by Stephan Kinsella
on April 25, 2025
Update: See The Universal Principles of Liberty (Aug. 14, 2025).
I’ve pointed out before the pitfalls of trying to design law by legislation, and also the limitations of libertarian legal theorists trying to design or deduce law from their armchairs. And yet there is no doubt a role for libertarian theorists, and for legal commentators and private law codes in guiding the development of law in a private-law society. As an example, a fledgling libertarian society might take the existing private law as developed in the mostly decentralized Roman law, and as now embodied in European civil codes, or the English common law, as starting points and as presumptively compatible with libertarian law.
The positive Roman/European continental and Anglo-American common law would only be presumptively just, and would have to be scrutinized with respect to more fundamental or abstract or general libertarian principles, and ultimately discarded if found wanting. It would be no surprise if this were the case; lots of statist or other assumptions play into the reasoning of jurists over the centuries. It would be a surprise if mistakes never happened. Of course a sense of caution or humility in jettisoning long-established rules would be warranted. As Chesterton noted: [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 25, 2025
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 24, 2025
Background:
My heart is with Israel, my brain is with the Palestinians.
- A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre
- Ammous vs. Block on Israel
- Walter E. Block & Alan G. Futerman, “Rejoinder to Hoppe on Israel vs. Hamas,” MEST Journal (2024), which is a response to
- Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “An Open Letter to Walter E. Block,” LewRockwell.com (Jan. 31, 2024).
- David Gordon and Wanjiru Njoya, “The Classical Liberal Case For Israel,” LewRockwell.com (Feb. 2, 2024; Mises.org version)
- and Walter’s response, Alan G. Futerman and Walter E. Block, “Rejoinder to Gordon and Njoya on Israel and Libertarianism,” MESTE Journal (Position Paper) (2024).
Some recent twitter posts:
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 23, 2025
I had surgery for prostate cancer last October. And I’m fine. But beware of a scam Facebook page using my photo to seem nostrums.
[continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 22, 2025
Related:
Earlier this month I attended and spoke at the APEE 49th Meeting in Guatemala City and had a great time. The APEE Annual Meetings alternate between Las Vegas and other cities, sometimes in the US, sometimes in other countries. It’s been held in the past in Guatemala because of its connection to the Universidad Francisco Marroquín (where my old friend Bill Marina used to teach), but apparently it’s been over 10 years since it was held there. Most of the meeting was held at the Westin Camino Real, just a couple miles from UFM, but the opening reception and dinner was held at UFM.
As I mentioned previously, the CEES (Centro de Estudios Económico-Sociales; see UFM page), a group affiliated with Universidad Francisco Marroquín and in fact started by Manuel Ayau, who also founded UFM, holds a monthly colloquium with UFM and other local students and members to discuss a book or work, normally on a Saturday night. The impression I get is that CEES was originally founded as very classical liberal and libertarian but nowadays has a lot of members interested in Rothbard, Hoppe, Austro-libertarianism, and so on. They sent me a very kind invitation to lead a discussion on the Monday night of my APEE talk (April 7), on the topic of self-ownership and natural rights, based on “How We Come To Own Ourselves,” chapter 4 of my recent book. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 21, 2025
[From my Webnote series]
I have not yet confirmed these–got help from ChatGPT, Grok, and NotebookLM—
“The present work attempts to fill this gap, to set forth a systematic ethical theory of liberty. It is not, however, a work in ethics per se, but only in that subset of ethics devoted to political philosophy.”
— The Ethics of Liberty [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 21, 2025
Mi Ecuadorian amigo Juan F. Carpio is translating my book Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) into Español. He’s ideally suited to it since his English is perfecto and he understands Austro-libertarian concepts like no normal translator could.
Anyway while getting ChatGPT to assist, in the middle of the translation of chapter 1 (which is only about 5 or 6 pages), it inserted about 30+ pages of made-up text. I didn’t write any of it and I am not sure where it got it from. Some of it sounds like some of the other chapters in the book that it is also helping to translate, some of it sounds like Ayn Rand. It’s as if it was trying to just write a rambling essay in my style, like a chapter that could have been in the book but wasn’t, or an overview or introduction. I’m not sure. I only skimmed it and nothing seemed exactly wrong, but lots of it is written in a style I would never use and expressing things I would never express. But a lot of it sounds like me, or a version of me.
Anyway, Juan and I got a kick out of it. The text has a few breaks as if ChatGPT was starting a new section, sort of arbitrarily or randomly, so I indicated some of those by dingbats.
(Interesting question: who has the copyright in this text? Open AI? No one? My guess is: no one (like the monkey (macaque) selfies), or maybe me, to the extent it’s a derivative work.)
What is libertarianism?
What does it mean to be a libertarian? What constitutes the essence of libertarian thought? Although there are disagreements within the movement on specific issues, and even on fundamental philosophical questions (such as anarcho-capitalism vs. minarchism), there is a kind of common core, a consensus, that defines the libertarian spirit. And that core is composed of a belief in individual rights—especially property rights—and in the illegitimacy of aggression.
To put it in its most basic terms, libertarianism is a political philosophy centered on the idea that every person is his or her own master and that the use of physical force against others is permissible only in self-defense. This basic ethic—the nonaggression principle—serves as the basis for deriving property rights over external resources: those that were first appropriated, acquired by contract, or voluntarily exchanged. This is not an arbitrary rule, but a normative conclusion derived from respect for self-ownership and social peace. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 20, 2025
As I’ve recounted in various biographical pieces, in college (LSU) I dabbled in writing letters to the editor to local newspapers and the student newspaper, and then columns for the LSU Daily Reveille as well The Wonderland Times, an underground student newspaper published briefly around that time.
As I mentioned in The Genesis of Estoppel: My Libertarian Rights Theory:
When I was younger I was interested both in STEM topics as well as philosophy, but had almost no views on political or economic topics. I was basically tabula rasa. Reading Ayn Rand in high school catapulted me into deeper interest in philosophy, political theory, economics. I ended up going to LSU and studying electrical engineering (started in 1983), but I was also devouring this other kind of material “on the side.” I started getting the itch to have conversations or interactions on these topics with others, but it was hard to find anyone to talk about them with. Frustrating. You can’t find engineering students who care about this stuff. And there was no Internet back then. This itch is probably one reason I eventually gravitated towards law school. I gradually realized I would not be satisfied being a practicing engineer. I liked using normative and verbal and legal type reasoning and argumentation too much, plus the scholarship opportunities a law career can offer. I liked writing. Engineering would not have suited me—it would have been too stultifying and boring. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 20, 2025
[From my Webnote series]
Not yet organized—
- See links at On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library
- A Simple Libertarian Argument Against Unrestricted Immigration and Open Borders, LewRockwell.com, September 1, 2005
- I’m Pro-Immigration and Pro-Open Borders
- Switzerland, Immigration, Hoppe, Raico, Callahan
- Reply to Neverfox on immigration: “Whatever Mileage We Put On, We’ll Take Off”
- Boudreaux on Hoppe on Immigration
- Transcript: “Liberty Forum Debate vs. Daniel Garza: Immigration Reform: Open Borders or Build the Wall?“, by Stephan Kinsella, Daniel Garza, and Jeremy Kaufman, New Hampshire Liberty Forum, Manchester, NH (Feb. 7, 2019) [KOL258]
- Kinsella on Anarchy Time Discussing Immigration
- Discussion with Bieser on Immigration
In response to this LewRockwell.com blog post, Immigration Idea (2; about selling citizenship, and No Treason’s Chattering Punks), and Hoppe’s article on immigration, these threads sprang up (my reply: Palmer on Hoppe, Hoppe on Coase, and Re: Palmer on Hoppe):
Tweets
https://x.com/NSKinsella/status/1434617199570964484
https://x.com/NSKinsella/status/1434618580667092994
https://x.com/NSKinsella/status/1770500516298068282
https://x.com/NSKinsella/status/1434599843926847492
https://x.com/NSKinsella/status/1379588048531427338
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 19, 2025
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 15, 2025
George Reisman
I’ve long been a great admirer of Objectivist economist George Reisman, author of the towering Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996). I devoured his book The Government Against the Economy (1979) and other writing in college and have listened to many of his lectures and courses.
I think the first time I met George was when I presented “The Legitimacy of Intellectual Property,” which later became Against Intellectual Property, at the Mises Institute’s Austrian Scholars Conference, Auburn, Alabama, on March 25, 2000. I believe he had recently split with the Ayn Rand Institute, and had reunited with his old friend Ralph Raico at the Mises Institute event. George was standing in the back of the room during my lecture and his questions to me indicated he was a bit stunned at my argument.
In any case, he had long offered for sale a 10-CD lecture set, “Reisman’s Program of Self-Education in the Economic Theory and Political Philosophy of Capitalism.” I suggested he might want to put them online so people could more easily access them. His own website, capitalism.net, was in disrepair and there was no immediately obvious way to remedy this, so I volunteered to organize the material and host it on my site, and upload it to Youtube, which I did: George Reisman’s Program of Self-Education in the Economic Theory and Political Philosophy of Capitalism.
Jeffrey Tucker and I have warned libertarians for years that their work could be lost because of copyright and standard publishing models and paywalls which can make it hard for people to access the work, or to republish or reuse it after they are gone.
I discussed this with George and he has decided to free all his work, to which he holds copyright, upon his death, by means of a CC-BY 4.0 dedication and license grant, which he gave me permission to post here (pdf).
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 12, 2025
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