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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 112.

Update: see KOL419 | Soho Forum Debate vs. Corey Deangelis: School Choice

From the vault. This is from 1989, an interview by my good friend Jack Criss, then host of a libertarian AM radio talk show on WJNT in Jackson, Mississippi (now the editor of BAMSouth). Jack interviewed lots of libertarian luminaries on that show, including Murray Rothbard and many others.

At the time of this podcast I was an LSU law student and was talking in favor of educational vouchers—something I completely disagree with now, by the way. But I had not yet at the time reached the full flower of my current Austro-libertarian-anarchist radicalism. To my ear, too, I think I had a thicker Louisiana accent back then.

Good times.

For criticism of voucher:

• KOL419 | Soho Forum Debate vs. Corey Deangelis: School Choice
• Lew Rockwell, Education and the Election
• William Anderson, The Trouble with Vouchers
• Jacob Hornberger, “School Vouchers Are Anti-Libertarian,” Hornberger’s Blog (Future of Freedom Foundation) (July 5, 2022)
• ———, “More on Anti-Libertarian School Vouchers,” Hornberger’s Blog (Future of Freedom Foundation) (July 6, 2022)
• Bob Murphy Show ep 105: Corey DeAngelis Makes the Case for School Choice
• Jacob Hornberger Makes the Case AGAINST School Vouchers (with Bob Murphy — Bob Murphy show ep. 248)
• Tom Woods Show: Ep. 2325 Corey DeAngelis and Connor Boyack: The State’s Schools Are Beyond Repair
• Tom Woods Show: Ep. 2211 Corey DeAngelis on the School Choice Movement
• Kinsella, “Negates freedom of choice,” Letter to the Editor, The Morning Advocate (Dec. 21, 1988), and related correspondence related to the voucher system and school choice, 1988–89 (Note: Written in a more Randian “Objectivist” phase, and before I came to oppose voucher systems.)

Related:

• Rose City Catholics Fight for LGBTQ Rights—and Start a War With Portland’s Archbishop (July 5, 2023)

Update: Soho Forum Debate: resolved: “Today’s school-choice movement in the U.S. is worthy of support by libertarians…” (taking the negative), vs. Corey DeAngelis, New York City (Aug. 21, 2023) (tickets)

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 111.

This was my appearance on Daniel Rothschild’s youtube channel on Jan. 20, 2014; we discussed a variety of topics, getting really into the nitty-gritty of a lot of aspects of libertarian legal theory.

For some background on some issues discussed, see:

• Trademark versus Copyright and Patent, or: Is All IP Evil?
• The Libertarian Approach to Negligence, Tort, and Strict Liability: Wergeld and Partial Wergeld
• Fraud, Restitution, and Retaliation: The Libertarian Approach
  

Previous podcast with Daniel: KOL095 | Interview with Daniel Rothschild on Children’s Rights, Aggression, Contract Theory, Self-Ownership, Voluntary Slavery, and More. See also: KOL004 | Interview with Walter Block on Voluntary Slavery.

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Legislação e direito em uma sociedade livre, Portugese translation of “Legislation and Law in a Free Society,” Mises Daily (Feb. 25, 2010). Translations of my other writing is here.

I did a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread recently, on the anarcho-capitalist sub-reddit, here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/1vd8s9/i_am_stephan_kinsella_anarcholibertarian_writer/.

Previous Reddit AMA’s I did: Reddit Ask Me Anything Thread. One I did a year ago is at My reddit “ask me anything”.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 110.

I appeared recently on the Canadian libertarian podcast Ed and Ethan: The Voice of Liberty in Canada (Dec. 29, 2013) (I was a guest last year as well). We discussed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other matters. This is my segment only; for the full show, go to Ed and Ethan’s show page for Episode 90.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 109. This is the audio for episode 005 of Liberty Talk, a weekly-ish Google hangout-based podcast with Jeffrey Tucker and me (Google Plus page; Youtube Channel). Though it’s been a month since our last one. Hey, it happens.

Today: we discuss Adam Kokesh and his recent brush with the “law” (see FDR2561), Liberty.me, 3D Printing, libertarian activism, nonscarce goods, intellectual property, The Mises Seminar Australia, trade secrets, and more.

Next week: we discuss Richard Posner, Richard Epstein, and the Chicago school, and their argument for IP.

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Back in 1991, I did a book review of J. Neil Schulman’s The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana (originally published 1990; sample). My review was posted and discussed on the “GEnie Science Fiction and Fantasy RoundTable” (I believe GEnie was one of those pre-Internet dial-up networks some of us used back in the day). I thought I had lost my review but was able to find a copy buried on my hard drive, along with some comments by Schulman and others that was on that forum. Here is my initial letter to Schulman and the review, and some of the followup commentary that appeared on the forum (with some editing).

***

From Stephan Kinsella
Friday, April 26, 1991

Neil,

I just finished reading your book, The Robert Heinlein Interview and other Heinleiniana. I enjoyed it very much. Although there are a few gripes, which will become apparent in the course of the review listed below.

I did note errata while I was reading it. [omitted]

After the errata, I list a book review below. Go ahead and distribute it, if you wish.

If you want any biographical data on me, here it is. I’m 25, graduating from law school (the LSU Law Center) on May 31. I’m going to practice corporate law in Houston, Texas, with the Jackson & Walker law firm. But first, I’m going to London (probably) for a year to get an LL.M (master’s in law) in International and Comparative Law. …

I’m a big Ayn Rand, C.S. Lewis, and Heinlein fan, as are you.

* * *

\\ERRATA\\

[omitted]

BOOK REVIEW OF THE ROBERT HEINLEIN INTERVIEW
Reviewed by Stephan Kinsella
April, 1991

As a big fan of Robert Heinlein’s works, I was happy to discover J. Neil Schulman’s paperless book, The Robert Heinlein Interview and other Heinleiniana. I downloaded it from GEnie, and was able to read it in about four two-hour sittings (this is a rough estimate). (One hint for readers of paperless books: to keep track of where I left off, I created a small ASCII file called BOOKMARK. Every time I “set the book down,” I noted the line number or page number, and opened up BOOKMARK, and wrote something like “At line 1024, file HEINLN2” to remind myself where to pick up next time.) [continue reading…]

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 108.

This was my (remotely delivered) presentation, “Why Intellectual Property is not Genuine Property,” at the 3^rd Adam Smith Forum, Moscow, Russia (Nov. 12, 2011).

As I noted in a previous post, this event was held Nov. 12, 2011 in Moscow. It was organized by the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, the Libertarian Party of Russia, and others. The Chairman of the ASF Steering Committee was economist Pavel Usanov, head of the Hayek Institute for Economy and Law, and Andrey Shal’nev, head of the federal committee of the Libertarian Party of Russia, was its co-chairman. I was invited to speak but could not attend in person, so my 47-minute speech “Why Intellectual Property is not Genuine Property” was presented remotely, with Russian subtitles. It is below, along with the original version and the English transcript plus the Russian translation, which was prepared by Maxim Tulenin, head of the Moscow branch of the Libertarian Party of Russia. Pictures from the event are here. The program with the list of speakers and topics is here (English translation).

Tulenin told me after the event:

I’m head of the Moscow branch of the Libertarian Party of Russia and I did the translation of your very consistent and convincing video lecture into Russian. Let me thank you, on behalf of the steering committee, Andrey Shal’nev and the participants for your contribution to the Forum, it was a great success with the audience, especially with the younger generation. I also tip my hat to you for the analytic case you’ve made against “intellectual property” because it has provided me with a pattern of argumentation suitable for my own Internet debates.

One of the participants in the Forum provided a brief overview of my talk (rough English translation). The Forum’s promo video excerpt, with Russian subtitles, is below, followed by the subtitled version presented at the Forum; the original version of my speech (without subtitles) follows these. The audio file is here. The English transcript is below; a Russian translation which was used for subtitles for the version presented at the Forum. The powerpoint presentation I used is also streamed below.

Youtube:

Vimeo version: Stephan Kinsella speech at IIIrd Adam Smith Forum from ivangoe on Vimeo:

Stephan Kinsella’s speech at the IIIrd Adam Smith Forum from ivangoe on Vimeo.

Alternative youtube version:

Slides:

[continue reading…]

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:24 — 76.5MB)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 107.

This was one of my guest appearances on  Adam vs. the Man (Oct. 25, 2011), episode “on “AVTM + Stephan Kinsella: “Intellectual Property” vs The 4th Amendment,” discussing Copyright and Neo-Mercantilism and related issues. We discussed U.S. Copyright Czar Cozied Up to Content Industry, E-Mails Show and related issues such as neo-mercantilist aspects of modern patent and copyright law (discussed in my post Rothbard on Mercantilism and State “Patents of Monopoly”).

This was the new, 3.0 version of Adam’s show. The previous version was carried by RT (Russia Today). I had appeared a couple times on the 2.0 show—On Adam vs. The Man re Drug Patents and Adam the Man vs. IP.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 106.

I was a guest today on the Peter Schiff Show (guest host Stefan Molyneux), discussing:

ObamaCare’s Next Legal Hurdle.
Stephan Kinsella, patent attorney & director of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom, on how ObamaCare still fails any reasonable legal test, whether anything constructive may come from the Apple/Samsung battle, and why entrepreneurs needn’t worry about their intellectual property.

Links to issues discussed:

• Oklahoma lawsuit to derail Obamacare?
• House passes Innovation Act by vote of 325-91: a small solution to a big patent problem

See also Another Problem with Legislation: James Carter v. the Field Codes: From an 1884 paperby James C. Carter, The Proposed Codification of Our Common Law: A Paper Prepared at the Request of The Committee of the Bar Association of the City of New York, Appointed to Oppose the Measure, defending New York’s common law from David Dudley Field’s attempt to (legislatively) codify it:

At present, when any doubt arises in any particular case as to what the true rule of the unwritten [i.e., judge-found, common-law developed] law is, it is at once assumed that the rule most in accordance with justice and sound policy is the one which must be declared to be the law. The search is for that rule. The appeal is squarely made to the highest considerations of morality and justice. These are the rallying points of the struggle. The contention is ennobling and beneficial to the advocates, to the judges, to the parties, to the auditors, and so indirectly to the whole community. The decision then made records another step in the advance of human reason towards that perfection after which it forever aspires. But when the law is conceded to be written down in a statute, and the only question is what the statute means, a contention unspeakably inferior is substituted. The dispute is about words. The question of what is right or wrong, just or unjust, is irrelevant and out of place. The only question is what has been written. What a wretched exchange for the manly encounter upon the elevated plane of principle!

For more on problems of legislation, and discussion of legal codes and codification efforts, see myLegislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society; and the articles collected here; also my posts Book Recommendations: Private, International, and Common Law; Legal Theory and The UN, International Law, and Nuclear Weapons. In particular, for further related commentary, see my Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society, e.g., note 78 and related text.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 105.

This is an interview I did a couple years ago with my friend, Dr. John McGinnis, on his radio show, “Open Mike with Dr. John McGinnis,” WRTA  (Sep. 19, 2011), discussing the America Invents Act. I met John when I lived in Philadelphia in the 90s, when we were both involved with the Freeman Society of Valley Forge (FEE-related), which helped me meet Hans Sennholz and Jacob Hornberger. A former economics professor, he is now a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

For background information on the AIA, see my Mises Academy webinar, The American Invents Act and Patent Reform: The Good, the Meh, and the Ugly (audio and slides).

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:15 — 24.0MB)