Kinsella On Liberty KOL413 | Café Bitcoin: Private Law, Legal Positivism, and the Administrative State
Aug 1, 2023
Stefan Kinsella, an American IP lawyer and libertarian legal theorist, discusses law versus legislation and the roots of private/common law. He contrasts monarchy with the modern administrative state. He critiques regulatory classification, legal positivism, and how fiat money shapes social character and incentives.
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Administrative State Warps Law
- Modern administrative states replaced judge-made private law with statutory and regulatory law, eroding justice as judges now apply texts rather than seek just outcomes.
- This shift creates vague, smeared-out power and forces novel phenomena into preexisting bureaucratic classifications, undermining spontaneous social concepts.
Common Law vs. Regulatory Classification
- Private-law traditions like common law grew from judges seeking just outcomes, producing stable legal norms.
- Modern regulators reclassify novel practices into old categories, causing misapplication and legal mismatch.
Bank Worker Equates Policy With Law
- Alex Danzig recounts a bank employee insisting a wire explanation was mandatory and citing bank policy as law.
- The exchange illustrates how people conflate corporate rules with legal obligations in a surveillance-oriented culture.
