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Judge Alvin Rubin on Justice

My book Legal Foundations of a Free Society concerns justice. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe writes in his Foreword, “The question as to what is justice and what constitutes a just society is as old as philosophy itself. Indeed, it arises in everyday life even long before any systematic philosophizing is to begin.” In ch. 2 (n.3), I quote the classic formulation from Justinian: “Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render every one his due.… The maxims of law are these: to live honestly, to hurt no one, to give every one his due.”

I came across a nice quote about justice from esteemed Louisiana federal judge Alvin Rubin (2) (1920–91), from the case U.S. v. McDaniels, 379 F.Supp. 1243 (E.D. La. 1974): [continue reading…]

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Libertarian Answer Man: Argumentation Ethics, Gödel, etc.

Dear Mr. Kinsella,

I hope this message finds you well. I have a question regarding the use of performative contradiction in argumentation ethics. I’d really appreciate it if you could share your thoughts.

My question is, without using performative contradiction, self-ownership is naturally true in argumentation since argumentation presupposes self-ownership. It is like Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem that Gödel found a way of allowing mathematics to talk about itself. It is self-referential. In the case of argumentation, if A owns B, there is no need for an argumentation between A and B over the ownership of C, A would just own C by default. In this case, in order to have an argumentation, A and B must be self-owned. [continue reading…]

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Q:

Hello prof. Kinsella. I would like to ask you a quick question. Do you consider libertarian as synonymous with anarcho-capitalist? Obviously there are many libertarians who are more classical liberals, but a libertarian consistent with his premises should be an anarchist, in this sense would he be a synonym for anarcho-capitalist? [continue reading…]

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On the Core Principles of Libertarian Property Rights

[From my Webnote series]

See also, on reasons law cannot be fully deduced:

Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 11:

Those types of arguments and reasons are not justifications. There has to be an objective best link.[15] So how does that work out? In Western private law and in libertarianism, which is a far more consistent working out of this, there are basically two types of links—the type of link applied to your body, which is a unique scarce resource; and the type of link applied to external resources in the world, which were previously unowned scarce resources. For the body, the link is a self-ownership link. You own your body, and the reason is because of your direct control over it, which I will get to in a minute.

And then for scarce resources in the world, they’re always owned first by someone first using them from their unowned state. That’s called homesteading or original appropriation. And then ownership can be transferred for two reasons: contractually—that’s a voluntary transfer of your ownership title of the resource to someone else, either by sale or by gift; or for purposes of rectification, which can be seen as a subset of contract because it’s also a transfer of title from an owner to someone, but it’s because the owner committed a tort against the victim and thus gave him a right to recover some of the aggressor’s property as damages.

So original appropriation, contract, and rectification are basically the only three principles to determine ownership of external resources in case of a dispute. So these four principles—body-ownership due to direct control, with an exception made for forfeiture of this right due to committing aggression,[16] plus the three principles for external resources—are how we determine the best link, and this is the core of all property rights, and of all just law. A developed body of private law, to be just, has to be based on these core principles, and just entails working out the details as the law develops.[17] And every socialist system, and every law not based on these core principles, including IP law, always ends up deviating from these core private property law principles in one way or another.

[15] See “How We Come to Own Ourselves” (ch. 4).

[16] See “Inalienability and Punishment: A Reply to George Smith” (ch. 10) and note 18, below. See also the Libertarian Party Platform language quoted in note 27, below.

[17] See “Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society” (ch. 13), in general, and “Knowledge, Calculation, Conflict, and Law” (ch. 19), the section “Abstract Rights and Legal Precepts.” See also Hoppe’s pithy summary of these basic rules, in “A Realistic Libertarianism,” LewRockwell.com (Sept. 30, 2013; https://www.hanshoppe.com/2014/10/a-realistic-libertarianism/) and in “Of Common, Public, and Private Property and the Rationale for Total Privatization,” at pp. 85–87, and the LP Platform language mentioned in note 27, below. As Hoppe writes in “A Realistic Libertarianism”:

But who owns what scarce resource as his private property and who does not? First: Each person owns his physical body that only he and no one else controls directly (I can control your body only in-directly, by first directly controlling my body, and vice versa) and that only he directly controls also in particular when discussing and arguing the question at hand.… [A]s for scarce resources that can be controlled only indirectly (that must be appropriated with our own nature-given, i.e., un-appropriated, body): Exclusive control (property) is acquired by and assigned to that person, who appropriated the resource in question first or who acquired it through voluntary (conflict-free) exchange from its previous owner. For only the first appropriator of a resource (and all later owners connected to him through a chain of voluntary exchanges) can possibly acquire and gain control over it without conflict, i.e., peacefully.

For elaboration of the basis for the property acquisition rules, see Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward, in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), n. [42] and accompanying text, including references such as: Kinsella, “How To Think About Property,” StephanKinsella.com (April 25, 2021); Kinsella, “The Limits of Libertarianism?: A Dissenting View” (citing Roderick Long and Robert Nozick); also idem, “KOL345 | Kinsella’s Libertarian “Constitution” or: State Constitutions vs. the Libertarian Private Law Code (PorcFest 2021),” Kinsella on Liberty Podcast (June 26, 2021); and “Nobody Owns Bitcoin,” StephanKinsella.com (April 21, 2021). See also Gary Chartier, Anarchy and Legal Order: Law and Politics for a Stateless Society (Cambridge, 2012), at ch. 2.E, pp. 64–65 , et seq., elaborating on the “baseline possessory rules” corresponding to original appropriation and contractual title transfer.

See also Gary Chartier, “Intellectual Property and Natural Law”; The Essence of Libertarianism? “Finders Keepers,” “Better Title,” and Other Possibilities

Update: Simon Guenzl, “Public Property and the Libertarian Immigration Debate,” Libertarian Papers, 8(1) (2016): 153–177, at p. 165 & n.15, writes:

Pursuant to Rothbardian philosophy, property can only come to be justly owned in one of three ways.

First, someone can homestead previously unowned property using legitimate means. Here, the individuals who compose the state cannot be held to have properly homesteaded state-claimed land because they used illegitimate means (at a minimum, stolen income) and the taxpayers have not performed any homesteading acts of their own.

Second, a person can receive property through consensual transfer from a prior legitimate owner (such as through a gift or purchase). In this case, neither individuals within the state nor the taxpayers received the state-claimed land from a prior legitimate owner, because there was none.

Third, a victim may exercise remedial claims, by force if necessary, to an aggressor’s legitimately-owned property. Here, the aggressors (individuals within the state) do not legitimately own the state-claimed land, and thus the victims’ (the taxpayers’) rights cannot extend to such property (nor can the aggressors offer the victims such property or any benefits arising from it in lieu of other enforcement action).15

15. This method of acquiring legitimate ownership of property is not commonly articulated as the third limb of Rothbardian property rights theory, except perhaps by Kinsella (for instance, Kinsella [2014]). This may be because Kinsella has written extensively on both property rights and punishment, and thus has been able to integrate the two fields. Note that the libertarian literature characterizes remedial rights in various ways. See for instance, Randy Barnett (1977), Roger Pilon (1978), Kinsella (1997; 1998-99), and Rothbard (2002, chapter 13). In all cases, however, the literature is clear that the victim’s enforcement rights are against only the aggressor’s legitimate property (or person). Note also that the reason these remedial rights can be characterized as a third means of acquiring legitimate title to property is because, unlike homesteading and consensual transfer, this method relies on force—the aggressor would not normally yield his property rights absent the threat of force from the victim—with the distinction being that such force in response to initiated aggression is justified.

It is true that most libertarian commentators are not explicit about this “third limb,” and in recent years I have been explicit about this. But this insight is not original to me. For example:

Nozick:

The subject of justice in holdings consists of three major topics. The first is the original acquisition of holdings, the appropriation of unheld things. This includes the issues of how unheld things may come to be held, the process, or processes, by which unheld things may come to be held, the things that may come to be held by these processes, the extent of what comes to be held by a particular process, and so on. We shall refer to the complicated truth about this topic, which we shall not formulate here, as the principle of justice in acquisition. The second topic concerns the transfer of holdings from one person to another. By what processes may a person transfer holdings to another? How may a person acquire a holding from another who holds it? Under this topic come general descriptions of voluntary exchange, and gift and (on the other hand) fraud, as well as reference to particular conventional details fixed upon in a given society.

… If the world were wholly just, the following inductive definition would exhaustively cover the subject of justice in holdings.

  1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.
  2. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.
  3. No one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) applications of 1 and 2.

… Not all actual situations are generated in accordance with the two principles of justice in holdings: the principle of justice in acquisition and the principle of justice in transfer. Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible modes of transition from one situation to another. And some persons acquire holdings by means not sanctioned by the principle of justice in acquisition. The existence of past injustice (previous violations of the first two principles of justice in holdings) raises the third major topic under justice in holdings: the rectification of injustice in holdings. If past injustice has shaped present holdings in various ways, some identifiable and some not, what now, if anything, ought to be done to rectify these injustices? What obligations do the performers of injustice have toward those whose position is worse than it would have been had the injustice not been done? Or, than it would have been had compensation been paid promptly? How, if at all, do things change if the beneficiaries and those made worse off are not the direct parties in the act of injustice, but, for example, their descendants? Is an injustice done to someone whose holding was itself based upon an unrectified injustice? How far back must one go in wiping clean the historical slate of injustices? What may victims of injustice permissibly do in order to rectify the injustices being done to them, including the many injustices done by persons acting through their government? I do not know of a thorough or theoretically sophisticated treatment of such issues.2 Idealizing greatly, let us suppose theoretical investigation will produce a principle of rectification. This principle uses historical information about previous situations and injustices done in them (as defined by the first two principles of justice and rights against interference), and information about the actual course of events that flowed from these injustices, until the present, and it yields a description (or descriptions) of holdings in the society. The principle of rectification presumably will make use of its best estimate of subjunctive information about what would have occurred (or a probability distribution over what might have occurred, using the expected value) if the injustice had not taken place. If the actual description of holdings turns out not to be one of the descriptions yielded by the principle, then one of the descriptions yielded must be realized.*

2. See, however, the useful book by Boris Bittker, The Case for Black Reparations (New York: Random House, 1973).

* If the principle of rectification of violations of the first two principles yields more than one description of holdings, then some choice must be made as to which of these is to be realized. Perhaps the sort of considerations about distributive justice and equality that I argue against play a legitimate role in this subsidiary choice. Similarly, there may be room for such considerations in deciding which otherwise arbitrary features a statute will embody, when such features are unavoidable because other considerations do not specify a precise line; yet a line must be drawn. 1

Roderick Long (citing Nozick): Libertarian property rights are, famously, governed by principles of justice in initial appropriation (mixing one’s labour with previously unowned resources), justice in transfer (mutual consent), and justice in rectification (say, restitution plus damages). 2

Gary Chartier also elaborates on the “baseline possessory rules” corresponding to original appropriation and contractual title transfer. 3 In a separate section he argues in favor of restitution in the case of injuries resulting from aggression. 4

***

Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 9:

“In other chapters I argued that rights in our bodies stem from the fact of our direct control of our bodies, drawing on Hoppe’s arguments, while property rights in external, previously unowned resources arise from original appropriation or title transfer from a previous owner by contract or for purposes of rectification.51

51. See “How We Come to Own Ourselves” (ch. 4) and “Goods, Scarce and Nonscarce” (ch. 18). See also Hoppe’s pithy summary of these basic rules, in “A Realistic Libertarianism,” LewRockwell.com (Sept. 30, 2013; https://www.hanshoppe.com/2014/10/a-realistic-libertarianism/) and in idem, “Of Common, Public, and Private Property and the Rationale for Total Privatization,” pp. 85–87.”

The Problem with Intellectual Property, Part II.C:

The purpose of property rights is to support actors in the pursuit of their goals by enabling them to employ resources, including their own bodies, free of physical conflict and interference from other actors. Property rights are inherently practical. For this reason legal systems and their corresponding property rights from time immemorial have always exhibited certain core features in the private law, to one degree or another: self-ownership, original appropriation, contractual transfer, and transfers for rectification.

Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 2:

“The libertarian view is that individual rights—property rights—are assigned according to a few simple principles: self-ownership, in the case of human bodies; and, in the case of previously-unowned external things (conflictable resources), in accordance with principles of original appropriation, contractual title transfer, and rectification.11”

Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 4:

“FIRST USE AND HOMESTEADING OF UNOWNED RESOURCES”,

ch. 4:

“The libertarian view is that individual rights—property rights—are assigned according to a few simple principles: self-ownership, in the case of human bodies; and, in the case of previously-unowned external things (conflictable resources), in accordance with principles of original appropriation, contractual title transfer, and rectification.”

note 11:

“As Narveson writes:
Robert Nozick has most usefully divided the space for principles on the subject of property into three classes: (1) initial acquisition, that is, the acquisition of property rights in external things from a previous condition in which they were unowned by anyone in particular; (2) transfer, that is, the passing of property (that is to say, property rights) from one rightholder to another; and (3) rectification, which is the business of restoring just distributions of property when they have been upset by admittedly unjust practices such as theft and fraud.

Jan Narveson, The Libertarian Idea, reissue ed. (Broadview Press, 2001), p. 69. See also Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), ch. 7, section I; Roderick T. Long, “Why Libertarians Believe There is Only One Right,” C4SS.org (April 7, 2014; https://c4ss.org/content/25648) (“Libertarian property rights are, famously, governed by principles of justice in initial appropriation (mixing one’s labour with previously unowned resources), justice in transfer (mutual consent), and justice in rectification (say, restitution plus damages)”); and“Gary Chartier, Anarchy and Legal Order: Law and Politics for a Stateless Society (Cambridge University Press, 2013), at 64–65, et seq., elaborating on the “baseline possessory rules” corresponding to original appropriation and contractual title transfer. Regarding transfers made for purposes of rectification, see ibid., chap. 5, “Rectifying Injury,” esp. §II.C.2, and “A Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Rights” (ch. 5), at Parts IV.B and IV.G.”

also

“ “KOL259 | ‘How To Think About Property,’ New Hampshire Liberty Forum 2019,” Kinsella on Liberty Podcast (Feb. 9, 2019).”

“Aggression and Property Rights Plank in the Libertarian Party Platform,” StephanKinsella.com (May 30, 2022);”

  1.  Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), ch. 7, §1, pp. 150–153. []
  2. See my post The Limits of Libertarianism?: A Dissenting View; Long, Why Libertarians Believe There is Only One Right. []
  3. Gary Chartier, Anarchy and Legal Order: Law and Politics for a Stateless Society (Cambridge, 2012), at ch. 2.E, pp. 64–65, et seq. []
  4. Ibid., ch. 5.I, 5.C.1, 5.C.2, pp. 263, 265, 266 et seq. []
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Persian Translation of Against Intellectual Property

Against Intellectual Property has been translated into Farsi (Persian):  کینسلا، استفن (۱۴۰۱). علیه مالکیت فکری. ترجمه محمد جوادی. تهران:‌ نشر آماره. ۱۸۸.

Trans. Mohammad (Amir) Javadi, Alayh-e Malekiat-e Fekri (Tehran: Amareh Press, 2022). (online) [continue reading…]

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Desyllas: Three Theories of Parental Obligations

Interesting post by Jake Desyllas:

Three Theories of Parental Obligations

One of the most important philosophical questions relating to the family is whether parents have enforceable positive obligations towards their children. How you answer this question depends on your theory of the relationship between parents and children. Here are 3 major theories of that relationship: [continue reading…]

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Libertarian Answer Man: Are Airline Tickets Future Goods?

Dear Mr. Kinsella:

I’m a huge fan of your work and if it’s not too much trouble, I wanted to ask your input regarding the practice of airline overbooking and how this may relate to theft from a libertarian perspective. I recently watched libertarians on Twitter/X arguing about this issue so I wanted to get your take.
When you buy an airline ticket, and on the day of the flight the flight is overbooked, and you’re not allowed to board the plane ,and you don’t get your seat, is the airline commiting theft?
The argument is that when you buy an airplane ticket you’re buying a future good (a future plane seat) and so on the day of the flight you gain title to an airplane seat, and if the airline doesn’t give you the seat they’re stealing from you.

[continue reading…]

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A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre

Update: As noted below, this piece was originally intended to appear in Elvira Nica & Gheorghe H. Popescu, eds., A Passion for Justice: Essays in Honor of Walter Block (New York: Addleton Academic Publishers, forthcoming), but I withdrew it and published it here. However, I have published this paper under a CC0 license so that my permission is not needed for republication or reuse, the editors of this book decided to use it in the book, so apparently a version now will appear in Elvira Nica & Gheorghe H. Popescu, eds., A Passion for Justice: Essays in Honor of Walter Block (New York: Addleton Academic Publishers, forthcoming 2025).

Note: in this piece I forgot to mention Walter’s defense of suing some parties under defamation law, even though in principle he is against it: see Walter Block Defends His Libel Suit Against The New York TimesA Libertarian Analysis of Suing for Libel (“How … can I justify suing the New York Times for libel? It is simple. The libertarian case against suing for libel applies only to innocent people, and this newspaper does not at all qualify. Rather, this organization is a member in good standing of the ruling class, and all bets are off for criminals of that ilk.”); and Randy Barnett, “What’s Next for Libertarianism?”

One other update: re my mention of his “two teeth for a tooth” rule: I criticize it in KOL020 | “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society: Lecture 3: Applications I: Legal Systems, Contract, Fraud” (Mises Academy, 2011):

And then there’s caveat emptor, which is the buyer beware. Was he defrauded, or did he—should he have known better? And then Walter Block and Murray Rothbard’s idea where they say, well, there should always be the two-teeth-for-a-teeth punishment rule. I mean I understand the sympathy there and the reasoning, but it seems to me a little mechanical and a little bit armchair. We can’t say it would be exactly two teeth for a tooth.

This is similar to some other criticisms I have made of Walter and also Rothbard for being too ad hoc. See, e.g., the section on “Incitement” below; Kinsella, “Causation and Aggression,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society, p. 182 et seq.; also in ch. 24.

Also, on others who support voluntary slavery, e.g. Gerard Casey and Nozick, see KOL442 | Together Strong Debate vs. Walter Block on Voluntary Slavery (Matthew Sands of Nations of Sanity).

A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre

Stephan Kinsella[*]

[Note: This piece was originally intended to appear in Elvira Nica & Gheorghe H. Popescu, eds., A Passion for Justice: Essays in Honor of Walter Block (New York: Addleton Academic Publishers, forthcoming), but it has been withdrawn for various reasons so I am posting it here. This article is not a comprehensive overview of all of Walter’s publications, and does not include his pro-covid lockdown writing or more recent Israel-Gaza related publications. This is part of the reason for my withdrawing the piece. I could not in good faith omit discussion of these issues, but since I strongly disagree with Walter on these matters, it would be inappropriate to include such criticism in a book of essays in his honor.] 1

I dare say no single person has ever read all of Walter Block’s massive corpus of publications. There are just too many. Walter’s writing spans a large number of topics in Austrian economics and libertarianism as well as in other areas, published over a more than fifty year period. This includes innumerable popular articles, 32 or so books, and hundreds of scholarly journal articles. His first articles were published in 1969; his first piece in a refereed journal was published in 1971,[2] a year before he received his Ph.D. As Walter tells his friends, one of his goals is to publish 1,000 articles in refereed journals and law reviews,[3] and by his count, he’s currently at about 700. So he is on track to meet his goal in about twelve years. He’s only 82 now, after all. [continue reading…]

  1. For his pro-lockdown and related writings, see Walter Block, “Forced Vaccinations,” LewRockwell.com (Feb. 4, 2013); see also Libertarianism and Compulsory Vaccinations and others listed here. And more recently, Walter Block, “A Libertarian Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” J. Libertarian Stud. 24 (2020): 206–37. Jeff Tucker criticized Walter for some of these views here; a few days later the same program had Walter on to defend his pro-Covid lockdown/mandate views he had expressed at the height of the pandemic lockdown period. Tucker also rightly called out Block for his illiberal and unlibertarian views on infectious diseases, including his bizarre defense of jailing “Typhoid Mary,” in The Downfall of the Gurus. See, e.g. ; Walter Block, “My Response to Jeffrey Tucker on COVID,” Epoch Times (Feb. 8, 2023; substack version); Jeffrey A. Tucker, “The Downfall of the Gurus,” Epoch Times (Jan. 23, 2023); Block’s appearance online talking about the Typhoid Mary issue. And Walter Block, “Rejoinder to Slenzok on COVID,” J.Libertarian Stud. 25 (1) (2021): 264–68. For the Israel stuff, see 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). See also 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). Again, as noted above: I agree with Tucker, and with Hoppe, on the substance of the covid/infectious disease lockdown and Israel-Gaza issues, but it would be inappropriate of me to include this, with the necessary criticism it would entail, in a book of essays in his honor. []
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Libertarian Answer Man: Contracts over Non-existing Things

“Q – can you have a valid contract over things that don’t exist?

and especially if there’s no property title being transferred?

like it’s buying the idea of a kilometre? or a ‘rare sat’?”

Okay here’s how others might say: there is no thing to transfer so the contract is null and void, or something like that. That is because they think of contract as some kind of independent thing—a relationship, a legal “obligation.” And that one of the effects of a contract is that someone gets title to something that they agreed to, etc etc. This view of contract also thinks of the parties as being obligated to each other, and if they don’t perform their obligation they are in breach and owe damages, etc. [continue reading…]

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Libertarian Answer Man: Consensual Killing

Q: If I sign something that says “this person is allowed to kill me under xyz circumstances and he is owed $10 from my estate if he fulfills this” and, assuming I never renege, those circumstances arise and the person kills me, would the thing I signed be a valid defense against murder charges in a free society and/or an enforceable claim against the estate?

Kinsella:

I think in a free society, it would be a defense because it would indicate consent. (And yes, the estate owed the $10.)

Of course, in today’s world, it will still be murder [continue reading…]

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Patents, Pharma, Government: The Unholy Alliance

Stephan Kinsella, “Patents, Pharma, Government: The Unholy Alliance,” Brownstone Institute (April 2024) (version below has hyperlinks converted to endnotes; all cited work is mine unless otherwise indicated)

See also

See also my comments in this Twitter thread:

It [banning pharma TV ads] is a crude proxy for removing the artificial power Big Pharma has because of government-granted patents combined with the socialized medical system and the government-regulated insurance and prescription and medical system. Better to just abolish all patents. Wouldn’t you agree?

Just like it would be just to take away Pharma patents and, with it, the ability to charge monopoly prices; or, barring that, as a second best, impose price controls or antitrust liability. See Price Controls, Antitrust, and Patents

Here’s a crazy idea. The state should STOP:

  • issuing patents
  • taxing corporations
  • granting pharmacy tort/damage liability waivers
  • subsidizing scientific research with tax dollars
  • blocking drug reimports, i.e. blocking free trade in the name of supporting US patent pharma patent monopoly pricing (Cato on Drug Reimportation; Cato Tugs Stray Back Onto the Reservation; and Other Posts)
  • paying for healthcare and drugs with socialized medical welfare systems (medicare, medicaid)
  • pushing employer-funded medical insurance with antiquated and distorting tax regulations
  • imposing unreasonable liability on doctors with ridiculous tort laws, requiring doctors to adopt risk-averse techniques like going along with whatever their medical associations, insurers, and Big Pharma recommend
  • outlawing or regulating the sale of controlled prescription drugs by requiring consumers to have a “prescription” in order to purchase medicines or substances they prefer

THEN we can let Big Pharma advertise all they want as long as they have full liability and are not being subsidized by (a) taxpayer funded medical research, (b) taxpayer funded purchases from medicare/medicaid, (c) state-granted patent monopolies, and so on. In the meantime, these crooks don’t have much grounds for complaint, do they?

Patents, Pharma, Government: The Unholy Alliance

Patents, Pharma, Government: The Unholy Alliance

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The Problem with Intellectual Property

The unholy alliance between Big Pharma and the FDA and Federal Government is truly breathtaking to behold. Unfortunately, its nature is so arcane and obscure that only a few notice this, other than those who benefit from it and keep their lips shut. To unpack this we must explore a few separate but interrelated issues. [continue reading…]

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Dear Mr. Kinsella,

I’m a fan of your work, and appreciate your input into unalienable rights and the Blockean homestead problem. I’d like to add a bit of angel-pin nuance to them.
1) You’ve mentioned multiple times that the human physical body is unalienable, in the vein of Rothbard. I’d like to clarify that it is the mind/will, or in a quasi-Christian sense “soul”, that is unalienable, and not the physical body, since consensual organ sales and prostitution are perfectly fine in libertarianism (of course, this is for consensual transactions of one’s physical body, so stuff like infant circumcision is still out).

[continue reading…]

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