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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 050.

This is lecture 6 (of 6) of my 2011 Mises Academy course “Libertarian Controversies.”  This talk continued lecture 5, which covered “Controversies and Conundrums,” such as monarchy vs. democracy, discrimination and diversity, immigration, incitement and causation (cont.), property rights, legal and logical positivism, fraud, contracts and inalienability, self-ownership, creation and the source of rights, and common libertarian misconceptions and mistakes such as scarcity vs. nonrivalry, states’ rights, loser-pays system, an educational voucher system, push the button hypos, rights as a subset of morals, spam as aggression, the danger of metaphors and equivocation, working for the state, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, and fine print in contracts, federalism, left vs. rights, activism, use of courts, forgiving crimes, abandoned property, fractional reserve banking, inalienability/voluntary slavery, mutualism, relevant technological unit, the Lockean proviso, the Blockean proviso, Rothbard on copyright, Constitutional sentimentalism, Georgism, strategy, thick vs. thin, and other issues. Slides for this lecture are appended below (also used for lecture 5).

For background information, links to recommended reading, and audio and slides for all six lectures, see  KOL 045 | “Libertarian Controversies Lecture 1″ (Mises Academy, 2011).

Update: The videos of all six lectures are now available here; the video for this particular lecture is embedded below.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 049.

This is lecture 5 (of 6) of my 2011 Mises Academy course “Libertarian Controversies.”  This talk covered “Controversies and Conundrums,” such as monarchy vs. democracy, discrimination and diversity, immigration, incitement and causation (cont.), property rights, legal and logical positivism, fraud, contracts and inalienability, self-ownership, creation and the source of rights, and common libertarian misconceptions and mistakes such as scarcity vs. nonrivalry, states’ rights, loser-pays system, an educational voucher system, push the button hypos, rights as a subset of morals, spam as aggression, the danger of metaphors and equivocation, working for the state, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, and fine print in contracts, federalism, left vs. rights, activism, use of courts, forgiving crimes, abandoned property, fractional reserve banking, inalienability/voluntary slavery, mutualism, relevant technological unit, the Lockean proviso, the Blockean proviso, Rothbard on copyright, Constitutional sentimentalism, Georgism, strategy, thick vs. thin, and other issues. Slides for this lecture are appended below (also used for lecture 6).

For background information, links to recommended reading, and audio and slides for all six lectures, see  KOL 045 | “Libertarian Controversies Lecture 1″ (Mises Academy, 2011). The remaining lectures will be released here in the podcast feed in upcoming days.

Update: See KOL395 | Selling Does Not Imply Ownership, and Vice-Versa: A Dissection (PFS 2022).

Update: The videos of all six lectures are now available here; the video for this particular lecture is embedded below.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 048.

This is lecture 4 (of 6) of my 2011 Mises Academy course “Libertarian Controversies.”  This talk covered “Misconceptions and Controversies,” such as positive vs. negative obligations, contracts vs. promises, incitement and causation,  and other issues. Slides for this lecture are appended below.

For background information, links to recommended reading, and audio and slides for all six lectures, see  KOL 045 | “Libertarian Controversies Lecture 1″ (Mises Academy, 2011). The remaining lectures will be released here in the podcast feed in upcoming days.

Update: The videos of all six lectures are now available here; the video for this particular lecture is embedded below.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 047.

This is lecture 3 (of 6) of my 2011 Mises Academy course “Libertarian Controversies.”  This talk covered “Even More Misconceptions,” such as state vs. government, “limited” government, Hoppe on monarchy vs. democracy, federalism, restitution and punishment, positive obligations, and other issues. Slides for this lecture are appended below.

For background information, links to recommended reading, and audio and slides for all six lectures, see  KOL 045 | “Libertarian Controversies Lecture 1″ (Mises Academy, 2011). The remaining lectures will be released here in the podcast feed in upcoming days.

Update: The videos of all six lectures are now available here; the video for this particular lecture is embedded below.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 046.

This is lecture 2 (of 6) of my 2011 Mises Academy course “Libertarian Controversies.”  This talk covered more common libertarian misconceptions such as PDA jurisdiction, Big-L vs. small-l libertarianism and other misused terms, non-aggression “axiom” or principle, and other issues. Slides for this lecture are appended below.

For background information, links to recommended reading, and audio and slides for all six lectures, see  KOL 045 | “Libertarian Controversies Lecture 1″ (Mises Academy, 2011). The remaining lectures will be released here in the podcast feed in upcoming days.

Update: The videos of all six lectures are now available here; the video for this particular lecture is embedded below.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 045.

This is lecture 1 (of 6) of my 2011 Mises Academy course “Libertarian Controversies.” This lecture contained an overview of basic austro-libertarian concepts and started discussing various libertarian “misconceptions,” regarding the left-right spectrum, coercion and force vs. aggression, the jurisdiction of private defense agencies, and related issues. I’ll release the remaining lectures here in the podcast feed in upcoming days.

This course followed on my speech “Correcting some Common Libertarian Misconceptions,” from the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society (May 27-29, 2011; see KOL 044 | “Correcting some Common Libertarian Misconceptions” (PFS 2011)). That talk  engendered a good deal of discussion and interest, but in the time allotted for a single speech I was able to cover only a small number of the topics I had assembled over the years. In the 6 week Mises Academy course, “Libertarian Controversies” (Sept. 19-Oct. 23, 2011), I covered these and related topics in greater depth. The course was planned for 5 weeks initially, but I added a sixth “bonus” lecture at student request. The course is discussed in my Mises Daily article “Libertarian  Controversies” (Aug. 25, 2011); here are the audio and slides for all six lectures. The “suggested readings” for this lecture are appended below.

Update: see also

• KOL185: Clarifying Libertarian Theory (Liberty.me, July 2014)
• KOL 044 | “Correcting some Common Libertarian Misconceptions” (PFS 2011)

SUGGESTED READING MATERIAL

General background readings are below; other particular links are provided in the slides for each lecture: [continue reading…]

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 044.

This is my speech “Correcting Some Common Libertarian Misconceptions,” delivered on May 28, 2011, at the Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. The video is here, and streamed below; here is the powerpoint presentation. Re-presented as PFP076.

Transcript available here.

Related:

• KOL 045 | “Libertarian Controversies Lecture 1” (Mises Academy, 2011)
• KOL023 | “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society: Lecture 6: Applications Continued; Common Libertarian Mistakes (Fraud Etc.)” (Mises Academy, 2011)
• KOL206 | Tom Woods Show: Five Mistakes Libertarians Make
• KOL185: Clarifying Libertarian Theory (Liberty.me, July 2014)
• KOL118 | Tom Woods Show: Against Fuzzy Thinking

[This speech was discussed previously on the Mises blog with extensive comments, and also on my blog]

Update: Thanks to Joseph Fetz with help cleaning up the original audio file.

Update:

other libertarian confusions: opposing co-ownership and self-ownership:

• Libertarian Answer Man: Co-ownership and Ownership and Punishment of Criminals
• “Libertarians” Who Object to “Self-Ownership”
• Voluntaryist Association, THE CONTRADICTION OF MULTI-PERSON OWNERSHIP (October 24, 2022)

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 043.

This is my appearance on Michael Shanklin’s Triple-V: Voluntary Virtues Vodcast with Michael Shanklin (April 25, 2013). We discussed a variety of issues, including: Bitcoin, the police state, legal reform (jury nullification, loser-pays rules), the morality of voting, Rothbard on copyright (for more: see Against Intellectual Property, “Contract vs. Reserved Rights” section, and Rothbard’s “High Tech ‘Crime’: A Call for Papers” (1983)), the history of patent and copyright (for more: see Karl Fogel’s article The Surprising History of Copyright and The Promise of a Post-Copyright World), and other issues.

Our previous discussion: KOL 025 | Triple-V: Voluntary Virtues Vodcast, with Michael Shanklin: Intellectual Property, Ron Paul vs RonPaul.Com, Aaron Swartz, Corporatism.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 042.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 041.

This is from Episode 367 of the Bad Quaker podcast, with Ben Stone.

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 040.

[Update: KOL186: Great IP Debate with Baker-Kinsella]

This is a discussion about IP with a fellow Austro-anarchist libertarian, Alexander Baker, who initially accepted the anti-IP argument I and others have made, but who has since moved to a type of pro-IP position. We had a few email discussions in recent months about this, but I was unable to persuade him that his approach was misguided. We decided to have a (friendly) discussion about it.

Baker calls his theory “intellectual space” and has a new blog devoted to this “libertarian theory of intangible property”; he sketches his position in his post Intro to Intellectual Space. We had a very interesting, civil discussion, which is rare for discussions with IP advocates (see, e.g., KOL 038 | Debate with Robert Wenzel on Intellectual Property). Baker was honest and forthright, willing to admit what he is not yet sure about; he admitted his own bias for IP given that his career (as a musical composer) depends in part on IP protection. He admitted the burden of proof is on IP advocates, and I believe he would not disagree with me that many advocates over the years have offered weak arguments.

I don’t agree with Baker, in the end. His argument seems to me to be based on analogies: an idea or recipe can play a role in production “similar” to how scarce means can, and thus can be exploited, owned, etc. However, he came across to me as sincere and searching for truth, which I can appreciate. Listen and judge for yourself.

Update: Here is a previous discussion on this topic between Baker and Stefan Molyneux:

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