Kinsella On Liberty

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 296. This is an appearance on Timo Virkkala's LocoFoco Netcast. We had a rambling discussion about libertarianism etc. (see my previous episode with him at KOL291 | LocoFoco–NOT talking about “legal positivism”). https://soundcloud.com/locofoco-net/my-peeps-stephan-kinsella-on-todays-libertarians-1 Update: Youtube version:

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 295. This is my appearance on Jimmy Song's podcast Bitcoin Fixes This (ep. 7). Bitcoin Fixes This #7: Intellectual Property Stephan Kinsella is a patent attorney, Austrian economist and author of Against Intellectual Property. We talk about IP law’s monarchist origins and how it’s a tool for monopoly. Stephan also tells us about how information is not the same thing as physical property and how IP and Bitcoin both suffer from labor theories of value.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 294. This is my appearance on the Burning Boots podcast, ep. 53. We had lots of fun. From their shownotes: We have Stephan Kinsella on this week to hang out and joke around then we get into some more thought provoking topics and questions for him from the listener mailbag! He's one of the most prominent Hoppeans around right now and frankly we found him to be a little under-educated for our prestigious intellectual podcast, but hopefully you can forgive him anyway. Follow him, read him, listen to his podcast, and definitely listen to his debates because they usually rock. Before we bring Kinsella on though, we take about 30 minutes to talk about the state of Kenosha and the collapse in general and Davie tells us about how the doctor that cut his balls off might secretly be based. Burning Question for this week: Can property be implicitly abandoned? Outro song this week (chosen by Stephan) is The Eagle Has Landed by Saxon

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 293. This is my discussion with my old friend and colleague, patent lawyer Steve Mendelsohn, about faith and free will and related issues, some of which are discussed in his book Shallow Draughts: Faith in the Absence of Free Will (2017) (PDF of this book and his most recent one posted here [Shallow Draughts] and here [Sequitur] with his permission). (Steve and I worked as patent lawyer associates together from about 1994-96 or so in Schnader Harrison in Philly.) Yes, yes, I know I normally talk only about libertarian legal theory, or, mostly, IP, and try to avoid discoursing about topics I don't think I'm an expert on ... like faith, concept formation, knowledge theory, free will, compatibilism, and the like, but, hey, what the hell. Caveat listener! Related: KOL471 | “What Is Property? And What Is Not? — Part 1," Capitalism & Morality (Vancouver) (see in particular text at note 3: "In society, others’ free will introduces the risk of interference with possession, necessitating property rights to protect it. [Note: I do not mean to imply here there is free will in the causal sense, but it’s too complicated to get into in such a talk, and not necessary either. 3. My friend Steve Mendelsohn, the “law school asshole” mentioned above–he and I have disagreed before on free will. See KOL293 | Faith and Free Will, with Steve Mendelsohn. I have not talked in detail about free will, but have mentioned it here and there: Peikoff on Copyright, Michael Jackson; Memories of Meeting Rothbard in 1994; Remembering Tibor Machan, Libertarian Mentor and Friend: Reflections on a Giant, the section “Free Will/Downward Causation”. Re the current talk, Steve commented to me: “Apparently I listened too long because I got to the part where you imply that free will exists. So sad.” My response: “Basically as I have tried and failed to explain, I’m a dualist and think have different realms of phenomenon to understand and different concepts and terminology appropriate to each—to causal world and the teleological world. If and insofar as we find it useful or indeed unavoidable to understand and characterize our and other humans actions as purposive, that is as action, not mere behavior, aimed at achieving “chosen” or selected ends, then there is no other vocabulary to use than to describe the action as one where we choose our means and ends. But this “choice” is the way we conceive of and describe human action, th way we characterize it in a teleological sense. It does not mean that there is “free will” in the causal sense. But it’s hard to explain which is why I use shorthand. Similar when talking about natural law or natural rights I will sometimes refer to ‘God” as a placeholder concept even though there is no real “God.” It’s just language.] Peikoff on Copyright, Michael Jackson Memories of Meeting Rothbard in 1994 Remembering Tibor Machan, Libertarian Mentor and Friend: Reflections on a Giant, the section "Free Will/Downward Causation" Ayn Rand on Free Will David Kelley lecture on Free Will, Foundations of Knowledge lecture series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8qeaxNl7jE&list=PLnHOyZsmJrozETJ9zzryDhW0kliZkbIsu&index=5 It is obvious that "genuine free will" in a causal sense is impossible. Randians are diehard monists so try to force it into this monism by some handwaving legerdemain about how the "locus" is on the choice to focus blah blah blah. At least Kelley admits that to have "genuine"… — Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) November 28, 2025 Update: Re the upcoming PFS talk by David Dürr (Switzerland): “On Freedom of the Will,” I had these comments to Hoppe: I am curious to see what he will say. I am also skeptical of free will in the causal sense, since it seems to presuppose downward causation, which seems to me to be as irrational and spooky as quantum action at a distance, which Einstein himself rejected. And yet in the teleological realm there must be choice as it's a component of action. So this is the dilemma. I know there are some libertarian arguments that try show free will is apriori true--by Rand and others, maybe Rothbard--to the effect that you cannot deny free will because it is presupposed in arguments where you are trying to persuade others that free does not exist—since you presuppose they are free to (choose to) change their minds if they agree with your arguments. There is some subtle error in this reasoning, I think. For genuine apriori—necessarily true—truths, they are of the form that the denial is contradictory since the proposition denied is assumed to be true in the attempt to deny it. E.g. we cannot conceive of a world that does not exist, or without causality. But we can conceive of a mechanistic world where intelligent humans emerge who experience an illusion of volition but are wrong that it is real, because they are conflating the teleological-praxeological realm with the causal realm, just as logical positivists and monists do. There have been some so-called "compatibilists" who attempt to square the circle, e.g. Daniel Denniet, but they all fail as far as I can tell since they are too monist. This is similar to the way most atheists' arguments against God are weak because they come from an empiricist and logical positivist stance. They are all too scientistic and unaware of dualism and praxeology. So I have thought the apparent dilemma, an antinomy, really, can be solved best by a type of dualism inspired by Mises's—in which we recognize that choice is an ineluctable component of action in praxeological-teleological analysis--an unavoidable assumption. It is part of the conceptual language we must employ in characterizing other humans as actors (teleological realm) instead of mere behavers (causal realm). I think you (Hoppe) hint at something similar in ESAM--where you writes: But if one can learn from experience in as yet unknown ways, then one admittedly cannot know at any given time what one will know at a later time and, accordingly, how one will act on the basis of this knowledge. One can only reconstruct the causes of one’s actions after the event, as one can explain one’s knowledge only after one already possesses it. Indeed, no scientific advance could ever alter the fact that one must regard one’s knowledge and actions as unpredictable on the basis of constantly operating causes. One might hold this conception of freedom to be an illusion. And one might well be correct from the point of view of a scientist with cognitive powers substantially superior to any human intelligence, or from the point of view of God. But we are not God, and even if our freedom is illusory from His standpoint and our actions follow a predictable path, for us this is a necessary and unavoidable illusion. [The Economics and Ethics of Private Property] I think this basically is the solution to the dilemma: a Hoppean-Misesian type of dualistic approach like this. Hoppe's reply: "The central error of the determinists is that on their own terms they cannot claim their theory to be true or false. True or false, right or wrong do not exist. But talking about this very question shows demonstrates that it DOES." My reply: I agree with you we have to assume choice because we must understand others as choosing actors. As long as we understand that this applies to the understanding of humans as actors, in the praxeological-teleological realm, and doesn't have any implications for "spooky" causal notions of downward causation etc., ... in other words, adopting a type of dualist approach is inescapable if one wants to regard others as actors and to understand their actions, motives, purposes, and so on. This is what modern logical positivists and empiricists are unable to do; they are stuck with monism. Update: See discussion of free will as an assumption behind some arguments in quantum physics (which I have always been skeptical of). https://youtu.be/2kxoq5UzAEQ?si=sfZHqS28SVEsQlND&t=360 Here she discusses Gerard 't Hooft, The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (2016) and his idea about an ontological wave function. Hunh. *** Grok Summary: Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Faith and Free Will with Steve Mendelsohn - Show Notes Introduction and Guest Background 0:02 - 2:10 In this episode of the Kinsella on Liberty podcast, host Stephan Kinsella interviews Steve Mendelsohn, an old friend and patent lawyer colleague from Philadelphia. Kinsella introduces the episode as a rare direct interview, one of only a few among his 300+ episodes, which typically feature rebroadcasts of his appearances on other shows. Mendelsohn, a mentor to Kinsella during their time at the Schnader law firm in 1994, joins from his home in the peaceful suburbs of Philadelphia, specifically near Narberth. The conversation begins with a light discussion about Mendelsohn’s current situation, including his limited visits to his office due to remote work trends post-March 2020. Remote Work and Office Space Changes 1:14 - 2:10 Mendelsohn discusses how his law firm is adapting to remote work, with their office lease expiring and plans for a smaller downtown footprint. He explains that the central Philadelphia location remains necessary due to the geographical distribution of staff and lawyers across the region. The conversation touches on the phrase “it is what it is,” with Kinsella noting its recent use by Michelle Obama, setting a casual tone before diving into the main topic. Introduction to the Main Topic: Faith and Free Will 2:10 - 3:44 Kinsella outlines the episode’s focus on faith and free will, a departure from his usual topics of intellectual property, libertarianism, and Austrian economics. He admits to not being an expert in this area but finds it suitable for an interesting discussion. Mendelsohn, who has self-published a book titled Shallow Drafts: Faith in the Absence of Free Will,

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 292. This was my appearance recently on a Brazilian podcast. I believe they are adding subtitles in Portuguese. For now, here is the audio, and the current version of the youtube video is below. Their shownotes (roughly translated): "Visconde de Mauá Study Group The Libertarian Study Group of Fortaleza, Visconde de Mauá, is pleased to present a lecture with another of the great names of Libertarianism in the world, the Author and lawyer Stephan Kinsella. At this event, we discussed ideas about what it means to be a libertarian and its practical application in everyday life. Kinsella is the author of an extensive work on libertarianism including the works: Estoppel: A New Justification for Individual Rights, New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Theories of Law and What is Libertarianism. which have become essential works for understanding libertarianism, especially in their application in law, these works are extremely relevant!" Youtube below:

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 291. This is my interview by (really: discussion with) my old friend and underappreciated stalwart libertarian thinker and writer Timo Virkkala. This is one of the early episodes of his new podcast, LocoFoco, and were were apparently going to talk about legal positivism and perhaps argumentation ethics, but we got detoured onto tangents for almost two hours, about a variety of issues--covid, riding dirt bikes, and so on. Good guy. Very smart. Underappreciated. Check out his new podcast, LocoFoco. https://soundcloud.com/locofoco-net/not-talking-about-legal-positivism-with-stephan-kinsella Update: the raw feed was a video skype, which Timo edited for his podcast. The raw video is posted below, in which you can briefly see my new poodle puppy Bella Kinsella:

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 290. This my appearance on the Liberty412 podcast, with host Mike Cuneo. We discussed a variety of topics, from the philosophy of property rights and the problem with IP, to coronavirus, racism, the prospects of liberty and anarchy, activism, and the like. We also detour into other issues like the Fermi Paradox and theories about the Industrial Revolution.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 289. [Update: Transcript appended below] This is my appearance on the Scottish Liberty Podcast from May 30, 2020, with hosts Antony Sammeroff and Tom Laird. We discussed IP and related matters, including Sammeroff's recent debate on the topic of IP with pro-IP Randian law professor Adam Mossoff. See various links, embeds, notes below. This was the second take, and entitled "A Sober Conversation with Stephan Kinsella...," because we had previously recorded a discussion on May 24, 2020, in which I was a bit drunk and went off on a rant. The episode was entitled "Under the Influence... of Stephan Kinsella... Against Intellectual Property". We then recorded this current episode on May 30, 2020. [Update: I recently (March 2021) realized I never posted the initial episode, so have just posted it as KOL326 | Scottish Liberty Podcast: Discussing the Mossoff-Sammeroff IP Debate, Take 1: Under the Influence…] See various links, embeds, notes below. Youtube of the current discussion: Youtube of the initial discussion, now posted at KOL326: Antony's previous debate with Mossoff: In his remarks, Mossoff mentioned this paper by Stephen Haber as supporting the empirical case for patents (funny, I thought the Objectivists had principles): Stephen Haber, "Patents and the Wealth of Nations," 23 Geo. Mason L.Rev. 811 (2016). I have read through it as much as I can stand and provide my critical commentary here:  “The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright”--see in particular note 3 and accompanying text. ❧ Transcript Scottish Liberty Podcast: Discussing the Mossoff-Sammeroff IP Debate, Take 2: A Sober Conversation With Stephan Kinsella (May 30, 2020) [Transcript of "Scottish Liberty Podcast: Discussing the Mossoff-Sammeroff IP Debate, Take 2: A Sober Conversation (May 30, 2020)] 00:00:01 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Greetings people of planet Earth.  It must be episode 156 of the Scottish Liberty Podcast with me, Antony Sammeroff, and that ranty, ranty man, Tom Laird, back with us again. 00:00:15 TOM LAIRD: Thank you. 00:00:15 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Sorry. 00:00:16 TOM LAIRD: I’m free. 00:00:17 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: He’s free.  The excellent, the extraordinary Stephan Kinsella.  Don’t mispronounce it Stephen.  Don’t be that guy.  Don’t be that guy.  Only an idiot would do that.  Thank you for joining us. 00:00:33 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Glad to be here with all four of us.  You said there was you, Antony Sammeroff, Tom, and me, so that’s four. 00:00:39 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Excellent. 00:00:41 STEPHAN KINSELLA: I only see three people though. 00:00:43 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: So we’re going to talk about – you only – for those tuning in on Facebook and YouTube see that I kind of look weird because I’m trying this digital background.  But Zoom thinks that my face is part of the background, so I look… 00:00:57 STEPHAN KINSELLA: I think you’re triggering a lot of light-epilepsy people right now. 00:01:00 TOM LAIRD: I think it’s because your head looks like a planetoid. 00:01:02 00:01:04 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I am the moon, the orbits, the Earth. 00:01:07 STEPHAN KINSELLA: He looks like a Marvel character like Ego the Living Planet or something. 00:01:12 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: So I guess we’re going to talk about IP and stuff like that. 00:01:17 TOM LAIRD: Whoa. 00:01:17 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: That’s crazy.  As some people know, probably heard a couple of weeks ago, I was debating this Adam Mossoff guy.  And there may have been some conversation that we had once before, but we don’t talk about that anymore because… 00:01:32 TOM LAIRD: Did he laugh at any point during the… 00:01:34 00:01:37 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: But let’s just say that there were some things that could have been said in that discussion that we never speak of – we don’t talk about anymore that weren’t discussed.  So I guess a good place to start would be what – you said one of the things annoying about Adam Mossoff is he never actually defines IP. So what – how would you – how do you define IP? 00:02:02 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, so this is – all right, the definition is intellectual property refers to a set of legal rights that – it’s like an umbrella term that covers four or five different types of statutory – mostly statutory rights, which are all not really related.  So it basically just is a term that people came up with to lump together some different types of law like the patent system, which covers inventions, and the copyright system, which covers artistic and creative works, and then the trademark system, which covers sources of goods and names, brand names, things like that, and then the trade secret system, which has some rights related to keeping secrets that you want your employees not to tell other people, things like that, and then maybe one or two other special things in modern times. 00:02:57 So they’re always – in a way they’re loosely related, and the reason the term bothers me is because it’s a propaganda term.  It was a new term that was invented I think in the 1800s when these new statutory systems, which were independent, the patent system and the copyright system, say, in the US, 17—I think—90, right after the Constitution – the US Constitution was ratified in 1789.  The very next year the Congress started enacting patent and copyright laws.  And they were thought of and characterized as monopoly privilege grants, and some people were in favor and some were opposed.  But no one had any doubt that they were just special monopoly privilege grants by the state for a particular purpose to incentivize innovation or something like that, which is why they only lasted in the beginning for about 14 years, like a finite time. 00:03:59 They were temporary things sort of like infant industry protections or tariffs, how they protect local industries.  No one thinks of these things as natural rights or property rights.  So then the free market economists in the 1800s started getting alarmed at the rise over the world, in the modern world, of the prevalence of patent and copyright, these monopoly privileges.  And so the people that were entrenched in industries depending upon these by now, the publishers, inventors of light bulbs, and these kind of new industries, things like this – they started defending these systems not on the utilitarian grounds, which is really the main justification given, but saying that, oh no, they’re not artificial monopoly privileges because everyone was getting skeptical of monopolies, even natural monopolies or free market monopolies or government-granted monopolies, whatever. 00:05:06 So they didn’t want to call them monopolies.  They didn’t want to call them what they are, which is government-granted privileges.  So they started calling them – they said, no, they’re property rights, and everyone said, well, if it’s a property right, as Antony pointed out in his opening comments in the debate, there’s not a scarcity thing.  Like there’s not a possibility of conflict.  Anyone can use these ideas at the same time, so how is it a property right, and why does it only last for 17 years, 14 years?  And nowadays copyright has been extended from the original 14 years to 100+ years.  It’s crazy. 00:05:43 TOM LAIRD: Wow. 00:05:43 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Why would – if it’s a property right, why would it expire at a certain arbitrary time?  And so the counter to that was, well, it’s a property right, but it’s a special type of property right.  It’s an intellectual, so they added the word intellectual to explain why it’s different and it has to be treated differently in the law.  But they want to call it a property right, which Mossoff did repeatedly.  He just kept saying it’s a property right because you can license it.  It has an economic value.  You can sell it.  But that is just not an argument for why the law is a good idea.  I mean you could – I mean honestly you could make the same argument about child slavery in the antebellum south in America. 00:06:25 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: That’s a good example. 00:06:26 STEPHAN KINSELLA: They were – slaves were property.  They could be traded.  They had a market value.  They contributed to the operation of plantations.  And you could ask all kinds of questions like instead of coming up with an argument justifying slavery and instead of responding directly to someone who explains why slavery is immoral and wrong, you could just come up with a fake rhetorical question.  And you could say but who would pick the cotton, which is not really a sincere question because that’s not really what they’re asking. 00:07:05 If you say, but who would pick the cotton, what you’re really saying is we all take it for granted that the cotton has to be picked.  That’s our ultimate value, so whatever you propose, you’re going to have to guarantee that the cotton will be picked.  So unless you can prove to me that the – your free market system abolishing slavery is still going to result in cotton being picked, you haven’t satisfied your burden of proof to me to get rid of slavery, which is exactly what Mossoff and these guys are saying when they say things like, well, how would you have – how would a novelist make money?  How would a pharmaceutical company recoup their cost without IP law?  So they ask this question, but the question is a loaded question because it takes for granted some assumptions that I don’t share and that free market economists don’t share because we don’t think there’s a guarantee to a profit, and there’s no guarantee to recoup the costs of your investment.  I mean what the hell is that?  So one reason, and my last thing, and I’m going to stop – shut up in a second because I talked over you guys, and I ranted.  I kept changing my subject many times.  I was so irritated because… 00:08:18

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 288. Installment #2 in my impromptu Zoom session with whoever wanted to join. Got a bit more hang of how to record everyone in gallery mode, and so on. As last time, just a few of us talking random libertarian topics. Next time will give more advance notice and maybe have a slightly bigger audience.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 287. I decided to try an impromptu Zoom session with whoever wanted to join, in part to test Zoom and my tech skillz. Just a few of us talking random libertarian topics. No big whoop. May make this a more regular thing once I get the hang of it.