KOL444 | Property Rights, Bitcoin, Ideas & Fungibility, with AlexAnarcho
Oct 31, 2024
Stephan Kinsella, patent attorney and libertarian legal theorist known for critiquing intellectual property, joins to discuss property rights, IP, and whether digital things like Bitcoin can be truly owned. Conversation covers natural law vs positivism, homesteading and self‑ownership, fungibility and privacy coins, network effects and practical risks of storing value in crypto.
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Law vs. State Distinction
- Rights discourse separates what the law is from what the law should be, and anarchism asks whether a state is necessary to enforce law.
- Kinsella argues law can emerge privately and the state's existence doesn't prove law's necessity.
Origins Of Property Rules
- Property rules and homesteading emerge because humans live socially and need predictable control of scarce means to avoid conflict.
- Self-ownership, original appropriation, and consensual transfers form the core legal rules that enable cooperation and trade.
Property Grounds The Non‑Aggression Claim
- Aggression is a descriptive label that presupposes property assignments rather than a foundational axiom.
- Property rules (self-ownership, homesteading, transfer, rectification) are prior to and ground anti-aggression norms.













