Kinsella On Liberty

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 425. From Adam Haman's show Haman Nature, Ep. 4. Released Feb. 15, 2024. From Adam's shownotes: Adam gets all intellectual and stuff with Stephan Kinsella. Part two of this interview explains why the concept of "intellectual" property is illegitimate and impedes humanity's progress. [Previous episode: KOL423 | Haman Nature Ep. 1: Getting Argumentative.] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vpTQHLw_kc Update: See the response/commentary video: https://youtu.be/k23t_8cUSmA?si=ImRcLsE7YB-dKWBj 00:00 – Intro 01:15 – Introducing two amazing books: Stephan's Against Intellectual Property and Against Intellectual Monopoly by Boldrin and Levine. Then Stephan touches on many aspects of the philosophical and consequential aspects of intellectual property laws. The dude goes all over the place! There's no stopping him! He knows so much! 26:38 -- Outro

Stephan Kinsella, lawyer and libertarian legal theorist and author of Legal Foundations of a Free Society, discusses self-ownership and how bodily control grounds property. He examines property as a right to exclude, critiques intellectual property, explains homesteading and contracts as title transfers, and explores forfeiture, inalienability nuances, and the effects of state monopoly on ownership.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 423. My appearance as the first guess on Adam Haman's new podcast and Youtube channel, Haman Nature (Haman Nature substack). As I noted in the initial discussion, this is the fourth or fifth podcast for which I was the first guest, the others being KOL374 | The Intellectual Contributions of Hans-Hermann Hoppe: The Great Fiction Podcast Ep. 1, KOL078 | Lions of Liberty Podcast Inaugural Episode: Intellectual Property, KOL244 | “YOUR WELCOME” with Michael Malice Ep. 001: Intellectual Property, Prostate Cancer, and KOL347 | This Time I’m Curious Ep. 1: The Libertarian Movement, AI Rights, UFOs, Music, Movies, Alcohol. Shownotes: Adam and Stephen discuss argumentation ethics which of course means they also talk about museums. Part 1 of a 2 episode interview. https://youtu.be/00MQjVoHgYI?si=yGoO7GfLW1EFx2X6 Time marks: 00:00 – Intro 2:50 – Remembering PorcFest 2023 and fun with the creature from Bretton Woods. 5:52 – Introducing Stephan's new book: Legal Foundations of a Free Society. 7:00 – Libertarianism in America, then and now. 9:35 – With the change in the way we consume information, is intellectualism dead? 13:58 – The origins of this book: activism vs. preaching to the remnant. The value of engaging these ideas deeply to maximize credibility and effectiveness. 18:40 – From Marx to Rothbard: People who care about ideas are reachable and teachable. 20:17 – Exploring argumentation ethics. To understand liberty, we must understand property. 29:13 – Oh crap! Does Elon Musk own us? 29:31 – Back to argumentation ethics. Is v. ought. Natural order arguments. 35:31 -- A very brief discussion of Michael Huemer and intuitionism. 37:23 -- Five blind men describing an elephant - all roads lead to liberty. 40:30 -- Outro Part 2: KOL425 | Haman Nature: Stephan Kinsella dismantles “intellectual” property Reaction video (Haman Nature Ep. 6): https://youtu.be/k23t_8cUSmA?si=alkIp3G0jolbLp4f Pix of Adam, me and others at Bretton Woods at PorcFest 2023...

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 422. A new podcast by Dumo Denga, ManPatria, has just released an audio narration of my article "What Libertarianism Is" for its first episode, entitled "What is Libertarianism." This narration appears to be based on the original article, not the updated version that appears as chap. 2 of Legal Foundations of a Free Society. There is also a previous narration of this article by Graham Wright (KOL005).

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 421. This is my appearance on Episode 297 of The Local Maximum with host Max Sklar. Recorded Sep. 13, 2023, published Sep. 27, 2023. From their shownotes: Max talks to Stephan Kinsella, a libertarian intellectual property lawyer who ardently challenges the very foundations of IP. Kinsella delves deep into the core arguments underpinning intellectual property and the inherent fallacies. They also discuss the impact of generative AI on the copyright landscape. Transcript below. Transcript Max Sklar: You're listening to the Local Maximum episode 297. Narration: Time to expand your perspective. Welcome to the Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar. Max: Welcome everyone, welcome, you have reached another Local Maximum. We are going to get a really interesting perspective on intellectual property today from Stephan Kinsella. He is an intellectual property lawyer who is actually against the whole concept of intellectual property that includes patents, copyright, the whole thing. Now, for those of us on the outside, there's still a lot that we need to learn about IP, like, what are all these different concepts? Why are they considered necessary by the mainstream? So we go back to basics a little bit, go over what patent and copyright is and why you still need to use it and think about it even if you don't agree with it. And then we're going to take a turn into the issues of the day with generative AI models and how copyright law may end up getting applied to these processes, by the authorities, by the powers that be and the harm that this could possibly do. All right. My next guest is a libertarian writer and registered patent attorney in Houston. He has spoken, lectured and published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics, such as intellectual property law and international law. Stephan Kinsella, you've reached the Local Maximum, welcome to the show. Stephan Kinsella: Thank you, glad to be here. Max: Yeah, really glad to have you and your work on intellectual property and copyright. First of all, that's a topic that, you know, not everyone can make it interesting for me, whenever I listen to your stuff on it, I always I always find it's more interesting. So I appreciate that. And I agree with you on a lot of things. So that's it. I just appreciate the way you present it. You've been opposed to IP for quite a while. When did you come to this kind of full? Well, what is your full position? I think it's like, you know, no patent, no copyright? Is this your full position? And when did you come to this position? Was it before after going into IP law? Stephan: About the same time I was a, I was a libertarian and college and in law school, but I was always unsatisfied with the arguments for IP that I had heard by Ayn Rand and others, I assumed it was a legitimate type of property right because it was in the Constitution, and it's part of so-called capitalism, and everyone was in favor of it. But their arguments didn't make sense to me, because, you know, most of the arguments were either well, they're either utilitarian or incentive based, or they're kind of a deontological, or principle based, like have a natural rights argument. And the natural rights argument just makes no sense because the patent and copyright expire after a certain number of years, which, which is not how other property rights work. So it seems to me like if you're trying to do a natural rights argument, which Ayn Rand did, and then you say, but that copyright should expire in 100 years, and patent should expire in 17 years. It's weird that you just have this arbitrary number, which, of course, the government would have to make up and they have no basis for it. And if you do a utilitarian argument, then I just don't think that you never hear any evidence, you just hear anecdotes and the same old arguments, so I was dissatisfied with it. And when I started practicing law in 1992, I was doing oil and gas law at first in Houston. But then I decided to switch to patent law. So I could move around the country because it's a national field. So I started learning patent law, studying, taking the Patent Bar Exam. At the same time, I redouble my efforts to try to figure out from a libertarian point of view, like, I thought I was going to be the one to come up with the right argument for IP to explain it. So I kept searching and searching and trying and trying and one argument after the other and I kept failing. And finally I realized, well, the reason I'm failing is because this is not justifiable. And as my understanding of property rights got clearer — which I had to sort out to figure this out — I realized that patents are totally illegitimate. Probably around ‘93 or ‘94 right? Right around the time I passed the Patent Bar. So at the moment, I became a patent lawyer, I also realized that all intellectual property rights, I would say every intellectual property rights, illegitimate patent, copyright, trademark trade secret law, all of it. And not just those but any any type of right in an intangible or an immaterial object is an invalid right because it always ends up stealing property rights from existing owners of tangible objects. So I came to that conclusion. I was cautious about admitting that in public at first because I thought it might hurt me in my career to be a patent lawyer who thinks the whole patent system should be abolished. But over time I gradually let my opinions out there and I realized no one cares. No one in the business world cares what my private opinions are. In fact, it helped me get clients because they figured I must know what I'm talking about, if I'm so passionate about this topic to write on it, so it never hurt me in my career that I noticed. Max: So I, yeah, I found that interesting, you get your patent, you become a patent attorney, you come to the conclusion that all of these laws shouldn't be there. And yet you stay in that field. You know I feel like your experience in this role must have been so different from every other patent lawyer out there. Stephan: Most of them either don't care to think about these issues, or they have self serving arguments, you know? For me, now, if you understand — I actually don't think you need to know IP law on the detail level, like a professional like me does to understand the case against it. So I don't think that I came to my anti-IP conclusions, because I knew the law. I think that because I was going into the law, it made me turn my attention as a libertarian to it. And that's what made me figure it out. Now, knowing the law does help a little bit, because it helps me communicate precisely. A lot of people that talk about IP, either pro or con mangle the terms, they confuse copyright and trademark and patents because they don't get it. But knowing the field really well, like I do, helps me understand that there are ways to engage in the practice of that law that are not incompatible with opposing it on moral grounds, because, so I look at my job, I help people acquire patents. So to me that's analogous to selling guns to someone, or weapons or bullets maybe. And guns and ammunition has a good, you know, has a justifiable purpose, and it has a bad purpose, you can use it aggressively or you can use it defensively. So merely selling someone a bullet, or a gun, per se doesn't mean that you endorse using it aggressively. And in fact, most people acquire patents for defensive purposes. Like given that the system exists. If you don't have patents, you're vulnerable to attack and a patent infringement attack by someone else. So it's a waste, it's a huge waste of society. But given that the system exists, obtaining patents is a little bit like buying insurance. And I have never helped in litigation with the aggressive side, I've only helped with the defense side, which I think is perfectly legitimate. Or in a countersuit like I would have no problem using one of my clients patents to, to countersue someone if they sue me first, you know, it's like once you open that door. So that's how I started to justify it. I steered clear of being part of the aggression. And I only provided the patents to people. Now that said, I still didn't enjoy it, because I knew that what I was doing was, in a sense, a waste on society. But given that it's there as sort of like a, the way I analogize is like an oncologist, a doctor who tries to he gets paid a good salary to help people fight cancer. But if he's a decent human being, he would like there to be a world where cancer was cured and abolished, even though that would put him out of a job maybe right? Or put it this way, defense attorney, a libertarian defense attorney who gets paid to defend people from drug charges. He would prefer there to be a world where drugs are not illegal, which means he would be put out of business, but it's not hypocritical or unethical of him to defend people who are attacked by the state for drug charges given that the system exists. So I think that's the best way to look at the best positive spin to put on being a patent practitioner like I’ve been. Max: Yeah, that I almost had a flashback for I you know, I worked at Foursquare for many years. And it wasn't, you know, I was an engineer. I wasn't on the legal side or anything. But I remember we were always having these like, kind of patent trolls come after us. And it was like, Well, what did they say we copy? He's like, Oh, he claims he has a patent on all online commerce that takes place based on latitude longitude. It was like that, that sounds — I didn't get into the details. But I'm like that, that sounds a little crazy. Stephan: That's the thing about patent trolls is, everyone says patent. People say we need to reform the patent system because it's broken. And they'll say something like, there's too many bad patents issued.

Stephan Kinsella, a libertarian attorney and author of Against Intellectual Property, recounts how he came to reject all forms of IP. He traces his legal and intellectual journey, critiques common defenses of IP, and explains why knowledge cannot be treated as scarce property. The talk highlights foundations of property theory and the practical implications of abolishing IP.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 419. This is my Soho Forum debate held Aug. 21, 2023, in Manhattan, against Corey DeAngelis, of the American Federation for Children, moderated by Gene Epstein. I defended the resolution "Today’s school-choice movement in the U.S. is worthy of support by libertarians…" (taking the negative). Oxford debate rules applied which meant that whoever changed the most minds won. My side went from about 10 to 23 percentage points, gaining about 13; Corey went from about 45 to 64%, gaining about 19, so he won. I was pleased that we had an informative and civil debate about an important issue. (This is my second Soho debate; the first was KOL364 | Soho Forum Debate vs. Richard Epstein: Patent and Copyright Law Should Be Abolished.) My discussion notes are appended below. See also Reason.com article with video; Reason.com article with podcast. Results Today's school-choice movement in the U.S. is worthy of support by libertarians.                           Pre                 Post                Change Yes                   44.90%           64.29%            19.39% No                    10.20%            23.47%            13.27% Undecided   44.90%           12.24%            -32.65%   https://www.youtube.com/live/xZF-lT_1pag?si=nJVtVVz6FKsQ4wjv Update: "Gotta say [Kinsella] is right on this, I have done a 180 on this issue. After seeing how "school choice" has been implemented in Alabama, ... I see now it is exactly what SK has been saying. The program explicitly discriminates against the most productive taxpayers and just opens the door of my kid's expensive private school to the lower class dregs." I debated @DeAngelisCorey a couple years ago. I still oppose the optimize-educational-welfare movement, cleverly self-named "school choice", though it does seem to piss off the right people, for the most part. https://t.co/4D776Y96SM There was some talk of us redoing this in… — Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 25, 2025 School Vouchers Were Supposed to Save Taxpayer Money. Instead They Blew a Massive Hole in Arizona’s Budget. (July 16, 2024) Related: Comments on the Youtube livestream Various comments on twitter: here, here, here, here. Rose City Catholics Fight for LGBTQ Rights—and Start a War With Portland’s Archbishop (July 5, 2023) Educational Scholarship Accounts Lew Rockwell, Education and the Election William Anderson, The Trouble with Vouchers Jacob Hornberger, “School Vouchers Are Anti-Libertarian,” Hornberger’s Blog (Future of Freedom Foundation) (July 5, 2022) ———, “More on Anti-Libertarian School Vouchers,” Hornberger’s Blog (Future of Freedom Foundation) (July 6, 2022) Bob Murphy Show ep 105: Corey DeAngelis Makes the Case for School Choice Jacob Hornberger Makes the Case AGAINST School Vouchers (with Bob Murphy — Bob Murphy show ep. 248) Tom Woods Show: Ep. 2325 Corey DeAngelis and Connor Boyack: The State’s Schools Are Beyond Repair Tom Woods Show: Ep. 2211 Corey DeAngelis on the School Choice Movement KOL112 | Jack Criss Interview on the Voucher System (1989) Kinsella, “Negates freedom of choice,” Letter to the Editor, The Morning Advocate (Dec. 21, 1988), and related correspondence related to the voucher system and school choice, 1988–89 (Note: Written in a more Randian “Objectivist” phase, and before I came to oppose voucher systems.) DISCUSSION NOTES Resolved: Today’s school-choice movement in the U.S. is worthy of support by libertarians A Soho Forum Debate Corey DeAngelis vs. Stephan Kinsella Aug 21, 2023 The Sheen Center, 18 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012 MAIN PRESENTATION – NOTES [15 MIN] So there are many ways to explain why intellectual property is illegitimate Oh wait, that’s the wrong debate Resolved: Today’s school-choice movement in the U.S. is worthy of support by libertarians. To answer this question, we need to understand what libertarians should support, and what “Today’s school-choice movement” is Libertarianism is a political philosophy that believes in individual rights to self-ownership and to private property ownership. In short, we oppose “aggression” So libertarians oppose a host of state laws and policies since they themselves commit aggression Such as taxation, war, the drug war, the central bank, and intellectual property (see, IP keeps coming up) Another thing almost all libertarians oppose is public education, more properly named government schools, or state schools, or educational welfare Why do we oppose public education? The three C’s: Compulsory attendance laws; Compulsory financing (by property taxes); government Control over the curriculum The first two are unjust because they involve aggression The third is only possible because of the first two It’s really a result of the first two This Control results in state propaganda and indoctrination be a good citizen believe in global warming and democracy sign up for selective service to fight in the state’s wars mask up, vaccinate, and lock down when we say so! And this predictably results in education that is Too expensive Inferior Full of indoctrination and state propaganda   So libertarians oppose public schools and support eliminating or reducing it, and moving to a private system We support separation of school and state Or education and state Just like we support separation of church and state If we had a state-subsidized church system, like some countries still do, and like the US did for decades after the Bill of Rights was ratified (“Congregationalism” in Massachussetts, for example)—would libertarians be arguing for improvements to this system by “introducing choice,” or would we argue for separation of church and state? This is Jacob Hornberger’s example Jacob Hornberger, “School Vouchers Are Anti-Libertarian,” Hornberger’s Blog(Future of Freedom Foundation) (July 5, 2022) ———, “More on Anti-Libertarian School Vouchers,” Hornberger’s Blog(Future of Freedom Foundation) (July 6, 2022) We would support reducing any of the three C’s: Get rid of or reduce compulsory attendance Get rid of or reduce school property taxes and funding of educational welfare Reduce government control But keep in mind that so long as the government is paying, there will be control “He who pays the piper calls the tune”   So what is “Today’s school-choice movement” It’s a broad attempt to improve public education by various means Vouchers, suggested by Milton Friedman in 1962, which can be used to go to another public school, private school, homeschooling, private tutors Public choice within the public school system Tax credits Educational savings accounts or educational scholarship accounts (ESAs) Tax funded Why should libertarians support this? Does it get rid of or reduce the Three C’s? Education is still compulsory Still funded by taxes What about Control? The state still controls the public schools, so there is still control of public schools And will have to put additional conditions on what private schools “qualify” for state funding So school choice would increase control Why did Hillsdale College have to stop accepting students using guaranteed student loans? To avoid federal control Just a couple months ago, the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, which runs 15 Catholic schools there, terminated a department that was insisting on use of preferred pronouns. The Archbishop declared that students in these schools will be addressed by their birth pronouns rather than their chosen pronouns Of course this caused an uproar If Oregon was funding all the students in these schools via a voucher program, would they permit state funding of a school that “misgenders” students? Would the Archbishop have taken the actions he did, if he thought it would jeopardize funding for the school? See Rose City Catholics Fight for LGBTQ Rights—and Start a War With Portland’s Archbishop (July 5, 2023) As for compulsory funding, or taxes In the current system, there is educational welfare for about 80%-90% of the students (those in public schools) In a full-fledged “school choice” system, now taxpayers have to fund 100% of students So educational welfare expands under school choice Would the cost of educational welfare, that taxpayers are compelled to fund, go down after expanding it to include private schools and private school students? Well have we seen college tuition go down or go up, in the last several decades, as a result of taxpayer subsidies via guaranteed student loans, the GI bill, etc.? To ask is to answer The term “school choice” is somewhat misleading It’s like using semantics to argue substance, much like in the abortion debate where abortion-rights advocates couch their position as “pro-choice” or “pro-life” Well who is against “choice”? Who is against “life”? This is much like how intellectual property advocates refer to patent and copyright, which are just state grants of monopoly privilege, as intellectual “property” to fool people into thinking IP rights are just normal forms of property I told you IP will keep coming up School choice advocates say things like “well rich people have the choice of sending their kids to private schools, why shouldn’t everyone have that choice?” Well, because it requires stealing money from taxpayers and giving it to parents You could say “Rich people have the choice to buy a BMW; why shouldn’t everyone have that choice?” If have the choice to send my kids to college, why shouldn’t everyone have this choice? Aren’t there people now calling for forgiving student loans and providing free college for all?

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 418. See Libertarian Answer Man: TTTC, Contract, Fraud, Conditional Loans, Lottery Tickets This is a followup to KOL414 | Corporations, Limited Liability, and the Title Transfer Theory of Contract, with Jeff Barr: Part I. See that episode for more information and notes. In Part III, we need to talk about corporations. For more on that, see Corporate Personhood, Limited Liability, and Double Taxation.   https://youtu.be/5-Zvt59UlSk For more discussion of the comments below, see Libertarian Answer Man: Future and Conditional Title Transfers Under the Title-Transfer Theory of Contract.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 417. Part 3 of my video commentary on Larken Rose's recent comments on IP. For more information, see the description and links at KOL415: Commentary on Larken Rose, “IP: The Wrong Question”: Part 1. https://youtu.be/Q6dVF-DP-mY

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 416. Part 2 of my video commentary on Larken Rose's recent comments on IP. For more information, see the description and links at KOL415: Commentary on Larken Rose, “IP: The Wrong Question”: Part 1. https://youtu.be/3W7ZSkzjOtQ