s following me into my room he does this every day i can’t stand it every time i hear his ski bits in the
hall i know something bad could happen to me i can’t take it anymore
please help i can hear this please help
you really have a talent with making your bed i see it’s beautiful do you have do you at least have the
decency to shut your door do you at least have the decency to shut your door with your jerk you know
[Laughter] yes all right we’re here in
west end bistro last night here in telluride this will be the cap off of our lift our
lift talks just talk number two that’s true we didn’t get in the hot tub but you know what it’s very romantic
you can keep talking the microphone’s still working that’s it he’s taking me out for a romantic meal
on her last night it is yeah look i have a mocktail what do you think about that
i think
i’m just kidding look i’m drinking water i don’t even have a single alcohol
so we skipped a nice dinner invitation from our hosts to have leftovers from
our repast last night what was the word were passed we were patched leftovers never mind
drip past so can’t believe it
i decided not to ski anymore because i wrecked twice today and one of the snowmobile guys says you
know when you start skiing for a few days when you have a ski you know a regular then on the
third or fourth day you start getting way more confident but your skill doesn’t go up so you get more dangerous and that’s what
happened to me my skill went up and i did the thing is i know i’m
your friends well our friends and thought i was going really fast but
actually i never go faster than i can handle because as soon as i go slightly out of control i kind of freak out and
slow down so i thought it was really good it was really fun i loved doing those
blacks um and we went fast it was good
yeah well i almost fell as well actually um at one point it wasn’t when we were
going fast it was just when we were going a trail that’s when i didn’t expect to so the snow must have been uneven and my
legs parted like this like your mum’s and i almost
wrecked but i i managed to rebalance myself when you least expect it no not even in
a difficult the second time you felt it wasn’t in a difficult place no i was just just shaking from the
first one that sometimes happens yeah so anyway it was good though i think i injured my hand
my elbow my shoulder and my rib and my neck but other than that i’m fine
yeah any part in any way we should conclude well
it’s it’s i tried to do a hot tub to have a hot tub conversations but i got in there and it was lukewarm the
heater broke last night so who who would have done that david said
he blamed it on a scotsman farting in the tub
i wonder who he could have been talking about when did a scotsman climb into the tub
never mind fart oh yesterday and i have it on video it was on
yesterday’s lift talks you how did you get how did you video me
farting in the hot tub i didn’t you lied no i said i have us in the hot tub
anyway this is weston bistro at the hotel telly ride looks kind of looks kind of nice so we’ll see
yeah you found a nice veggie option delicious we’re going to have some ramen noodles
with all sorts of trimmings let’s do lamborghini oh it sounds good now what else did we have
we’re going to have to share some truffle fries that sense porches you know what that is really
there’s a there’s something called truffle oil which is oil artificially flavored to taste like truffles
so they just pour truffle flavored oil on it per show that’s like fraud would that be
legal in a libertarian order probably because people generally know or they should know
and if they don’t they’re stupid yep you can’t cure stupid that’s what my my well my cousin cindy
littlefield says uh you can’t you can’t pick stupid that’s true or maybe there’s another one of my
cousins anyway all right let’s sign up we’re
gonna fly out tomorrow peace out okay hey
what are you doing i’m sending my parents uh robert redford from the 90s
yeah yeah i just was i was just we’re at this coffee shop our last day tell you right i was just [ __ ] with the
with t-boy here i told him i said hey robert reporter’s right outside i thought he looks pretty young and he yeah well he believed me he was
like really seriously for sure i was like yeah go talk to him while i’m using the bathroom
i said the most i do if i met a celebrity would be to ask them for a cigarette and pretend i don’t even know who they
are but i’ve quit smoking so but you can still ask him for a cigarette
sure i can ask him for a cigarette and throw them in the trash and say i quit 10 weeks ago but you can’t stop
[ __ ] you wouldn’t say that to robert redford because he’s a respected actor
respected by him just because he’s respected by the vox popularity
i mean the uh the film festival in uh in salt lake city
what’s it called uh the famous film festival
gay film festival sundance sundance film festival no it’s not it’s not gay your homophobia is starting
to agree on my nerves i like going home can you do the sign of the cross
sign of the cross are you not catholic i can do it this is that i don’t know if you don’t know i’m not
like the divi brothers jesus is just all right with me when we did sign lacrosse we would say
um domino’s pizza delivers get it yeah but not very good pizza i do
i still don’t get it it’s just good pizza don’t be a pizza snob this is ridiculous
garbage pizza pizzas like sex good good pizza is great but even bad pizza is still pretty
good i disagree well that’s because you’re scottish and you’re disagreeable
i don’t think i’m not disappeared let’s go get a postcard for your parrot let’s get a postcard for your rents and
say goodbye to lyft talk coda bye to left talk call me
squeezing your girlfriend or mom’s bye-bye robert redford bye rob okay this is uh pretty much it
for the audio version uh this is just a final photo of us in front of the uh the christmas tree made of snow skis and
this is a little video from the telluride app kind of showing uh
that we hit a top speed of 50 to 51.2 miles an hour at one point the entity may be a little
faster and then it kind of shows the map of where we went and traces our
part of our path on on this this final day of skiing so
you can stop listening now for the audio version but the uh the youtube video will show a little bit
more of this to end it out sayonara see you later thanks for listening
anthony i had a good time he’s at his airbnb in houston right now i’m on my porch recording this
while editing this video on imovie and uh we had a good time and if it’s well received who knows what
this will lead to in the future can sell on liberty number xyz signing
out and scottish liberty podcast too bye-bye
you
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (44.7MB)
[From my Webnote series]
Related:
From X:
Libertarian Answer Man, What Sayest Thou?
“Crusoe owns nothing on his island, as there is no legal order. Does this include his body?
He can control and use his body, but he doesn’t own it. Ownership is a legal relationship between an actor and a resource, that is recognized and respected by others in society. If there is no society or legal system, there are no norms or rules or rights.
Also: Does a slave, in a legal order that supports slavery, no longer own his body?
The master is the legal owner, but the slave is the natural or rightful owner. We have to distinguish possession or control, from ownership. And we have to distinguish positive law from just law. As Mises wrote: [continue reading…]
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 329.
Lift Talks #1 —Telluride March 2021 — With Kinsella & Sammeroff.
Two libertarian blokes on a ski vacation. Filmed Tuesday March 30, 2021, Telluride Ski Resort.
Grok summary shownotes: In the “Lift Talks” episode recorded in Telluride, Colorado, Stephan Kinsella and Anthony Sammeroff deliver a dynamic conversation while riding ski lifts, starting with humorous reflections on their trip [0:00-9:00]. They discuss their skiing adventures, hot springs visits, and encounters with COVID-19 mask policies, including a tense plane incident involving a dropped tissue and a stewardess enforcing federal mask laws [3:46-5:57]. Their libertarian perspective shines through as they mock passive-aggressive mask enforcers and recount a refreshing interaction with a store clerk who opposed mask mandates [6:09-7:06]. The hosts also share personal stories, like Sammeroff’s flirtatious banter about a vegan woman and a chance meeting with a friend from a yoga retreat, highlighting cultural differences between American and European directness [7:12-8:27].
Grok detailed shownotes and Transcript below.
[Update: Tom Woods and Antony discuss his travels across American in Ep. 1895 Traveling Through COVID America. Also mentioned in KOL462 | CouchStreams After Hours on Break the Cycle with Joshua Smith (2021).]
Part 2: KOL330 | Lift Talks #2 With Kinsella & Sammeroff
Cross-posted on Scottish Liberty podcast.
Bonus video:
Three day skiing video compilation telluride March 2021
all right this is stefan kinsella and anthony summeroff will be joining me these are some
photographs of our trip to telluride our first day or two before we get to
this is the hot springs the orvis hot springs and ridgeway that we went to and this is uh
me and anthony on the left and me and anthony and david
and peggy are gracious hosts a few pictures taken on top of the
mountain me and anthony and then this is uh peggy and david and anthony
and here’s me afraid to go down a hyper mowgli black which i did not go down and here
we go this is uh the beginning of lift talks
with anthony summeroff and stephen gonzalo how are you doing there i think
excellent you’re looking forward to having a good lift talk on the left oh sure this has been like one of the best holidays
ever and we’re only on the second freaking day i know i know right i know right okay we’ll see
you on the left okay so this is we’re about to get on the gondola head up
about to get on the gondola they ask you to put this over your mouth and nose which is what [ __ ]
[Music]
nicely done that was just a majestic as a gazelle
all right how elegantly i can compensate for my errors in life ah peace and quiet okay this is tuesday
we skied yesterday and we’re on our second day starting off late starting off late because someone
couldn’t get out of bed someone’s recovering from the covet vaccine number two which all my libertarian friends warned me about
taking but i just didn’t listen yeah you should have injected that poison into your
bloodstream yeah and feeling the effects so this whole trip has turned into a kobe trip because all
you do is complain about covet and get us in trouble and almost get kicked off of dead airplanes yeah so i
guess we should introduce you into some of the characters that we’ve met do you want to sit here so that we
can both be in the frame and tell the story i’ll sit by you sweetie yeah you’ll get some nice views
this is such a great idea i love this show the samurai can sell the show so
yeah i mean in houston it was pretty good with the covert i mean most places you go to shop they ask you
for a mask i don’t usually put my mask on until i’m asked if someone asks me to put on the
mask they usually are quite polite they say excuse me sir do you have a mask and i or could you put a mask on and i
say yes i can do that for you and i say i could do it for them because i want them to know that i don’t believe in that
[ __ ] and that’s my little bit of civil disobedience but i never met that pro even though you
you’re telling me that houston’s a pretty blue city i never met the sarcastic
um overly polite massive aggressive progressive slash liberal i hate that
they stole her word but liberal [ __ ] smarmy
until i went to colorado
this is just a commercial break you keep talking long-winded story [Music] um let’s see what about the what about
the people on the plane yeah so you you tell that story because i saw that story better than i did oh
yeah so we were flying to telluride from denver on a little plane and we were sitting together behind us was a
couple but before you go on to the couple the air host stats announced please ladies and gentlemen the mask
must be over your mouth and nose and she gave me a direct look because my mask was up to here but i really want to tell these people
do you think that i’m not wearing it over my nose just to be an obtuse [ __ ] because i know i am an obtuse
[ __ ] but that’s not why i’m not wearing it over my nose i’m not wearing it over my nose because i like to freaking breathe air
and it just doesn’t it feels really bad breathing through the mask so anyway the fabric you go on and so
and so uh the the people behind him he dropped his tissue and it flies to fall and they say excuse me sir did you
drop your tissue which wasn’t the real question because they they knew he dropped this tissue they wanted to like
chide him for contaminating the world with his with his uh tissue and then they said
and could you please put your mask up like that was a whole it was a ruse to yeah and then the stewardess comes over
and she’s like sir i’ve asked you three times it is a federal law and if i have to report you to the
captain you could be banned from all future flights presumably on key lime bum [ __ ] air what
the [ __ ] and the only you only need to fly one more time in your life
on thursday when we go home such a maverick getting into trouble from the aeros but yeah the funny thing is the guy was
so overly friendly and smarmy when he was like excuse me sir i think you dropped your
tissue but what like this is a difference in culture between americans and europeans
because i was in the autobahn in germany and i was playing something
out of my phone and the german lady was just like excuse me sir could you put headphones on and
she just said exactly what she meant so if it was in europe that guy would have been like excuse me sir your
handkerchief is bothering us can you please pick us up pick it off the floor why do you [ __ ] have to be so
passive aggressive and it was girlfriend his girlfriend as well she didn’t say play she was just
like oh yeah and put your mask up over your nose go suck a dick lady anything to add
what were you talking about yeah
uh i guess i agree but i’m just i’m just complying oh then we met this cute chick at the targaryen oh yeah she was fine
yeah it was this babe i came in without my mask she did she was kind of like a rock chick with tattoos on her neck and
we didn’t even know she had piercings on stefan asked her to take her mask down so we could see her face
i i mentioned that i mentioned something about masks and she more or less told us that she didn’t give a [ __ ] and she thought it was harsh [ __ ] yeah
it hides people’s faces so they can’t see each other yeah she’s like what did she say it hides
people’s faces so they can’t see each other and she said hopefully it’s going to be lifted shortly yeah she thinks telluride
or colorado or something are there or the store owner is going to say and then kinsella said well we can’t
we’ve not seen your face you should take your mask down and she did and she had tons of piercings and i never even knew
yeah it was just as well she had her mask up she might have scared which means she’s probably a democrat but yet she’s sound on mass policy anyway
that’s a rare company she’s a unicorn she’s a democrat and yeah i’d still fill her up full of babies but then we went to
dinner with lindsay his friend lindsey from a yoga retreat in mexico yeah as one does in her
boyfriend her name from venezuela and she happens to know this chick from uh photography and she informed anthony
that sorry sadly she has a boyfriend sadly and i said well it doesn’t really
since she’s vegan it doesn’t really count as cheap yeah because you’re vegetarian and you could be you can be vegan it’s like a network it
doesn’t really count and besides i have superior genes yeah
now the thing is there’s enough of a chain of connection that lindsay could watch this and pass it on to the piercing girl but i don’t really care
anyway it’s really interesting i should tell you this i think the only person i met in
colorado on my travels was this girl lindsay right and i invited her to the libertarian
meetup i had in denver thinking well she lives in colorado maybe she’s a stone’s throw a distance
and she’s like ah that’s pretty far from where i live i don’t think i’ll make it and then i went on her facebook profile and i saw that she lived in telly ride
and i sent her a whatsapp like gtfo mates do you seriously live in telly right
that’s where we’re going skating she’s like no wait what are the chances of that okay we’re coming up to sofia
station we need to get off here let’s get sophia i mean i don’t know it means a bad actress and godfather
we’re off the lift we’re about to ski for the day hello let’s see keyboard start
i’m impressed at how much better i am today than yesterday yeah me too okay we’re on the first
official lift of our live talk adventure lift 10. and uh i think we should call this like
libertarians on the left libertarians on the left and not on the left get it yeah
the the new the new leftist libertarians oh he left this lift what does take a left mean is that
like getting higher like smoking no it means turn left on the road no take a left
take a lift i’ve never heard that marley i let my mind take a left maybe say oh
maybe his mind went up because he got high yeah what about your left for the day we can call this show
you’re take left talks you’re left for the day like you’re left out lift lift out in
the cold left over that is true
in the cold i have a surprise little t-boy here could ski so well for a scotsman for a middle-class
scotsman i know you’re better as well who’s better do you think
i don’t know because it’s hard to tell your technique might be better because you’ve got more lessons yeah i need our independent tradition
who’s pre whose privilege is better i think you’re privileged to spencer yeah
yeah i kind of think i have about 2.7 too much privilege i want to trim a little bit off i need to go on a
privileged diet i’m working on a belly
speaking of speaking of bellies i met stefan’s very lovely very beautiful
wife do you know that a lot of people have never met her jesus city exists she keeps so low profile
okay but speaking of belly social justice for your child oh he’s just he’s just a little
woke in a pleasant way but better than being an all-right [ __ ] yes i would say on the scheme of things
but you still let the team down okay but i’m gonna give you a scottish accent you tell me who it is get in my belly get in my
belly yeah you’d do a good magmar’s impression i’d do a good impression of someone
doing an impression oh look this is proof that the irish and
the scots can get along after all but you’re not really a irish just like [ __ ] off
you bastards you get to have a [ __ ] heritage we can’t have one no what do you want me to trace my
heritage back to abraham lincoln in europe no one ever says they’re
she’s moving the camera well they still hear your voice
she had to build a multi-million dollar bridge to get to her house for the whole community’s benefit she said okay yeah
i mean just imagine how many starving children in africa i wonder if oprah’s do you think oprah skis or she just like
has a house in the mountains like i’m sure she invites her skiing
buddies over he doesn’t look like a skier though you gotta admit yeah she’s a little bit heavy around the
belly area but you don’t want to talk so hey i started when i was kidding
you were skidding yeah i was skinny skinny as [ __ ] let’s see after i was about 37. insert photographic
evidence to video all right i thought you were just like boned i didn’t think you were actually a big house
now that you’ve told me that you put on the way i know i’m a little feller like you it’s due to your weak character
i know due to brainwashing from the state which i’ve succumbed to i actually put on 11 pounds since coming to eastern
texas but it was a little bit crikey that’s almost half a stone i know but i don’t want to take all of
it off i only want to take six pounds off just grow your love muscle i got a
little bit of a belly actually you can see yeah you look you look like a little buddha symbol or something a little bit
well it’s not times by someone to take six times off okay lift talk segment three or whatever
signing off all right lift uh left hand the second time we’re uh
that was pretty good what did you think about that run i really enjoyed it nice and flat it’s fast slightly icy but
not too bad right yeah i’m eating a granola bar why don’t you take take it away until like
because i had two muffins already that’s enough for my big muffin why don’t you chat to the audience while
i eat oh they might like to see you eat all right anybody like to see me
what you can find on is this going to be on your on your podcast what is this spot it was scottish
liberty there was a scottish puberty i’ve got a lot of different professions
you can find me at www.beak.com
uh well unfortunately i’ve seen you naked twice already [ __ ] hot springs someone forgot his
bathing suit doesn’t wear a mask anywhere i’ll put it that way
here’s the thing what’s the thing speaking of things you didn’t need to see my junk if you
weren’t looking at my junk you mean this is easy to miss
yeah but not in a gay week [Music]
my butt cheek touched his knee and the jacuzzi but not in a gateway it was just his
friends he was getting in and i said dude boundaries
i totally thought it was i thought it was a hairy porpoise swimming by like it can’t be can’t be in a hot tub
no it’s gotta be something those aren’t pillows
all right so anyway we’re gonna we haven’t wrecked one time we haven’t wrecked at all i’ve not fallen over even once i’ve almost
wrecked but anyway what about lift thoughts how are we getting lifting people on
this talk and left in their lives well i just wanted to talk about the fact that
when you get near the left they sometimes ask you to fill this up over your nose today’s always a good
[ __ ] guy i’ll look like are you [ __ ] or something like i actually looked at him
like that all right i think he knew but the thing is you’re nowhere near
anyone and the thing is everyone knows it’s [ __ ] they’re just do it because their boss
said and their bosses just do it because their boss said and it won’t where is people’s line do
people actually have a line anymore where they say their total state is sheeple
so tell them about our adventure on sunday so we flew in sunday from denver no yeah after spending saturday night
there and seeing some old buddies i saw karen and harlow and my old buddy chris simoneau and he saw some other people there’s a
different buddies they were really cool we couldn’t we can order because the the grouping was not appropriate for logistical reasons
but anyway so we flew in and he he happened to know this girl from from
a mexican yoga retreat no i’m not making this up and she lives in telluride so her and her boyfriend
met us and they took us to these hot springs and and uh well they took us to uray first which is where gulf gulch is
that was cool yeah and we had some really unhealthy mexican food it was great
and then we went to uh ridgeway went to the orvis hot springs which is clothing optional which you took
advantage of too it was very optional for me oh tell about that it was optional in the sense that it’s
an option that i didn’t take the steam tell about the steam room with the rocks in the water the sauna and who was this native
american guy that was like we used to pray we used to give thanks
to rock and water then the white man came and he made us give thanks to god
but we used to give thanks to rock and water because we’re made of rock and water yeah he started listing off the
elements of stone is made of potassium and that’s what our rock bodies are made of so we
give thanks to stone and water and he wanted to educate us on the ways
of the ancients and it was just a bunch of my superstitious religious [ __ ]
is better than your superstitious people i like that skinny topless chick sitting down beneath us he was going like
i wonder if it’s better to pay someone to find your energy or to find your energy yourself i mean i
was in a hot of freaking democrats let’s face it it was worse than that these were like they were sort of like
the cast of a show that is yeah this is a new age
retreat or something [Laughter]
since we’ve touched upon religious issues definitely we need to bank for a topic our discussion on
as object how certain can you be the objective reality is objective
reality as certain as one can be you can have that as certain as possible you can have that whole conversation
it goes to 11 put it that way it goes to 11. i’m not even going to do this we’re
gonna have to have a frothy discussion a proper lengthy discussion these are not things matters that can be
solved in weird sound bites okay here’s what’s funny when i pass someone on the left like this like imagine that’s a
person right when they get here you say what state are you from and they feel compelled to answer
they’ll go ah alabama and then they’re like wait were we having that conversation and
that granola bar was really freaking good i wish i had it i thought you were against grains i’m not a fan of greens but i’m hungry
and we’re on the left just walking [ __ ] contradiction aren’t you well it would be better if i packed some bananas i agree but
i thought you were packing a banana well you’re the one who had a good wood cat i
did not have a good look at it i had a bad look at it why did you keep on going on and on about my jug
i’m a fan of jeffrey tucker and also mark thornton and also david gordon
sorry what we say
oh can you harmonize try to harmonize also try to harmonize with me
i don’t think he did i’ll try a different pitch oh
that sucks i am not picking up good vibrations i’m thinking of a good vibration sunset
let me do a good time i know this one
all right until the next lift lift stay lifted like his shoes all right we’re halfway
down from lift 10 sunshine express and why don’t you tell us what this is
this is oprah’s bridge which she had commissioned and built she’d think that she had
better things to spend her fortunes on than a bridge but seemingly not thank you oprah
for this bridge of peace okay we were talking about the like hops idea
that the right is realistic about recognizing hierarchies and differences and authority figures
naturally and the left is egalitarian and you think it’s horseshit well i mean i don’t think they’re they’re
right as realist or anything like that they’re just they’re mostly defined by what they
don’t like throughout history they just change their position and that’s not a way to be
in the world and that’s not a way to and that’s why they lose because look they’re not coherent
they’re not a cohort yeah throughout history who has actually written the political
philosophy there’s maybe about a dozen
hardcore right-wing intellectuals most of the basis for their philosophy
has been written by libertarians who they steal ideas from and then [ __ ]
all over how did they treat iron rand they shot and pissed all over her after stealing
her they did shot on her and how did they treat murray rothbard they shattered pissed all over him after
stealing his ideas they show no gratitude whatsoever
to libertarians for actually doing their thinking for them the left or right when they say okay
well if pop is right when he says that the right are realists
then the left to right when they say that they’re right or anti-intellectual they are anti-intellectual they’ve
always been anti-intellectual and i agree and so okay
basically what was saying is people like hoppa have a soft spot for the right and they create all sorts there is a
reason that they’re they libertarians have more in common with the conservatives today but not under
push okay we gotta get on we have all these wacky theories for why the right is better than the left but
they hate you they think that you’re they’re your their [ __ ] little cousin like rudrak
from the film dirty rotten sponge featuring steve martin if you’ve not seen it watch it bye well
i might as well film this here we go go to the right
okay we made it
all right for now oh that was a good run that was good right nice and icy
like i like my woman you like your woman i see i always say a girl who can’t back
chat in all that i made that up myself was what’s blackjack it means like sassy a little bit oh back
talk she used to be clever yeah if a girl isn’t clever she’s just how do i see this possibly
correctly let’s see her functions are limited [Laughter]
i i object to that on behalf of all women whatever gender are you seeing
[Music] at least you have more functions
i was watching tom woods play game of chess with david damn what’s that guy’s name steel
ramsey steel great guy david ramsey steel i was sick yeah you’re not a fan
i was sitting on the couch over in alabama at the lisa’s institute and i overheard this voice and i was like
you are a dead ringer for someone i can’t think who where are you from means like well birmingham that’s a long story short
oh brimmie don’t they say a broomy over there yeah they do actually and i was like eventually i was like
there’s this guy someone i i said another name ramsay steel and he’s like oh that’s funny because
i’m david ramsey still i was like yeah i’ve read some of your book from marks to missus so we got in a chat
anyway him and tom woods were playing chess and tom wins is brilliant to play chess
he almost beat he he
um walter block was an inches of losing to tom woods in a game
of chess and top and walter williams clawed it back at the last moment
but that’s to be expected because it was just walter defending the undefendable
exactly what i was thinking anyway i was just remarking to steph and it’s funny how the horse
is the night and chest because i always thought that it
was the person riding the horse that was that sounds like a david gordon joke for some reason
but i i always thought it was the the person writing the first that was the night
but i didn’t know this was the roman emperor which had a horse for a cemetery but
apparently no a horse is a high ranking member of the feudal system
so you learn something every day well we know that some of their cousins are asses so you know that would make sense
i just sat on the couch and had a chat to channel
well it’s the mountain’s empty today right i think that’s why we have it to ourselves we’re like kings
yeah we’re taking our privilege king canute did he ever get this tied to go back now
the question is can we ever get the tide of statism to go back or is that just like
being king canoe i’ll tell you something interesting though so tonight we’re having what i said wasn’t interesting no but my head’s on this
topic so tonight we’re having this catered dinner and the chef asked me uh
when we come over to cook would you would you prefer us to wear a mask or not like he wanted us to give him the lead
and we said we don’t give a damn anyway so i’m going to ask him tonight what percentage
what’s that what answer is he getting like what percentage of people say they don’t care which because that’ll be a good panel on the
streets so you’re gonna have to tune into the next edition of left talks to find out what he said
yeah because we’re approaching a hill which might be the terminal station but it’s not so i’m gonna tell you
well yeah so stefan being the baller that he has just arranged to have a chef come over
and cook for us well i’m paying back my host for keeping us for free that’s the idea that’s my that’s my way
of paying them how am i paying the back i’m not doing judge she gave them a book that’s true we brought them some
chocolate well you’re you’re you’re giving them free medical advice i’m going to send
them a thank you card free diet advice yeah
my friends are nice nice normal republicans that’s what you want that’s you want to
go on vacation with nice normal republicans you’re good you just i don’t know why you’ve got
such a border
not compared to lee oh yeah lee new friend leah gloaty no
but you just didn’t just
all right i gotta pause my hands getting too cold we’ll pick this up there we go we’re on left one the little chandler
end of the last left yeah sorry i’m not really good at fitting ideas into short spaces i always
think that in order to give a full picture of an idea you really need to i know like that lady done she’s like
okay can you explain bitcoin to me in two minutes i said probably not
i mean judging by your apparent technical abilities and my ability to summarize all this
stuff you’re not really doing things in lay person’s terms is not really your struggle well i
i didn’t think you’d have the cons time the time attention span to listen long enough for
me to slowly explain it so i was compressing but anyway my mouth is so
cold where it’s like yeah i think sigmarcic
oh no no no it was asymptote asymptotic i said it approaches the line
asymptotically and they’re like what’s that i said you know math like i never heard that only that’s the opposite of exponential
that’s what i told him well i don’t think it helped i i finally explained that
what other words do you use uh praxeology just keep on resting there
better try to explain it uh my mouth is so frozen
um uh what big words heterogeneous um
uh ella mercenary i like to use that one oh i like this
yeah l-e-e with a little exit mark m-o-s-y-n-a-r-y
that’s in case you want to look it up in the dictionary and find out what it means it means terrible how many big words do
you actually know of your accounting no probably more than average but um
i like to say something like the average person is a [ __ ] idiot so you could basically discount most of
those i like these words the opposite way say something like uh like like i just swam in the pool oh
that swim was so innovating innervate means a sappy of strength
but it sounds like you’re energized yeah no one even knows they don’t know the words they’re like yeah i feel innervated too
like really do you i tricked you i tricked you into
misusing a word wrongly i’ll i’ll like i’ll hold up on a can of gasoline and say is this slammable or
inflammable welcome to my berg trend welcome to my world we’re going to go up
the foe now we can go to guarano ranch whatever have a hot chocolate if you want that
wouldn’t be too bad because it’s kind of cold dude don’t waste out on me tomorrow will be a little warmer anyway i
don’t know it’s desolate here it’s just dead no wonder they’re closing it early they put all these freaking uh gondola
carriages around the fireplace in the center of mountain village so people can socially distance and sit by the fire in their little cabins
i kind of just want to infect everyone with the virus just to spite the people who are
destroying my life because of it [ __ ] it give it to everyone let god
sort them out i thought libertarians were not misanthropes well so a lot of libertarians are
wrestling throats tan my usual co-hosts myself confessed my son i’m gonna defend
him he was a good host all right i’m gonna stop say goodbye my mouth’s freezing over all right lift
four so we were talking yesterday like what’s the difference between political philosophy
political theory legal theory stuff libertarians do
so i think it’s an intersection of some of those right because it’s intersecting
so you said you had some thoughts on that well you asked
yeah because you’re talking about what the law ought to be ought to be so you need to
know some law which is why it’s political theory rather than legal theory
because yeah it would be something like legal
rather than what the law is what the structure of the law is correct as it starts correct see some
people say i’m good at these pedantic things like making distinctions between lots of different
things that’s really why some people like to read my stuff because i’m really [ __ ] pedantic and i split hairs um
so that’s a good question for me if i do say so myself i know i’m bad at
i don’t think i’m a very original thinker i think that i’m pretty good at presenting other people’s ideas i don’t
think that it’s better to be right than original right yeah it’s better to do something well this hike it’s better to do something
well then be to do something original i think occasionally new arguments but it’s not my strong
point this is why where we’re going to go after garado branch
go hang out with the sun what do you think that sounds great see but you know you wouldn’t call
libertarianism a political theory it’s a political philosophy so it is a self-political philosophy but
i think a political philosophy is more like yes it’s a certain view about the way
politics should be structured which is a view about logical theory as sorry you’re saying political
philosophy political philosophy is a field of study i would say it studies
it studies political systems so it’s not really political it’s studies ideal we’re very strong we’re
arguing normatively so we’re arguing normatively about what the law should be i just don’t know what to do when you’re arguing nor
okay when you’re arguing so you’re saying sorry i interrupted what’s your question no what
what’s the right word for it when you’re arguing normatively for what the political system
should be and what the law should be yeah you’re doing political philosophy philosophy when you’re arguing what the
law should be you’re maybe doing
political philosophy as well but you could say more even more you could invent a term
for it like just by shoving things together like legal moral philosophy
no no but legal moral philosophy would be a study of different views on what the law should be so i
talk about like i like i say i do i i do libertarian theory
i see you so that’s the best material i think that’s the best it’s really theorizing what the libertarian position but what
would the what would the what would be what would the correlative thing be for for a socialist or for
or for environmentalists or for a conservative would they be doing conservative legal
theory or conservative theory well i mean it depends what because what was marx do
it a mixture of a bunch of stuff yeah political philosophy sociology economics not very good
economics but he’s still doing economic he’s still basically understood
a lot of ricardo and smith and he could say exactly what he disagreed with when it came to regardless what i find
always interesting is how the word economics used to be called political economy
but it also had a slightly different school we think political economy sort
of encompassed political philosophy and political and economic sort of no political economy was saying
how a state should run the economy whereas economics has far greater boundaries i was just
studying economic phenomena yeah indeed so political economy it was more limited in scope
well maybe what we’re doing is libertarianism’s political economy because we’re saying what how the state should run the economy
economy because political economy is not normative so as soon as you bring in enormous
services you’re bringing in philosophy all right we gotta cut this short great
conversation by the way good talk thank you thank you internet tomboy
timer how’s that feeling i think i should nick
can’t go on under that all right that was a nice little break hi
it was a nice it was a nice too long break if you stop for too long you don’t want
to get back up i guess yeah i guess i have it backwards this time so anyway likes to stare off
wistfully into the distance and zone out yeah one of his habits my wifey says why don’t don’t do jessie
because we used to have a female friend named jessie who would do that staring she didn’t want you to do her because she was afraid that jesse
might be better in bed well i actually dated jesse because she was like all the more recent things
my wife’s good friend and roommate dude jesse did you do jesse i dated jesse
that’s all i’ll say and a gentleman never talks well i must not be a gentleman because i
love talking about sex
okay what about the uh the the uber driver and auburn the black chick who picked this up
yeah we had uh do you want to tell the story no you can we had a black taxi driver pick us up
she was getting into thomas seoul and walter williams she said she freaked out about trump when trump
got elected so she did her research on youtube and the more she found out the more she realized she was more
sympathetic to free market ideas and uh
she gave me her email address i’ll send her a link to a book i liked
and then asked her she thanked me and i said is there anything you want me to watch she didn’t reply
so i guess that’s the end of that she had this kind of complicated name like antonita or something like that
yeah she had a similar name to me anyway that’s where we’re gonna hit
today at the end we’re gonna go and do some sunbathing we think about that it looks like heaven
i like working i don’t like sunbathing we’re gonna sunbathe today and you’re
gonna like it whether you like it or not
all right we’re gonna go meet beat miss peggy in a second and ski with our buddies but either way it’s a beautiful day in the
neighborhood why do they always play africa by total when hold the line is clearly a superior
song yeah i don’t think they can answer you because this is a one-way conversation
all right later later that is what she said last night all right so we’re on the left and
you’re whining that you’re cold it’s a little bit cold today yeah it’s colder it’s about 12 degrees colder than
yesterday but tomorrow will be warm again so that’ll be just perfecto huh yeah i’ll probably get sunburned and
then i’ll have something else to wait about we’re gonna go meet miss peggy who’s a normie
she’s lovely that’s peggy peggy
anyway uh we’re going to do a hot tub adventures segment in our in our yeah in our lift
you up segment you can get a little bit of uh insight into the world for our
libertarian celebrities i watch said should i film some of the dinner party tonight that might be inappropriate
these people might not want to be associated with libertarians they might want to talk about they might
want to talk like conservatives about how it’s for people’s fault david this morning
david said and they work harder than other people and that’s why they’re rich
what did you say uh david said i’ve never met an anarchist before i
said well you’ve met three now because i brought one carpio here and and anthony we’re all three enterprise
capitals we’re growing we’re growing threat man better watch out yeah stop sucking the
deck of this state oh what’s that feminist t-shirt you said you liked oh yeah i want to get one that says she wants the destruction
of patriarchy
she was the d instruction of patriarchy that’s funny if someone wants if someone
wants to get a nice version of that t-shirt made for me i’ll gladly accept the gift i want to go down there that’s what i
want to do today i want to go chillax on the snow what you want to do
we could do it for a while all right okay now here’s a brief clip from the uber driver conversation in auburn
uh at the mises event a few weeks ago that we just mentioned in the previous lift talk club i’m gonna go back to the
50s yeah go back to the 50s but we were thriving so was it a slave mentality then no exactly
i haven’t fully turned republican yet but i’m on the verge well we’re libertarians actually so we’re like republican square but but
what you said was very open yeah yeah but i definitely i’m um breaking away from the
democratic party because at the end of the day they’re not serving you right they’re not thank you so much
okay and now back to our regularly scheduled lift talk where we join miss peggy our neighbor
and friend and host gracious host and lovely lady that’s all what’s even the part in that hey so uh
this is lift talk part x with special guest peggy hello
i can take my little mask off you’re gonna be on on the youtube oh yeah yeah i don’t know what do you
think about this libertarian stuff we keep yammering on about you guys are a little bit crazy but
generally i agree with it good crazy
i can’t get there on all of it okay well there’s hope left my child i’m already
there babe there’s no way back for me i know i’ve been handcapped since i was two months old
you’ve been what in capital anarcho capitalism again antarctica capitalists see this is
what we have it means libertarian middle-of-the-road right-wing conservatives don’t
understand their lexicon yeah but peggy i mean generally speaking
i like the less government idea good good woman you’re you’re you’re headed
a lot less like a lot like like very less like oh like none that sounds good
i don’t know they’re kind of crazy people out there yeah i know what do you do about a
police force well what what we do about chris i know it’s private what do you do with crazy people in the absence of
government well i’ve got an idea well you don’t put them in charge of a freaking government
that’s a good start what do you do because it’s not going to be greek negativity like sociopathic people who
only care about themselves well one thing you do is you don’t put them in charge of the military
the money is start what do you do with abusive people who like to beat people up well one thing is you don’t give them
guns so i’ll take my chances with the free
market thank you very much with the free market or with a free market there
there’s only one it doesn’t really matter i don’t know just like being pedantic so you’ll have to send peggy emails
explaining to her what we’re going to do about police force not that the police force does a good job of preventing crime
or even solving crime in fact sometimes when you get your car stolen and it’s got a microchip in it
that allows them to locate your car using a satellite the police still tell you they’re not
going to locate the car and apprehend the assailant so one thing i
would say is you fire the police if they don’t actually do a good job and you hire someone else to do their
job before they if they do a good job if they don’t do a good job you can fire them
oh that would be nice yeah there would be no police unions to take
it and teachers unions well the thing is the teachers have a monopoly service
under the current system so the union means a free market there’d be a bunch of
different police people providing education the union wouldn’t be and it’s the same for the police like
they could have a union but they’d just be one of several options that people had
so if they got too big for their gifts
they’d be easier to get rid of or replace with someone better yeah i think so too i’m doing all the
heavy lifting in these left talks i’m lifting the camera my arms getting tired
is their hand getting cold yeah a little bit yeah today’s cold my lips are cold my fingers are cold my
heart is cold and shriveled your heart is cold well they had uh they had this cake this is just one case
where there was some women living together and someone broke into their home and they went up into the attic
and they called the police and the police came and drove outside their house and stopped
and then went away and after a while they went downstairs to see if anything
had happened and the three of them basically got raped by the people that broke into their house
and the police didn’t do their job i think they called them a couple times they said they’d send someone right out
again and then they took the police to court for not doing their job and the judge
ruled that the police have no obligation to protect anyone from criminals and so the cops
got off of course you don’t have an allegation even though the women got raped so what i’m saying is without government
you wouldn’t have ridiculous cases like that because they work for
you the government don’t think they work for you they think you work for them so
hey peggy where’d you get that lanyard for your phone it’s online you did it was it just for
your phone or just for a large sized phone i don’t know i’d be scared to put mine in a lot cause i
think that’d be great for me skiing oh i love it i’m scared in case i ski too fast
it comes off the lanyard why would it come off i don’t know it’s the kind of stupid
[ __ ] that happens to me i’m great at losing friends yeah
over and out over and out overnight anthony’s king
and this is a picture of anthony samurov skiing i’m recording this on imovie
and this is a very short video of anthony skiing with me filming on my iphone
well hello here we are at the end of uh a nice day skiing our second day and uh don’t look stay close yeah don’t
let me hold this here okay [Music]
this might look weird but was it inappropriate that’s okay
i talked to andre in a man jaina anyway i got a main channel so i’m not even drunk i’ve just had one
of these this is what i’m always like yeah i have one of these which is not drunky you have to appreciate
kinsella because you might remember the first time he came on the scottish liberty podcast
he was wasted yeah but not next time i like to take i
like to i like to take credit for the fact that kinsella’s quit because i like to think that it’s
because he came on our show and humiliated himself that he decided do you know what drinking is no longer for me
now if i would have remembered it it would have helped can i take credit for all of your achievements from
now on sure in fact can i post data see that book intellectual property against
intellectual property if it wasn’t for me concealing ever would have written that book cam you’ve got time
time traveling skills i know what age was i when when did that book come out [Music] 2001 2001 when i was the prime age of
15. i didn’t even know that i was going to grow up to be your friend i thought i didn’t even know
you exist never mind didn’t know i was going to be your friend it’s crazy
crazy how life works i when you came on our podcast i didn’t know you were going to be my friend
i just thought it was a podcast thing
well i guess we travel around the world that’s what you get two more lights living the high life yeah
prairie prairieville moved up to telluride can i tell you something yeah you guys at home
they used to call america the land of opportunity and that is true because
since i’ve come here i’ve had tons of opportunities i went to the conference mises institute made friends
with this dude i’m publishing a book on cellular health what else happened i had a great
experience in florida what’s more i got a phone call from i got a message
on facebook from a publisher asking to publish my next book um we went to auburn too yeah went over
and spoke to michael heiss about getting on the belt how did he say his name is
pronounced let’s tell him nice actually he said it’s not haysa heist okay it’s heist everyone
sorry michael heiss michael heisen’s official maybe we’ll have him on the show one day
maybe you could be cool with stefan okay is there anyone you want to interview
because maybe you can be the guest co-host of the podcast and interview someone
i have to think about it that’s not how i roll usually it looks like i’m going to be on the bell at the nevada libertarian party state
convention oh here’s a tip here’s a tip for you a tip for you when you go to nevada
most outsiders try to make it fancy and they call it they say nevada
but it’s really nevada that’s how i pronounced that i know you did it right but the interesting thing is um
yeah maybe i should just see if i can get on all of them i’m such an attention or
um i’ve got a speaking opportunity in seattle none of this [ __ ] happened when i was in
scotland what the [ __ ] have i been doing for the last five six seven years since i’ve been a public intellectual being depressed
yeah partly so but i think it’s just because i hadn’t met you yet but now i met you and i’m no longer depressed
my life is complete this everyone thinks i’m an [ __ ] i know that’s because your online
persona is a little bit more sharp than you are in real life i love the
fact that because i’m in the pool it makes her look like the bottom half of my body
look look look it makes it look tiny it’s an illusion it’s like i’m a little bit it’s like
it’s like optical shrinkage so i think what we should do is end our
indoor lift notes today and maybe do another tomorrow maybe we’ll stop this could be episode one and
tomorrow could be episode b so let us know if you like lyft notes and we’ll just do it every time we come to colorado
sweet cheers guys thank you so much for watching or listening awesome yay that is so
beautiful this is so awesome i i like it better once it’s cooked it’s just golden color
to it and like crunchy crispy awesome
okay what would you like oh my goodness and
now just a few photos from the dinner party that followed this evening after our second day of
skiing in our first lift talks this is the beef wellington this is the dessert and
this is just some nice dinner conversation
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (38.7MB)
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 328.
This is my appearance on Heterodorx Episode 10: I.P. Everywhere!, hosted by Nina Paley and Corinna Cohn (posted March 29, 2021; recorded March 25, 2021). Nina is also on the C4SIF Advisory Board. From the shownotes (see also Nina’s Facebook post):
Get ready for some hardcore Libertarian nerd-talk, as Corinna goes head-to-head with Stephan Kinsella, author of Against Intellectual Property, and Libertarianism’s foremost critic of copyright and patents. Thrill to dazzling theories of labor vs. action, restrictive covenants, negative easements, burdened estates, nuisances, limitations, consent, redistribution of rights, triangular intervention, property, scarcity, value, allocation of contestable resources, conflict, trade secrets, the Patent Bargain, disclosure, distortion, abolishing the FDA…wait, what? By the end of the episode, Corinna suffers a long-overdue crisis of faith. SUCCESS!
Related links:
- Stephan Kinsella, Against Intellectual Property C4SIF.org Resources
- http://c4sif.org/resources/ Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes
- Karl Fogel:The Surprising History of Copyright and The Promise of a Post-Copyright World and https://youtu.be/mhBpI13dxkI
- Boldrin & Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly “Conversation with an author about copyright and publishing in a free society” (Harry Potter example)
- “Intellectual Property” as an umbrella term and as propaganda: a reply to Richard Stallman
- A Selection of Kinsella’s Best Articles and Speeches on IP
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:16:52 — 52.8MB)
I’ve decided to try to set up contributions, on a regular basis, to some of the people and groups doing good work in libertarian, bitcoin, or related areas, via Patreon, Local, and other channels. Here are the ones I support at present, either irregularly or (usually) regularly. I plan to update this list from time to time.
Related:
My friends Walter Block and William Barnett published an interesting paper several years ago, “On the Optimum Quantity of Money,” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2004, pp. 39-52. 1 At a Mises Institute conference in 2010 or 2011, or perhaps in a phone call with Walter, I believe we discussed this issue and some papers they had written about this. I disagreed with Walter and, after reading their full paper, sent them some critical comments. These (lightly edited), with some prefatory and additional comments, are appended below.
Prefatory Note
In this email, back in 2011, at the dawn of bitcoin, I said bitcoin seems almost like an “ideal money”. Too bad I didn’t act on it… : [continue reading…]
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 327.
I was asked some questions about intellectual property, and how you can sell something (like information, or ideas, or even your labor) if you don’t own it, by Shea Fisker, a budding libertarian and fellow libertarian. He had just the right attitude. He listened and thought, and asked reasonable questions when he had an issue that puzzled him. Would that so many cocksure pro-IP libertarians, who really know almost nothing about IP law itself and the fundamentals of libertarian property theory, or even how to argue or discuss issues without being tendentious, equivocating, or question-begging.
Youtube below:
Here is the interchange which led to this discussion (lightly edited), along with related links: [continue reading…]
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:04 — 35.6MB)
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 326.
[Update: Transcript appended below]
Back on May 24, 2020, I appeared on the Scottish Liberty Podcast, with hosts Antony Sammeroff and Tom Laird. We discussed IP and related matters, including Sammeroff’s recent debate on the topic of IP with pro-IP Randian law professor Adam Mossoff. I was a bit drunk and it shows, and went off on a rant and was not as coherent as usual. The episode was entitled “Under the Influence… of Stephan Kinsella… Against Intellectual Property”. We recorded a second episode on May 30, 2020, entitled “A Sober Conversation with Stephan Kinsella…,” which was released as KOL289. I just realized I never posted the initial episode, so here it is, warts and all (unfortunately for fans of my drunken rants, I have quit drinking alcohol since I realized it’s a destructive poison with no benefits at all, so this won’t happen again).
Previous episode: KOL289 | Scottish Liberty Podcast: Discussing the Mossoff-Sammeroff IP Debate, Take 2: A Sober Conversation…
See various links, embeds, notes below.
Youtube of the current discussion:
Previous Youtube from KOL289.
Antony’s previous debate with Mossoff:
In his remarks, Mossoff mentioned this paper by Stephen Haber as supporting the empirical case for patents (funny, I thought the Objectivists had principles): Stephen Haber, “Patents and the Wealth of Nations,” 23 Geo. Mason L.Rev. 811 (2016). I have read through it as much as I can stand and provide my critical commentary here: “The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright”–see in particular note 3 and accompanying text.
❧
Transcript
Scottish Liberty Podcast: Discussing the Mossoff-Sammeroff IP Debate, Take 1: Under the Influence of Stephan Kinsella: Against Intellectual Property (May 21, 2020)
[Transcript of “Scottish Liberty Podcast: Discussing the Mossoff-Sammeroff IP Debate, Take 1: Under the Influence…” (May 21, 2020)]
00:00:03
TOM LAIRD: Welcome to episode 155 of the Scottish Liberty podcast with me, Tom Laird and, of course, the man who can, Antony Sammeroff.
00:00:13
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: That’s me.
00:00:13
TOM LAIRD: And possibly the man who can, Stephen Kinsella, big hitter from the Mises Institute and patent lawyer extraordinaire, and there he goes.
00:00:25
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Author of Against Intellectual Property, a very influential book in the libertarian movement I have to say.
00:00:33
STEPHAN KINSELLA: The most intellectual book, and get my name right. Let’s say Stephan. Let’s say it. Okay, can you guys say with me Stephanie? Say it with me, Stephanie.
00:00:43
TOM LAIRD: Stephanie.
00:00:44
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Okay. Take off the E. Stephan.
00:00:47
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Stephan. Did you call him Stephen Kinsella? Did you call him – did you actually call him Stephen Kinsella in the intro?
00:00:55
TOM LAIRD: Who?
00:00:55
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Yeah, he did. It’s fine. I’m used to it. I’m used to it.
00:00:59
TOM LAIRD: It you want it pronounced differently, spell it differently.
00:01:03
00:01:05
STEPHAN KINSELLA: You can’t blame someone’s mother – so this is the thing. You can’t blame their mother, man. You’ve got to – there’s boundaries.
00:01:13
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, I know. I blame my mom for tons of shit.
00:01:17
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Like what?
00:01:18
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I don’t know if I should say it publicly.
00:01:25
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, then don’t tease us. Come on.
00:01:27
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: My ex-girlfriend blamed my mom’s mom for tons of shit as well.
00:01:33
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Like what? Give me one example, just one.
00:01:36
00:01:39
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I don’t – right at the beginning of the show? There might be new listeners tuning from Twitter. I tell you what. They’ll have to actually start one of those websites where they vote. If 100 people sign the petition, Antony will disclose embarrassing details of the way that his mom scarred him in childhood.
00:01:58
STEPHAN KINSELLA: You are so sweet. You Scottish people are so sweet.
00:02:03
TOM LAIRD: Well, look. It can’t get any more embarrassing than your pimp’s cushion that you’ve got behind you there.
00:02:09
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Do you like that? Look, I’ve got a nice set. For those of you who are on…
00:02:14
STEPHAN KINSELLA: It’s like a – is it a Bengal tiger or what the hell is that?
00:02:18
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: For those of you listening through your podcast app, I am actually setting up against a leopard skin – leopard pillow.
00:02:27
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Do you have a Jabra too? You have a Jabra too. We’re both Jabra – Jabra buddies.
00:02:32
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Jabra. That’s really funny. When I was in college, there was a group of weird jock guys that started calling me Tony Jabroni for some reason just because it rhymed. It doesn’t even mean anything. They just liked it. And now I’m a real jabroni, Jabro. I put the bro in Jabra.
00:02:53
STEPHAN KINSELLA: So when you say you went to college, what did you go to college in?
00:02:56
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Oh God. I didn’t know that I was going to be the interview guest.
00:02:59
TOM LAIRD: Exactly. We’re doing the questions here, Mr. Kinsella.
00:03:02
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, I mean he – you brought it up. It’s a point of interest.
00:03:07
TOM LAIRD: Okay. Antony, you’re going to have to tell us now.
00:03:09
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: These are the golden moments that people listen to Scottish Liberty podcast for. It’s not about the politics. It’s about the banter.
00:03:17
TOM LAIRD: It’s not about that cushion. But anyway, go for it.
00:03:19
00:03:21
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, I studied popular music, and then I went and studied music and philosophy, and then I did a post grad in counseling studies.
00:03:30
STEPHAN KINSELLA: So things you could have done without a college degree.
00:03:34
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, I mean – yeah, pretty much.
00:03:37
STEPHAN KINSELLA: No. I’m fucking with you but…
00:03:38
TOM LAIRD: He could have.
00:03:38
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Defend yourself. Defend yourself, my brother.
00:03:41
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I wouldn’t have had the – I actually…
00:03:43
TOM LAIRD: The fun and the drinking.
00:03:46
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Yeah. One of my reasons for going was I thought people like me should have a degree. That’s how pretentious I was at 22.
00:03:54
TOM LAIRD: Okay. First question.
00:03:58
STEPHAN KINSELLA: What did you do your degree in?
00:04:01
TOM LAIRD: No, no, no. It’s different.
00:04:02
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait.
00:04:06
STEPHAN KINSELLA: He’s changing subject.
00:04:06
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: What did you do your degree in?
00:04:08
TOM LAIRD: So much for Antony losing his voice.
00:04:13
STEPHAN KINSELLA: His voice is – so it’s just me and you because his voice is out.
00:04:17
TOM LAIRD: Exactly. So first question and it’s an important question.
00:04:19
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I feel bullied.
00:04:20
TOM LAIRD: Considering we were talking about Rush before this started. So the question is why didn’t America get prog rock?
00:04:28
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, I would challenge the assumption. I mean why would you say that it didn’t get prog rock? I mean I think that we did.
00:04:41
TOM LAIRD: Some Americans did, but it didn’t really take off in the way that it took off in Europe or elsewhere. There wasn’t really – it was more kind of niche thing in America I would – that was my take on it. It wasn’t very radio friendly.
00:04:57
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Are you a prog rock guy?
00:04:59
TOM LAIRD: Yeah, I’m a big proggie kind of guy.
00:05:03
STEPHAN KINSELLA: So Rush is like the pinnacle, right? And Yngwie Malmsteen and Triumph and that kind of stuff, right?
00:05:09
TOM LAIRD: Well, Yngwie Malmsteen doesn’t – you’re not getting Yngwie Malmsteen in prog there. I’m not having Yngwie Malmsteen.
00:05:16
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I know. I know. I know. I know. I have a 16-year-old son, and he can school me on everything, but he can’t get his driver’s license without my help. So it’s like a symbiotic thing but…
00:05:30
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: It’s a symbiotic thing except for he’s like the parasite that’s sucking out your will to live with his criticism of every little thing that…
00:05:37
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Yeah, but that’s the point of having kids, to have a parasite.
00:05:41
00:05:44
TOM LAIRD: I guess. I guess.
00:05:47
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: So…
00:05:48
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let’s go back up. What do you mean you guess? That was like a very vague, noncommittal.
00:05:58
TOM LAIRD: I’m sorry. I have to keep you to the subject here. Why doesn’t America…
00:06:03
STEPHAN KINSELLA: You don’t want to go to you.
00:06:06
TOM LAIRD: Why didn’t America get prog in the way that other countries got it?
00:06:10
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I mean why didn’t – I don’t know – Bulgaria get it? I don’t know. Why is America special?
00:06:16
TOM LAIRD: You can believe they got it.
00:06:18
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Really?
00:06:19
TOM LAIRD: Yeah.
00:06:20
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Tell me more.
00:06:21
TOM LAIRD: Okay. So favorite Rush album.
00:06:28
00:06:31
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Probably Permanent Waves.
00:06:33
TOM LAIRD: Permanent Waves. Okay, we’ll go for it.
00:06:35
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Is it the one that goes [guitar sounds]? I love that Rush tune, love that Rush tune.
00:06:44
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Give me 60 more seconds and I’ll tell you.
00:06:49
TOM LAIRD: Gee. You’re a Rush fan, for cryin’ out loud. If you can’t answer these questions, what chance are you going to get when you get to…
00:06:55
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I just want him to embarrass himself. I mean 2112, Moving Pictures, Permanent Waves. Those are the best ones obviously.
00:07:06
TOM LAIRD: Were you a Rush fan before you were a libertarian, or a libertarian after you were a Rush fan or was it…
00:07:12
STEPHAN KINSELLA: It all came together, to be honest. So I had a buddy in like – I was 10th or 11th grade in high school, and I got my first driver’s license, and I got my car. And I had a cassette player in my car, so he was like, Stephan, you need to get A, B, and C, and he’s like a hard rock electric guitar player. So he said – so my first two albums were Queen Greatest Hits and Rush Permanent Waves, and that got me going. And I was crazy after that. So that’s just – I mean it’s boring. I realize after a point it’s boring, but I love Iron Maiden, Rush, Triumph, Ritchie [Blackmore] – there’s so much stuff that’s boring to the people before and after you. Before you, they think it’s not – it’s just not folk, and after you it’s like not sophisticated.
00:08:27
TOM LAIRD: Right.
00:08:27
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Like there’s a certain – everyone comes into it at a certain degree, so I love Triumph and Rush and Ritchie Blackmore, Rainbow, and Iron Maiden and…
00:08:41
TOM LAIRD: Sure.
00:08:41
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Van Halen and all that stuff. That’s what I like.
00:08:44
TOM LAIRD: Only one of those was prog, so that’s back to the – give me an American prog outfit and…
00:08:52
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, I mean I don’t know – I actually don’t know. I don’t pretend to be an expert on this. I just like what I like. I like…
00:09:00
TOM LAIRD: I told you we should have had Tom Woods on again.
00:09:03
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Tom Woods is like – Woods is Woods. What can you say? What do you think? What do you – you tell me the best.
00:09:15
TOM LAIRD: Tom Woods should be down some forest somewhere doing live role play.
00:09:20
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: He looks like the last person to be into the kind of metal he likes with the growling vocals.
00:09:27
STEPHAN KINSELLA: But you know that’s an unfair comparison because everyone can be what they want to be.
00:09:34
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I agree, but I’m just saying that he looks deceivingly like the kind of person who wouldn’t be into that and has quite a conservative demeanor.
00:09:41
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Look, look, look, look, look, look.
00:09:43
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: And he chided me for having long hair.
00:09:44
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Are we going to talk about intellectual property, or are we going to talk about this boring shit.
00:09:47
TOM LAIRD: Wait a minute. I was sinking into that.
00:09:49
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: So he – go on.
00:09:52
TOM LAIRD: Why should I be able to download all of Rush’s albums and then reproduce them and sell them for my own profit? Why should I be able to do that?
00:10:04
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Why should Tom be able to do that?
00:10:07
TOM LAIRD: Why should I be able to profit off of Rush’s work?
00:10:11
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Hard work.
00:10:12
STEPHAN KINSELLA: So – okay, so first of all, notice that you just mixed together two different things.
00:10:18
TOM LAIRD: Okay.
00:10:18
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Why should you download them? Why should you be able to profit? So those are two different questions.
00:10:25
TOM LAIRD: Right.
00:10:25
STEPHAN KINSELLA: And the answer to both is the same in a sense like because you don’t violate anyone’s property rights in doing it. And it’s good for everyone…
00:10:37
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: That’s question begging.
00:10:39
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Yeah, I know. I know, and I like when you did that to my enemies, but don’t do it to me.
00:10:46
TOM LAIRD: Well, talking of that, would that – would you be referring to his recent debate where apparently he claims that you were his Mickey from the Rocky movies, like you were his coach?
00:11:03
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Oh my God. Hold on. Let me open up my Mac notes.
00:11:11
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: All right. Okay.
00:11:11
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I have so many notes on this whole topic.
00:11:16
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I think the reason why Stephen said that is I did actually accuse…
00:11:19
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Stephan, not Stephen, but go ahead.
00:11:21
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Now, he got me doing it, Tom, for fuck’s sake.
00:11:26
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Let’s – wait, let’s stop for a second. I’m being – I don’t want to be an asshole.
00:11:31
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: No…
00:11:32
TOM LAIRD: Go on. It’s never – it doesn’t stop us.
00:11:33
STEPHAN KINSELLA: You do know girls named Stephanie, right? Things like that.
00:11:38
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: It’s totally justified.
00:11:41
STEPHAN KINSELLA: How hard can this be?
00:11:42
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: It’s totally justified. I hate it when people call me Anthony.
00:11:45
STEPHAN KINSELLA: No, I don’t – I actually don’t hate it. I’m just – so I’m not confused by it.
00:11:49
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, I do actually hate it. So Stephan, I did actually…
00:11:55
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, the problem is your name is Anthony, and people call you Tony or T-Boy or whatever, right?
00:11:59
TIM LAIRD: Ants.
00:12:01
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Ants.
00:12:02
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I don’t like nicknames either.
00:12:03
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Ants. I don’t mind Ants. Ants is kind of cool. My brother calls me that sometimes.
00:12:09
STEPHAN KINSELLA: No one says Ant.
00:12:11
TOM LAIRD: Yeah, they do.
00:12:11
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Ant is lame. Ants is okay with an S on the end.
00:12:15
STEPHAN KINSELLA: All right.
00:12:16
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, I think Stephan is referring to the fact that I did actually accuse Adam Mossoff, my interlocutor, of begging the question, which just means circular reasoning for people who think it means the same as invite the question, which I then did to you, Stephan.
00:12:37
00:12:39
TOM LAIRD: So where were we?
00:12:40
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, what I liked about your discussion with him was, number one, he’s a very, very, very – at least with you – a nice guy. Okay, so – but honestly – so here’s what I think. I mean I don’t want to be an asshole. Well, I actually kind of do want to be an asshole.
00:13:01
TOM LAIRD: Well, we don’t care.
00:13:02
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I’ve been doing this show with Tom for four years, and he’s never stopped being one, so you’ll fit right in.
00:13:09
STEPHAN KINSELLA: So you have this guy who’s like being the happy, giddy, warrior who pretends like he’s on our side. And honestly that’s my misgiving about the whole thing. He’s like, oh, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So like – so when you say – like for example, someone in the questions or you or someone brought up if you believe in intellectual property, which is a broad term which includes not only patents but copyrights, patents and trademarks and everything, then that means that you have trademark rights and trade secret rights and everything. It’s not just a narrow thing. And he just giggles like oh ha, ha, ha. If someone says, oh, that means that I can’t say that I’m for COVID A, B, and C, and someone might trademark COVID-19 or whatever and charge you $0.15 per usage. And he goes ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. It’s like, what the fuck are you joking about? You believe this mother-fucking shit, okay? Do you understand?
00:14:33
It’s like it’s not a joke. You’re actually in favor of this, and you know what? If you were a socialist or a Marxist or a commie, that’s one thing because I’m used to being disappointed in these people. But if you’re a liberal, and you’re joking like you’re in favor of patent law, IP law, whatever, and by the way, they never defined it. You notice this.
00:15:06
TOM LAIRD: Right.
00:15:06
STEPHAN KINSELLA: By the way, I have 35 questions in my notes thing we can talk about if you want to. But the point is it’s like, come on, guy. It’s not a joke. So when someone says, oh, according to your theory of IP, I can’t say my name and he giggles, it’s like this is not a joke. This is what you’re in favor of. This is horrible. This is fascist. This is socialist. I mean it’s not a joke.
00:15:47
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Would another example be like if it weren’t for IP laws you could send millions of medications to Africa, cheap, generic medications to Africa and actually save lives, save maybe millions of lives. But you’re not allowed to because of IP.
00:16:04
00:16:06
STEPHAN KINSELLA: What do you mean? I’m actually not sure what you – what the question is.
00:16:10
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, in one of the readings you sent me about intellectual property in pharmaceutical industry, it said that people – that lives were being lost in Africa because – lives were being lost in Africa because people couldn’t replicate expensive drugs and send cheap, generic drugs over.
00:16:33
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, why don’t we do this? You were actually, I thought, amazing in your…
00:16:41
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Oh wow.
00:16:41
STEPHAN KINSELLA: …discussion with him. But the problem is in the debate format like this you can’t get the whole theory out there. So he does a modified version of A, B, and C. And you try to respond, and then it’s like this. There’s no way you can get to the bottom of this without a long discussion, which most people don’t have the attention span for. So I guess I could tell you one, two, three, four, five things I noticed in your discussion with Adam.
00:17:27
First of all, you have a way more calm explanation of things than I do. I do go ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. And you’re like – with your accent and everything, you’re like – and he was all happy. He was all happy-go-lucky. But there was a certain giggling aspect to his responses to you that – which annoyed the fuck out of me to be honest because it’s like saying that there’s a holocaust, and people are in cages. And well – so for example, when someone – like you brought up, for example, or someone did in the question and answer, well, what if someone wants to trademark COVID and you can’t say that for $0.15 royalties or whatever, something like that. And he just started giggling, like yeah, it’s really funny. It’s really funny. It’s really funny, ha, ha, ha, ha.
00:18:38
It’s like, well, you know what? It’s not fucking funny because this is serious. This is what the law actually is. And you’re not distinguishing between trademark and trade secret and patent and copyright law and all the different types of things that you call intellectual property. And every time that you had the chance – so the thing I’m thinking is the debate is not amenable towards – so for example, I mean, Anthony, what do you think was – so he had 10 minutes to give his presentation, right?
00:19:19
And he did something – and basically what he said, and you can correct me if you think I’m wrong. He said that property – IP rights, which are basically patent rights which he never clarified, they are like property rights. That’s what he said, and then he mixed in together incentives and causation and correlation, and by the way, one of the things which he said which you challenged him on, which I admired you for, was that he said, well, you know what? You have a point. Now, he didn’t say it this way, but he said, Anthony, you have a point that we can’t prove causation and correlation. However, even with regular property rights, we can’t prove that having property rights produces wealth.
00:20:21
So, number one, the whole point of his diatribe was something like I guess that law should mirror incentives to do – I mean it’s not clear. He never makes it clear. He mixes together all these things. Now, as – here’s my guess. As an objectivist, what he would say in response is that, oh, you’re right. You’re right. You’re right. You’re right. I’m mixing together all these things because we’re holistic and blah, blah, blah. Like we’re blending incentives and property rights and the fruits of your labor bullshit, all this stuff. He blends it all together. He never makes a clear point.
00:21:08
His entire argument was you can treat IP rights as property rights, and therefore, they have incentive effects. And therefore, there’s a causation/correlation thing. But the only thing that he said that makes sense, which is the causation/correlation thing, which was that if you have more property rights than ideas that you have more wealth, he admitted that even with real property rights, you can never prove this. So he admitted that. He said, well, we can never prove that either. So he’s basically saying that we have a higher level or an ontological basis for property rights. Okay, fine. That’s fine. So is it incentives? Is it – so what’s his theory?
00:22:03
So by the way you notice he never ever, ever, ever, ever defined intellectual property. He never explained why – number one, why trade secrets aren’t included. He never explained – there were so many things he said. He’s a happy, giddy little Randian exponent. I think everything he says is evil and wrong to be honest. He never explains why property rights have to incentivize production. He talks about creation of values. That’s just Randian bullshit. There are so many problems, and I think you found most of them. I’ve got 75 notes I kept on this if you want to go through this, but I’ll stop here. Go ahead.
00:23:01
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, okay. I just – one of the things that was frustrating is I think he usually ignored my arguments and just went back to stating his own position, which is, well, we seem to have done well under property rights. And there’s some evidence to believe that intellectual property rights do incentivize innovation, and he just kept on going back to that and not really answering my arguments, which I actually called him out for once and said, well, you’ve not really answered my point. But that was only one time. I mean most of the times he didn’t. But if you want to illustrate – if you want to talk about your notes, I think that would be a good way to give us some content.
00:23:51
TOM LAIRD: Could I just ask…
00:23:52
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Please do.
00:23:53
TOM LAIRD: For maybe – for some people who don’t get the subtleties or don’t get the difference, could you maybe just outline quickly the difference between copyright, patent, trademark?
00:24:04
STEPHAN KINSELLA: So I would be happy to, but this – the problem is that – so you have Adam Mossoff who is some allegedly respected law professor. And honestly, look. The guy seems nice. He’s happy. He’s friendly to Anthony. I mean so everything is fun. But he’s not a patent lawyer. He’s just repeating – honestly, so here’s the problem. I think that most people are not that into theory. I can see what he’s doing. He’s taking Ayn – so he’s a Randian. He’s an objectivist.
00:24:49
Let me be clear. I think this guy is a minarchist, statist Randian, and he is just trying to bridge the gap between both sides. And he is trying to – so he mixes in two, three, four, or five, six arguments: incentives, all this kind of crap, utilitarian. He’s totally unclear. He never defines intellectual property. He never defines it, okay, number one. He never says why the term should be arbitrary. He never says what the term should be.
00:25:29
He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’m a patent lawyer. I’ve done this for 20, 30 years. I know this is all bullshit. It’s all just – it’s like a tax lawyer or a drug attorney defending a client against a stupid bullshit claim. It’s all bullshit, okay? You do what you gotta do, and you want experts who want to do what you want to – but he’s just trying to – he’s doing what he can to try to – he’s trying to – Ayn Rand, who is his mentor, because he had – he does – he really doesn’t have any deeper theories than that.
00:26:15
I mean Ayn Rand knew literally nothing about intellectual property. She just was a Russian girl who became libertarian-oriented and came to America and loved the American constitution. That’s it, and guess what it says? You should have patents and copyrights. So she came up with some stupid justification for it, and you have some law professor who has never practiced it like I have and who’s just coming up with a justification for it.
00:26:48
TOM LAIRD: Right.
00:26:48
STEPHAN KINSELLA: It makes no sense, and he’s – so here’s what annoyed me about the whole thing. So you guys were joking about – okay, so intellectual property is a term that these guys came up with to unify the entire field of state intrusions onto private law—trademarks, patents, copyright, trade secrets. I can tell you more than anyone listening would know. Trust me, okay?
00:27:19
So you have Mossoff, who knows less than me I guarantee it, and I would do a debate with anyone to see this, saying – so someone says that, oh, well, what if someone trademarked the COVID term, and they said you couldn’t use COVID in your brand name. What did he do? Listen to the video. Watch it. He started giggling like it’s a joke. Hey, guess what, Adam? It’s not a fucking joke. This is serious, okay? So you’re in favor of reputation rights, which he explicitly said.
00:28:00
He’s in favor of trademark rights, defamation law, trade secret law, copyright law, patent law, which they – patent law, which they call IP law. It’s not a joke. Okay, so actually as a matter of fricking legal fact, someone cannot use certain words because they will be put in jail or penalized by the state. This is not a joke. This is not what my fellow liberals believe in. Trust me, okay? This is why it’s disgusting to me. Don’t joke about it. Don’t giggle about it. Don’t be in favor of the state having defamation law, reputation rights, all these laws that will let the state put you in jail or take your property or penalize you because you made a comment—free speech.
00:29:03
So I don’t think it’s a – I don’t think it’s funny. So that’s – I’ll stop ranting, but the reason I get passionate about this is because I really, really, really, really do not view these guys as our fellow allies. They’re not liberals. They’re not in favor of free markets. They want the government – okay, so Adam Mossoff believes in the state. He’s a minarchist or what we call a fucking statist or a mini-statist. It’s not a joke.
00:29:34
These guys want the government to come in and manage and regulate the economy and tell you what you can do and what you can’t do to maximize incentives, seriously. Everything about this was horrific, horrific, horrific except Anthony did a pretty good job defending against it. But these guys are not our allies. This is not liberalism. This is not free markets. This is not competition. I mean what the hell?
00:30:06
TOM LAIRD: Stephan, when – okay, when I’m talking or when you’re talking or when anyone’s talking to an ordinary, average Joe, not your – somebody who’s not familiar with lawyers’ arguments, somebody who’s not familiar with all these terms that you’re talking about. And it seems to them on the face of things that intellectual property rights are there to protect people’s work. That’s what they think, and it’s to protect.
00:30:29
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Okay, fine.
00:30:31
TOM LAIRD: Okay, that’s what they think. So what do you say to somebody like that briefly just to go, okay, here’s why it’s in your interest to get rid of intellectual property laws? Here’s why it benefits you because that’s what everybody wants to know. How does this benefit me? It seems to me on the face of things that these things are beneficial because that’s what I’m told, but what good will it do me to get rid of these things? What – how does it make my life better to get rid of intellectual property law?
00:31:02
STEPHAN KINSELLA: So I appreciate the framing. I appreciate the question, but in the end, the question to me seems like the same kind of question where you say, okay, the world is falling apart. Why shouldn’t I take the COVID reparations payments or whatever the hell they’re doing? Okay, I can’t give you good reason. I mean, okay, if the government gives me $19,000-a-year welfare payments, why shouldn’t I take it? Okay, maybe you should. But the question is a broader question. It’s like what should the government do? What’s the function of government? What’s the function of politics? What’s the function of law? What’s the function of justice? What should justice be? What should property rights be? All these questions. So I guess I would say that it depends upon what your question is. Like if someone asked me should I take this benefit? Should I feed at the trough? If there’s a trough, should I feed at the trough?
00:32:14
TOM LAIRD: Right.
00:32:14
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I don’t know. To me, that’s an epicurean or a philosophical question. But to me, the real question is should there be a trough? And my answer is no. There shouldn’t be a trough.
00:32:30
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I guess people…
00:32:32
STEPHAN KINSELLA: And that’s what IP is. There shouldn’t be a trough.
00:32:35
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Right. So I guess people can’t imagine living in a world where, say, all those shows on Amazon Prime or Netflix – anyone can just – it’s not illegal for anyone to just download them and watch them even though tons of people put all their work into making those shows. And also think, well, why is anyone going to bother putting that much money into all those special effects and directors and producers and distribution and all that stuff if anyone can just download it and watch it?
00:33:12
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Give me 30 seconds, and then I’ll get back to you. You guys can talk. I’ll listen.
00:33:18
TOM LAIRD: Okay.
00:33:19
00:33:22
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: So…
00:33:22
TOM LAIRD: I think it’s worth clarifying, Antony, for maybe those who are mystified as to just exactly what we’re talking about, could you just frame it for us? What was the debate? Who were you debating? Where was it?
00:33:37
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Okay. So I did put it in the podcast feed so anyone who’s not listened yet can go back and listen to it. I was invited to attend a debate with Adam Mossoff who’s – well, he’s apparently an expert on this or someone in the liberty movement obviously. Stephan disputes that he’s in the liberty movement who’s – one of the struggles that I think is…
00:34:05
TOM LAIRD: He looks at him like a fifth columnist.
00:34:07
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: For IP, and – which was quite funny because obviously it’s not actually an area of expertise for me. I just prepared for the debate. So that was – it was a good opportunity. I think I gave him a run for his money though.
00:34:26
TOM LAIRD: Okay.
00:34:26
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I’m back. Sorry about that. Thanks guys. I had to, you know, see a man about a horse. Well, listen. I don’t know who’s listening or who cares but…
00:34:38
00:34:42
TOM LAIRD: I mean the big stumbling point for a lot of people is when they talk about research and development. They go like, who protects that research and development? All the money I just…
00:34:51
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I know. I know. Okay, okay, so first of all – so the issue to me is a question is not an argument. I mean, honestly, I know I say this over and over again and everyone…
00:35:08
TOM LAIRD: No, I get that. But people will ask questions, and if you don’t kind of answer them satisfactorily it…
00:35:15
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Yes, but then you get back to activism. So, okay, fine. So you can answer questions, but the questions then have to be formatted into a way that is a real question like a single question that’s not loaded. So to me I will answer any question that’s sincere, genuine, and not loaded and not compound. This is a lawyer thing. Compound means you can’t ask five questions in a row because it’s not serious like rat, rat, rat. It’s rat-a-tat-a-tat. It’s like what do you think about A, B, C, D? It’s like, well, which one do you want me to answer, number one? So it has to be a single question.
00:35:57
TOM LAIRD: And most of them are probably red herrings anyway.
00:35:59
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, that’s the problem is that you can’t ask a loaded question. And so if someone asks me a question like, okay, Stephan, you just said that IP is A, B, and C. How would I make money selling my poems? Okay, now, that’s not a horrible question, but it’s not usually the real question because that wasn’t my argument. My argument wasn’t – so it’s like – so what they’re saying in effect is that, hey, Kinsella. I think that everything that I can imagine that should be promoted by society should be somehow viable economically.
00:36:56
And unless you can explain to me how this will work, I’m going to reject your proposal, so that’s what they’re really saying. So it’s almost like the welfare state argument like, okay, so you libertarians are saying that you don’t support public education and the welfare system. So you tell me how people that are poor are going to make it in society. You tell me. Now, when they say this you tell me, what they’re saying is they’re switching the burden of proof. They’re saying that unless you can guarantee to me that A, B, and C will happen, I’m going to reject your proposal. And so then libertarians bend over backwards and they say, oh, well, I think there will be charity, and there will be A, B, and C. So they try too hard to please these assholes, right?
00:37:57
TOM LAIRD: Right.
00:37:58
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Right? So they’re sort of giving into the – but here’s the thing. What if we switched the burden of proof and we say you tell me – you tell me how social security in America or whatever you have in Europe – how will that guarantee everyone’s going to be taken care of in 45 years? You tell me how that’s going to guarantee that. And they’ll say, well, well, well – they won’t know. They have no fucking idea, right?
00:38:29
TOM LAIRD: Right.
00:38:31
STEPHAN KINSELLA: So it’s like, well, that’s not – so that’s not the real question. So do they want a guarantee? And if they want a guarantee, guess what? That’s not coming.
00:38:40
TOM LAIRD: Buy a toaster.
00:38:41
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Right.
00:38:43
STEPHAN KINSELLA: There’s no guarantee coming.
00:38:45
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I like it.
00:38:46
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Anyway, sorry. I’m ranting, ranting, ranting, guys.
00:38:51
TOM LAIRD: If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.
00:38:52
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I see where you’re coming from. I just think that most people have a sense that it’s unfair if I go take my guitar to an open mic and afterward some salubrious bastard is like, oh Ant, man, that was a really great tune. Is that one of yours? I’m like yeah, yeah, I’ve been working on it. And he’s like, hmm, hmm. And next week I see him on top of the pops…
00:39:15
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, you don’t want…
00:39:15
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: …having stolen my song.
00:39:18
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I think they do have that view, but they also have a view that capitalism is unfair and that – and you know what? Maybe people need to just…
00:39:27
TOM LAIRD: No but – no but wait, wait, wait, Stephan. Some of the most ardent proponents I know of intellectual property aren’t capitalists. They’re leftists, and they hate all other kinds of – oh yeah, sure, actual physical property. That’s theft, man. But if you take my song or my painting or my dance-fucking routine and you copy it, then I’m going to sue your ass in about 10 different courts. So these are people that you would normally associate with, oh, property is theft, but as soon as it comes down to intellectual property they’re full on. No, no, no, that’s different. That’s my stuff. I’m an artist, and that’s my stuff. You don’t get to get my stuff. So it’s not just capitalists who are – who come out with this kind of stuff.
00:40:21
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Oh no. I agree that the – that criticisms of IP are like – they’re all over the map. So I actually almost don’t want to associate with the people that are against IP because half of them are against intellectual property because they’re against property. So they make the same mistake that – I want to say the capitalists. But – so they associate capitalism with property rights, and so because they’re in favor – because they’re opposed to copyrights in land and monopolies, they oppose patent rights and things like that too.
00:41:06
The other thing is most people don’t even under IP law. It’s very, very – it’s like if you and I and Anthony and two or three other people had a long debate about anti-trust law or competition law as you call it in Europe, and no one’s a lawyer except maybe me. But it’s like – but you could have an opinion. You could have some economically informed opinions, but basically it’s going to be like a hop-scob just scramble of opinions. People don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re just talking about things they don’t know they’re – what they mean, right? And I just…
00:41:50
TOM LAIRD: How do you define intellectual property? Sorry Stephan.
00:41:55
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, and that – to me that’s a good question, and so here’s the thing. So I have a bunch of notes which I could go through about Anthony’s debate with Adam, which I – so Anthony I think you did as good as you could. The problem with these debates is so he had 10 minutes. You had 10 minutes and then back and forth. And in his – so I will notice this. So you can’t do a good justification in 10 minutes either way.
00:42:28
But in your 10 minutes at least you tried to distinguish between scarce and non-scarce resources. You made the point that you can’t copy A, B, and C, or it’s not a taking or whatever. Mossoff never – as far as I can tell never ever even tried to make a coherent argument. He basically kept saying that it’s property, which to me is a legal positive argument. It’s the government treats it as property, and then once it’s property you can trade it. And even you pointed out, Anthony, well, we’re living in the given system. That’s why people do this. That’s perfectly true. I mean I don’t – you don’t want to bring up slavery or the Holocaust or whatever because then you’ll be dismissed. But honestly there’s no limit to this kind of reasoning. Human slaves were property, so the fact that…
00:43:32
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I wish I had made that point.
00:43:34
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, but the format of this debate doesn’t lend itself towards that kind of systematic getting to the point. But the problem for me was that Mossoff was a nice guy. He seems like he’s a liberal. He agreed with you on half of your points, which made sense, like about how the FD – I hate to use the US system because I hate being US-centric but like the FDA system or whatever the drug approval system is in other countries.
00:44:10
It biases things in a certain direction, and it imposes cost. So if you’re – if that’s your concern, just reduce those costs or whatever or the minimum wage or A, B, and C. And he would cheerfully admit to that, but when you guys brought up examples – so here’s the problem. There’s no such thing as intellectual property. I mean – and the whole question is on intellectual property, and the whole question is not property. The whole question is not what is property. Oh, and by the way, while I’m rat-a-tatting things off, I will say, Anthony, what I liked is how you are calmly like – calmly A, B, C. I can’t do that. I just can’t do that. That’s just not my nature, but that was good, like A, B, C.
00:45:06
TOM LAIRD: I’ve yet to see this exchange.
00:45:08
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, if you see it, you’ll see what I mean. He was like just calmly responding. Now, the problem is the format doesn’t enable itself – doesn’t allow a comprehensive case to be made either way. And the big problem is I think – and now I think that the objectivists and whatever would – they would think it’s the other way around. They would think that the problem is that we’re giving credence to the unprincipled types like Anthony, like – you have no real, clear principle grounds, and so we’re gaining to consort with you. I think it’s the other way around. I think that the assumption that you have a guy that is in favor of so-called capitalism like Mossoff or Ayn Rand or those types.
00:46:13
And they just make assertions that, well, if you’re in favor of capitalism then you must be in favor of a way of exploiting the fruit of your labors. They throw these terms around, by the way. So this is another thing I noticed. And as an engineer, as a rigorous thinker, these guys – number one, Mossoff doesn’t now much about patent law. I have actually prosecuted 1000 patent applications for big companies. I actually understand the patent system. I’m not saying that’s a prerequisite because I think you can have a reasonable view without it.
00:46:58
But he’s – he drops these things. For example, so as a law professor – so for example, my view as a lawyer, as a legal theorist, I have never been one of these types that thinks that if you have certain credentials you have certain pride of place and you can say certain things and you can’t if not. Everything Anthony says he’s entitled to say. But then you have Mossoff dropping a couple of legal doctrines which are, number one, US-specific, which annoys the hell out of me because America is not the goddamn world.
00:47:45
And number two, I don’t think he – it’s like – it’s irrelevant. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. So for – I wrote – I mean I’ve got so many pages of notes I could go through if we had time. But as an – as just an example, so he said something near the end like a-ha ha. So, number one, he’s giggling the whole time, but he’s giggling about things he’s in favor of. So when someone says, oh because of trademark law, which you support which is part of IP law, I couldn’t actually use this term of COVID, whatever, without paying a royalty, and he just giggles. It’s like, this is not a joke. You support this stuff. This is actually real.
00:48:39
This is actually really a real restriction on human liberty and can affect human fortunes and the way human discourse goes, so stop giggling. Okay, stop joking about it. You’re in favor of this stuff. Take ownership of it, and admit that you’re a fascist or whatever the fuck it is, but stop giggling about it. It’s not a joke. So Anthony, you were being good-spirited, but this is not a joke. I mean you’re opposing this stuff to your credit. This guy is in favor of it. What the hell? Don’t joke about it. Don’t giggle about it. So then he just had some – he dropped some comment like, oh well, actually no.
00:49:25
In the law, leases are actually real property. They’re not contracts. It’s like, first of all, this guy doesn’t know what the – he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s just some amateur guy at George Mason who’s – who got his way in, and that’s fine. But I’m telling you I can give you links. I can give you case citations. I can give you legal theory, whatever. Trust me. There’s a whole debate in the literature, which he seems completely unaware of, about the difference between lease and contract.
00:50:09
In other words, if you have a mineral lease or if you have any other kind of lease, is it a contract, or is it a property right, an in rem right or an in personam right? Okay, interesting question for the fucking legal positivist. Hey, guess what? I’m not. I’m a libertarian. I recognize the difference, but I’m not trying to – so, number two, I’ve actually practiced and I’ve actually written actual real contracts, and I’ve actually done real patents many times.
00:50:42
So this whole issue of in personam versus – sorry, leases versus real, okay, guess what? Louisiana and other states in America, some of them treat it like a real property interest, which we call in rem. Some call it in personam, which we call contract. But the only way to really sort this out is to have a unified version of contract and property law and, and, and to be actually—guess what—a libertarian, like a Rothbardian. Rothbard pioneered the whole theory of contract law, and I hadn’t sorted it out yet, but I think I’m closer than anyone I know personally, and that’s fine. But you can’t just cite positive law legal doctrines like they do, which is what they do. So this is their whole argument for IP. Here’s their argument for IP. It’s like real property, which you noticed many times, Anthony. It’s like it. It’s like it. It’s similar. There’s similarities. So what? So what?
00:51:57
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Yeah, a few times in the debate, he shot himself in the foot by referring to non-intellectual property as real property, and I kind of wanted to suddenly remark, oh, so you admit that intellectual property isn’t real property, but I…
00:52:13
TOM LAIRD: I guess what he meant was physical property.
00:52:16
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I know what he meant, but it was just quite a funny turn of phrase.
00:52:19
STEPHAN KINSELLA: No, but I think you’re – so I think the format didn’t lend itself towards you’re giving yourself a totally systematic view but…
00:52:27
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: So can I ask you a question on that…
00:52:29
STEPHAN KINSELLA: The one thing you focused on was – wait, let me say one thing. The one thing you focused on, which I like, was that you kept saying over and over again listen. If you take my property, I don’t have it anymore. That’s the whole point of everything. And so if you notice, by the way, one thing Mossoff said was he admitted – he sort of admitted you were correct when you said that you can’t prove causation and correlation. You can’t prove that IP rights are the cause of prosperity in the west. His response was not to argue against you.
00:53:14
His response was to say that, well, we can’t know this about property rights in general. That’s what he said. If you go back and listen, it was stunning to me. So what he said was, well, we can’t know this either. So what he’s admitting is that we don’t – our argument for these principles is not an incentive-based or a utilitarian one. In other words, we’re not in favor of property rights because we know that they will lead to better consequences. It’s for other reasons. So that’s what he implicitly admitted. In other words, we’re in favor of property rights for what you said, Anthony, like we have to solve conflicts among scarce resources.
00:54:01
And that doesn’t apply to ideas. And by the way, notice that he did this kind of weird, crabby argument like, oh well, some of us sometimes say ideas, but that’s colloquial, but we don’t really mean ideas. We mean implementation. I mean I’m a patent lawyer, dude. What he’s saying makes no sense, and he’s not a patent lawyer, by the way, so distinguishing between ideas and the implementation of ideas is just complete positivist. What the hell does it have to do with Austrian economics, libertarian principles, property rights? Nothing. Sorry. Rant over.
00:54:45
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: So you said that the debate platform did not provide an ideal platform to give a comprehensive response. What should I have said that I didn’t if we were doing a show that was in a format that was – that lent itself to that? What didn’t I include that I would have been able to include if it was possible?
00:55:15
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I mean I think that if you had known ahead of time what he was going to say you could have prepared a couple of zingers or whatever. But honestly probably nothing. I think you did as well as you could in the friendly – and I think – and I – by the way, I agree with Adam. He seemed like a nice guy. He seems sincere. Honestly, I think he’s just a Randian. He just is doing whatever the hell he can to rehabilitate her completely insane IP views. That’s what he’s doing, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I mean he’s just a law professor. He’s smart. He’s like blah, blah, blah. But I don’t think you could have done anything differently to be honest. I mean if I could fault you, I wouldn’t fault you. I would just give you some constructive criticism.
00:56:13
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: That’s what I meant.
00:56:14
STEPHAN KINSELLA: But I really can’t because all I can say is, okay, if you have 10 minutes and you know what he’s going to say do the following. But I think you hit the high points as best as you could. And I’ll notice this too. Adam Mossoff – I think you called him doctor at one point. I don’t know if he’s a doctor, so I would be careful about giving people credits that they don’t deserve. He’s just a lawyer, which is a JD, which is all bullshit. And he’s – has no experience in actual patent laws as far as I can tell, whatever. So I’m not that impressed by this dude, but he’s cheery and giggly.
00:57:02
Okay, so give him that. He’s cheery and giggly, and he’s got probably five little things he could put on his resume that he’s like the ad hoc advisor to this following group that’s in favor of IP. Okay, all that means is you’re a goddamn Randian, and you’re trying to do whatever you can to rehabilitate. I mean so here’s what I would have done. So there’s probably two or three or four things I would have done, probably most of them only if I’d seen what happened after the fact. But, number one, I would have asked him. Okay, what about Ayn Rand’s clear, clear, clear views on the fact that you only own a scarce resource in that when you rearrange things it does increase the value of the things you own?
00:57:56
But you don’t own the property value and the rearrangement rights. I would have asked him that because Ayn Rand clearly was conflicted. Listen, I’m not an Ayn Rand asshole. I don’t blame Ayn Rand for not getting A, B, and C correct. She got – or everything correct. She got A, B, and C and D and E, F, G correct. That’s pretty good. But she got confused on IP. Okay, not a big problem for me because I don’t learn IP from Ayn Rand. It’s really not a big problem. But Adam Mossoff apparently does. Do you follow me?
00:58:33
TOM LAIRD: Yeah.
00:58:34
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Right.
00:58:35
STEPHAN KINSELLA: This is not a big problem. I mean Ayn Rand was totally confused. When Ayn Rand wrote on IP in 1962 or 5 or whenever it was, she thought mistakenly – Ayn Rand believed that the American – okay, I hate to go to America. But she was in America. That’s what she was thinking. She thought the American IP system, the patent system, was a first-to-file system, which meant that the first guy that files for a patent would win. And everyone said why can that be just? How can that be just? Libertarians were like, how can you really be in favor of this? It makes no sense. This is not natural law. And Ayn Rand said, well, and blah, blah, blah. She came up with some stupid, totally horrible argument for it. The point is she was wrong at the time, and until about 19 – I’m sorry, about 2008, until Obama with the America Invents Act, the US had a first-to-invent system. We didn’t have a first to file. So she didn’t even understand the law, so she was defending a law that didn’t exist. Do you understand?
00:59:55
TOM LAIRD: Yeah.
00:59:56
STEPHAN KINSELLA: So she mistakenly believed that in America and in the west the first guy to file would get a patent, which is the case.
01:00:08
TOM LAIRD: I think that’s the case in the UK is first to file.
01:00:12
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Yeah, it is. It’s the case in the US now, but it wasn’t the case in 1962 when she wrote. It’s the case since 2008. My point is she had no idea what she was talking about. She just basically took for granted this is the American system. I’m going to defend it no matter what. I’m going to come up with a justification for it or rationale. And her rationale was, well, it makes sense that the first – and so you’ll see that in Anthony’s discussion with Mossoff, Mossoff was saying, well, it’s just – he kept saying this over and over again. It’s just like. It’s just like. It’s just like. It’s just like. It’s just like a property system, like oh, if so – and I thought Anthony’s response was really good.
01:00:59
So he said, well, if two guys are on the Mayflower coming to the US – well, to the western hemisphere, and one guy gets there first, he gets it all. And Anthony’s like, no, it’s not a winner-take-all thing. One guy can just go up the stream. And by the way, if they were all going for one little tiny island, it might be similar, but that’s actually not what happened, so it was a bad example. So Anthony was right. So everything you said was correct, so you’re better than a law professor who has this prestige and doesn’t…
01:01:35
TOM LAIRD: Don’t tell him that please.
01:01:36
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I’m going to get it printed on my business card.
01:01:40
STEPHAN KINSELLA: If I had to take a student on board, I would take Anthony over this law professor at GMU who has never filed a single patent, and I would – anyway.
01:01:54
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: That’s just nepotism, Stephen – Stephan for – crikey. So I’m just going to put that on my business cards from now on. Antony Sammeroff, better than a law professor. So any highlights from your notes?
01:02:13
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Oh, let me see. I’ve given you some already. Let’s see here what I got here that I haven’t mentioned yet because you know how I am. I go…
01:02:23
TOM LAIRD: What do we have in the background there? Is that downtown Houston?
01:02:27
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Oh, that’s just – that is Houston, but it’s just like – okay, let me see here. Okay, so – okay, let’s talk about this one thing. So he talked about price controls. Maybe we can go into that, and I can explain it to you guys and we can talk about it if you want. So he talked about the export of American IP to other countries.
01:02:57
TOM LAIRD: Right.
01:02:58
STEPHAN KINSELLA: And by the way, I don’t think the US is the end-all, be-all. I don’t think we’re the only one that makes IP and whatever or pharmaceuticals. But okay, so his idea is that – so here’s his idea. I’m simplifying it, and he would probably object, and he’s probably right, but I’m simplifying it. So here’s his idea. We have this spectrum of countries, and by the way, he admitted that we’re not perfect, and we have regulations and the FDA, and we have everything. So I don’t even understand this kind of Randian worship of the west, but whatever.
01:03:38
So here’s what happens. Guys, feel free to interrupt at any point. So here’s what happens. So western pharmaceutical companies try to come up with drugs that will solve problems. I don’t disagree with that. No one disagrees with that. So these guys don’t get credit for this because, guess what? Just because we’re not in favor of the patent system we’re also in favor of capitalism—whatever. But – so here’s the idea. They have to go through this gauntlet of the FDA system, which has unimaginable costs, which he admitted to and which you pointed out, Anthony. And so then they can only sell these – so this is what he said. If you listen to his – it was actually striking I thought if you listen to what he said.
01:04:38
He said that you can only sell to the west, to basically the US. So what he said was if you sell to Canada or Europe or other countries, they will impose price controls. And you can only sell it for an amount that you’re willing to sell it for, but you can’t – he said this many times. You can’t recoup your costs. Notice this. You can’t recoup your costs. Now, what the hell kind of libertarian, free market principle is this? Are you entitled to recoup your goddamn costs? What the fuck is he talking about? So what he’s saying is that – so here’s what’s going on. So you have an American pharmaceutical company.
01:05:31
They come up with a new pharmaceutical. They get it approved after 17 years or 7 years or whatever the hell it is after $800 million of cost. And they finally get it approved. And in the meantime they’ve had to – and by the way, every discussion you guys had about trade secrets none of you guys – I mean I’m not being critical of you. But you don’t understand how the industry works: NDAs, trade secrets, the relationship between trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, patents, the whole thing. This is the problem with the whole idea of IP is like using intellectual property as an umbrella term, which blurs everything. Okay, but forget that for a second. Okay, so you have these companies that come up with these new formulations, and they finally come out with something that’s approved by the government after a lot of cost. And then they…
01:06:31
01:06:34
TOM LAIRD: They put it on the market.
01:06:35
STEPHAN KINSELLA: They get to sell them, but at that point they’ve already revealed their secrets because they have to as part of the FDA approval process. So all their competitors are ready to compete with them at this last second, which, again, as a libertarian I’m not that against except I guess in a free market you can use trade secrets to stop that. But they can’t because the whole system has distorted everything. And even Mossoff even admitted that. He even said that if we didn’t have the FDA maybe. It’s like yeah, but then why aren’t you just focusing on that? Why do you want to add on a layer of government – and his whole argument about monopolies was completely bullshit. Anyway so…
01:07:23
TOM LAIRD: I’m guessing though that his point, even though clumsily made, was that America – or an American company comes up with a drug, a life-saving drug. They market it. It’s not that they have a God-given right to recoup their costs, but if they’re not confident that they can…
01:07:45
STEPHAN KINSELLA: No, I totally – oh sorry. I totally disagree with you. I think he does believe there’s a God-given right to recoup your costs, but go ahead.
01:07:54
TOM LAIRD: Right. Okay but to put it another way then, if I can’t, if I can’t, if I don’t have confidence that I’m going to recoup my costs, then that makes me less likely to invest.
01:08:08
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Okay, so first of all, I totally agree with this, but on the other hand, when did it become a principle of liberty and capitalism and liberalism that the whole purpose of our system was to make sure people can “recoup their costs?” What the – when did this come about? It’s like…
01:08:28
TOM LAIRD: No, but it’s – as an individual when you’re – if you’re in business, then if – I think he’s talking from a Randian point of view.
01:08:36
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but hold on.
01:08:37
TOM LAIRD: It’s self-interest.
01:08:40
STEPHAN KINSELLA: But the point of doing activity is not to recoup your costs. It’s to make a profit. So where did this become the standard in the first place?
01:08:48
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, the base of our argument…
01:08:51
TOM LAIRD: Well, then it’s going to – if I can’t recoup my costs then the chances of making a profit may be somewhat…
01:08:56
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I know. But that’s like saying that if some company that’s a venture – okay, if they’re going to go bankrupt, so what? What does that mean?
01:09:07
TOM LAIRD: I don’t care, but I care if it’s my company.
01:09:12
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Of course. Of course you care, and of course, and if the government will give you a monopoly then you will take advantage of it.
01:09:19
TOM LAIRD: So I’m guessing his point is why would I invest huge amounts of money…
01:09:23
STEPHAN KINSELLA: But that’s not – hold on. Hold on. Hold on. That’s not – you just said why would I? That’s a question. That’s a fine question. But that’s not a point. Let’s be clear. Asking a question is not a point.
01:09:36
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, I guess the point is we should have patents because if we don’t people will not spend 2.4 billion or whatever the (indiscernible_01:09:45).
01:09:46
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Exactly, but no one would ever say that because that’s ridiculous. So what they would say instead was they would – so here’s what they would say instead. So here’s what they would say. They would say this. They would say this. They would say that in a – in some kind of equilibrium tenting market or whatever, there is an underproduction of innovation because of free rider problems and other problems. And there’s a market failure, and the government needs to come in and tweak things and make them slightly better. And it will cost something, but the cost will be way less than the advantage we get from imposing.
01:10:27
TOM LAIRD: Okay.
01:10:28
STEPHAN KINSELLA: So that’s what their argument is. But they don’t want to make it this explicitly because if they do that then they have the fucking burden of proof, which they don’t want to prove, which you notice in our whole thing they said, well, the – I think Mossoff said to Anthony the burden of proof is on you. He tried to switch it. Did you notice that?
01:10:48
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I did.
01:10:49
STEPHAN KINSELLA: This is the whole point of this entire way of framing things is to change the burden of proof. And it’s changed the burden of what is the purpose of law and justice and social organization? So that’s kind of my perspective on it. I’m not trying to ramble, but that is my – that literally is my perspective on all this.
01:11:17
TOM LAIRD: Right.
01:11:17
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Does that make sense?
01:11:21
TOM LAIRD: It does in the way you’ve put it.
01:11:24
01:11:26
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Any more major points before we wrap up?
01:11:29
TOM LAIRD: No. I’m going to – well, I’m going to ask one thing. I saw a – well, there’s two questions that arise out of a Q&A session that I saw you do before. And if I can just find my note here, you recommended – and this is way back. This is in 2010 or something like that. You recommended a book called Against Intellectual Monopoly, and I think it was by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine. That’s a long time ago. Is there anything since then that you would recommend? Does anything surpass that in terms of its content, or can you even remember that far back?
01:12:18
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Oh, I remember. It’s Michele Boldrin who’s a French guy, and David Levine.
01:12:26
TOM LAIRD: Yeah.
01:12:27
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I mean we’re friends. I’m an admirer of their work. I think they have surpassed it slightly with a recent paper.
01:12:38
TOM LAIRD: Right.
01:12:39
STEPHAN KINSELLA: About three, four, five years later about patent law where they – so my understanding is this. So these guys are utilitarians, which I oppose their entire methodology to be honest. I don’t think that’s how you solve these issues. You can’t solve them this way. But they did basically examine the entire case for IP on its own terms, and they were careful. And I think they were actually moderate-leaning IP or something like that when they started, but then their investigation showed them that, Jesus, everything is like – everything is bad. Everything turns out negative. Now, they ended up in their first book – I mean from my point of view it’s fairly moderate. From the average point of view it’s pretty radical. They basically said we should get rid of most IP, and maybe we should replace it with a system of government-subsidized research grants.
01:13:52
TOM LAIRD: Right.
01:13:54
STEPHAN KINSELLA: And as a libertarian, as a holistic thinker, I’m like, oh, now you messed the whole thing up. But at least they’re better than the other guys because they at least admitted A, B, and C are wrong. And then their later paper about five years later, which I can give you the link to – I think it’s called The Case Against Patents. It’s really clear. It’s just on patents, not copyrights, but they kind of – so they even dropped that. They’re basically like, uh yeah. So even from a utilitarian point of view, I think that they’re like, dude, we have to give up patent. The world would be a better place if we gave up patent and copyright. Now, their argument is not the same as mine. Mine is more Austrian, Rothbardian, libertarian, propertarian, whatever you want to call it. Mine is more justice-based. There’s no excuse for using force against someone for copying other people’s ideas, and in fact, I think…
01:15:02
TOM LAIRD: It’s a deontological argument then.
01:15:04
STEPHAN KINSELLA: I don’t know. I mean other people can characterize it.
01:15:11
TOM LAIRD: Okay.
01:15:13
STEPHAN KINSELLA: But it’s not utilitarian. I wouldn’t say it’s opposed to consequentialsts because I think consequentialism and principled or deontological arguments converge. But that’s just my view. That’s just my view. Anyway, no, you’re right. So that book – those guys are the best on that side.
01:15:36
So what amazes me is that they’re – so they are like 1000 people on their side, but none of them or very few of them come to their conclusions even though if you honestly just followed their own methodology and went down their path you would come to their conclusions. But they just want to come up with a reason to – so here’s the basic idea. I’m in favor of innovation. I’m in favor of ideas because I’m not a dumbass sitting in a hut. I like ideas. Therefore, I favor property rights in ideas. This is how they think. Basically if you’re in favor of ideas, you have to be in favor of property rights in ideas. And if you’re against property rights in ideas, which is IP law, they will attack you as being anti-intellectual. It’s crazy. I mean the whole thing is crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy.
01:16:45
01:16:47
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: All right. With that crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, I think we’ll wrap up for the day because we’ve gone over an hour. Thank you so much, Stephan, for joining us.
01:17:01
STEPHAN KINSELLA: Thank you guys. I appreciate it. Sorry for – I wander. When I talk, I walk. So I – my wife wonders why I wander around the house, but I’ve been wandering around while I talk.
01:17:15
TOM LAIRD: That’s fair enough.
01:17:16
STEPHAN KINSELLA: But I appreciate it.
01:17:17
TOM LAIRD: Okay.
01:17:17
ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, I thank you very much for joining us on the show and hope to speak to you again.
01:17:23
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:17:23 — 70.9MB)
The Second Expanded Edition of Professor Hoppe’s The Great Fiction: Property, Economy, Society, and the Politics of Decline has been published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute (2021). More information available here. My Afterword is repixeled below [PDF].
For related material, see also:
Note: As I pointed out in the PDF:
(The copyright license printed on this edition of Hoppe’s book is factually and legally incorrect: its contents, including my Afterword, are not licensed under a CC-BY-NC-ND license, despite what the copyright notice says. To be clear: I hereby grant a CC0 license in this Afterword and, if that grant fails to be legally enforceable for any reason, I hereby grant a CC-BY license as a fallback, and as a second fallback I hereby estop myself and any legal heirs from asserting copyright in this work.)
This is one drawback of Creative Commons licenses, and illustrates yet another problem with copyright. See Kinsella, “Let’s Make Copyright Opt-OUT” and “Copyright Is Very Sticky!”
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 325.
This is my appearance on the Nate the Voluntaryist Livestream #202, released March 15, 2021 (Nate’s Bitchute channel). Shownotes: “Stephan Kinsella is back for more about Hoppe and who will succeed him in the world of Austrian economics, plus a Q&A.”
Previous appearance: KOL311 | Nate the Voluntaryist Livestream #194: IP, the CDA, DMCA, Argumentation Ethics, and More
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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 324.
I was on Aleks Svetski’s show Wake Up, Ep. 37. Youtube:
From his shownotes:
Stephan Kinsella is a Patent Attorney in Texas, Austrian AnCap philosopher, writer & hands down one of the smarter & most well-read people I’ve ever spoken to. [continue reading…]
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Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and retired patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020), and The Universal Principles of Liberty (2025).
My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025
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To the extent possible under law, Stephan Kinsella has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to material on this Site, unless indicated otherwise. In the event the CC0 license is unenforceable a 
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