It may be true that lovers of liberty, originally steeped in society’s preferred form of social democracy, must travel along the spectrum of the state via small (“minimal”) before reaching the conclusion that the state must go. But logically, this is not the case. To cure cancer, it is not necessary to reduce the size of a tumor bit by bit. The cure is to remove it. Similarly, if a rock upsets the flow of a stream, the solution is not to change the size or shape of the rock, to make it more streamlined, but to simply remove it. [continue reading…]
I just watched (because I’m a masochist) a video over 3 hours in length by a fellow with the handle “LiquidZulu (LZ)”. He used that time to blast Dave Smith for being unsound on libertarian theory and “afraid to debate him” or something. [continue reading…]
Walter E. Block, “Rejoinder to Kinsella on ownership and the voluntary slave contract,” Management Education Science Technology Journal (MESTE) 11, no. 1 (Jan. 2023): 1-8 [pdf]
I stumbled across some pages I had scanned from my notebook for my final semester or so of my first degree, my BSEE at LSU, Fall 1986 and Spring 1987 semesters. My courses included:
Real Time Computer Systems EE 4770 (Dr. Klinkachorn, Docka Klink)
Digital Integrated Circuits EE 4250 (Burke Huner)
Introductory Sociology SOCL 2001
History of Contemporary America HIST 4065 (Culbert) (with my friend Ben Favrot, or “Fartov”.)
I liked to doodle a lot and was at the time fascinated with Douglas Hofstadter’s “Ambigrams,” making words with mirror images of themselves. (Metamagical Themas; Ambigram (Wikipedia); My Life in Ambigrammia; Ambigrammia.) Nicknames and pet names like Faggot Lip, Smoochball, and so on. Many of my EE buddies were in these classes–Ben Favrot (“Fish”), Chris LeBlanc (“Duck Butter”), Damon Smith, Sal Bernadas, Jimmy1, Jimmy2, “Booger” Wayne LeBlanc, “Pretty” Wayne Speeg, Fat Wayne, and so on. Culbert is the one that had me read Charles Murray’s Losing Ground, Oswald’s Game (which persuaded me Oswald acted alone), and others.
As mentioned in the previous episode (KOL476), Alex Anarcho has begun a narration of Against Intellectual Property, with interspersed commentary. He has so far narrated the first two sections the first of which, “Summary of IP Law,” was in KOL476. This episode is Part 2, “Libertarian Perspectives on IP.” I have posted a Youtube video containing both parts. Alex assures me that narrations with commentary of the remainder of the book are forthcoming. These can be found in his Against Intellectual Property series, which includes Part I, What is intellectual property? (KOL476) and Part 2, Libertarian Perspectives on IP (this episode). KOL476 contains the transcript for both parts.
Dear
@NSKinsella
, I have a question about argumentative ethics. Isn’t natural law more fundamental, since it is based on human nature, which precedes all language, and therefore much more transcendental than it? Thus being a stronger starting point.
Hoppe argues persuasively in my view that natural rights have to be justified by reference to a particular aspect of our human nature, that is the activity of argumentative justification. It cannot be found in action itself, as Gewirth argues, because action itself is not normative or conative, and thus does not invoke universalizability. Our rights are based on our nature as acting beings in a world of scarcity but those who use reason and engage in peaceful, normative-laden argumentative discourse to justify norms. It cannot be based on nature alone because of the is-ought gap: you cannot go from what something is to conclude what it ought to do; this gap is logically unbridgeable; you must rest normative claims on other values, norms, which is in fact the case when one engages in peaceful, genuine argumentation. See my book, https://stephankinsella.com/lffs/ , ch. 6, at n.14, and ch. 22, Part II.E. See also https://stephankinsella.com/2010/01/intellectual-property-and-the-structure-of-human-action/ On getting an ought from an ought, see https://stephankinsella.com/2006/11/omega-chloride-redford-on-my-plagiarism/
Objectivists have long been bitter that libertarians accept most of Objectivism’s politics without accepting the rest of her philosophy: mainly, its metaphysics (objective reality), epistemology (reason), and ethics (self-interest), although most individualist-leaning libertarians more or less do happen to accept these three broad views. Objectivists somewhat crankishly refer to their politics as “capitalism,” just as some anarchist libertarians sometimes use the term anarcho-capitalism. 1 Objectivism’s capitalism is virtually the same as minarchist libertarianism, 2 a term Rand petulantly rejected, even though Objectivism’s “capitalism” is virtually the same as libertarian minarchism; in fact she is one of the main figures behind the modern libertarian movement. 3[continue reading…]
I have for many years tried to avoid the term anarcho-capitalism, since capitalism is just one aspect of the economic system of a free society, and not necessarily the only one. I tend to prefer the term anarcho-libertarian, anarchist libertarian, or libertarian anarchy. See The new libertarianism: anti-capitalist and socialist; or: I prefer Hazlitt’s “Cooperatism”’; Gerard Casey, Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012). [↩]
So I was having this discussion on X with a few people. It began off as “abortion is murder,” it devolved into “who has rights and why?” and then someone said: “because people in a comatose state have the potential to wake up and be able to form concepts again [which is what they’re using as a threshold for rights-bearers], then killing them is unjust.” [continue reading…]
Roberta Adelaide Modugno, 
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