 Okay, hey, this is Stefan Kinsella with a different edition of Kinsella on Liberty. One of my internet acquaintances, Nick Senard. Is that the right pronunciation? Yes, it's joining us. You wanted to chat about something today. I forgot what it was. I did two Tom Woods episodes last week and things are blending together so I'm forgetting what we were going to talk about but I'll let you bring bring up whatever you want. Go ahead. Introduce yourself too, if you don't mind. Nick Senard, been a libertarian for like eight years. I got a few businesses and stuff but I got a site, nixonard.com, I put some libertarian stuff up on there but it's been a while since I've updated it. For some reason I thought you were a foreigner or a Frenchman or something with that name but you sound Southern to me. Yeah, it is French but yeah. What state are you in or from? Tennessee. Tennessee, okay. Yeah, close to Great Smoke Mountains. Alright. But two Southerners on the line then. Let's try to keep the IQ level, the total IQ level above 100 if we can. It will be a challenge. I know. So I guess I want to talk about mostly three things. I think they're all pretty interrelated is one that's one you starting to see more is that libertarian starting to act like or say that Facebook's a part of the state. Oh, yeah, right. See that more yet. No one I think that's related is kind of the section 230. Yeah, even libertarian should bring that up. And then I've seen it's not as popular as it used to be, but terms of service violations as aggression. You know, I've seen a few libertarians make that, but I think that's just confusion on liability and contract. I haven't heard that one too much. I don't recall ever hearing hearing that terms of service or aggression. You could argue that they're not a binding contract and I think there are good arguments for that. Right. And on that one I've seen people say, well, you know, Facebook or Twitter didn't follow their own terms of service so someone has the right to force them to do. Oh, right. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's a confusion of libertarian property and contract theory. That's true. Yeah. But I guess start with the first one which is the most popular one I've seen talked on a few shows actually, and many people and say the Mises caucus group. Facebook is a part of the state just because they're cooperating with the state. When it comes to what information the government wants on its platform, you know, and they're like right now it's part of the state therefore, you know, I've seen someone say that no I don't want legislation or anything like that but you can say you don't want legislation to Facebook but if you're saying Facebook's a part of the state that does enter into some dangerous grounds. I agree I mean I think if you conclude someone is you should say it you shouldn't be afraid of the consequences but you should be cautious and try to do it carefully. I guess I've been thinking about this too. Why do people feel compelled to do this like why on this witch hunt to classify Google etc as part of the state, or corporations like the left libertarians want to say that about corporations because they have this limited liability privilege grant so called. I mean I think it's first as libertarians important to understand the state because it's the biggest aggressor. So we have an analysis and theory of the state. So the state is an identifiable actor agent or entity in society, and it plays a certain role it's the institutionalized source of aggression. Now we libertarians oppose aggression in general. So we oppose what I would say is private aggression and public aggression or aggression by private criminals. Which is why we need self defense and defense agencies and laws and courts and things like that and we also oppose institutionalized aggression and it seems clear that institutionalized aggression by the state is a far bigger threat than random isolated ad hoc acts of private crime by private criminals. And the menarchists and classical liberals recognize the danger of public aggression which is why they, they want to create a state but they want to put limits on it, like in a constitution. So like they recognize how dangerous it is so they want to put limits on it but they basically recognize the state is a, is a, is a possible source of violation of rights. So we identify the state and we have an analysis of the state. I think that analysis always comes with like this class analysis like Papa does and even Marx does to some extent but he does it in a different way but it's basically the rule of the majority by a minority, right that's why they do it so that it's like a pyramid of power. So the 1% or the 2% or the 1% or even the 10% can exploit the other 90% or 99% right so they can live high on the hog, while the masses are relatively impoverished. And the seed I think Hoppe goes into this in his banking nation states great article. They have to basically persuade the population to go along with it by a variety of techniques, propaganda, coercion tradition appeals to authority, and with democracy by getting everyone to falsely believe that they're part of the state. And you know they so many people have relatives are they themselves work for the state because the government is so large now, the federal government for example. So everyone is, you know their kids are going to public schools and we drive on public roads so everyone starts to have this kind of interest in the state. So they're reluctant to challenge it, but still the state itself has to be a minority. So if you broaden the definition of what's the state so so large that includes Google and Facebook, and even broader any corporation because no one has totally clean hands I suppose, and even broader than that every, not only every human being that's employee of the state which is, I don't know what 2015 2030% of population, but people that are being paid by the state because what's the difference economically and politically whether you pay someone a salary, you don't have a defense contractor that you're paying right or a welfare recipient who's getting money, or private jails you know so I guess these are all part of the state so you, if you're going to have such a loose standard of conceptual connection or causation that Google and Facebook are part of the state then basically we're all part of the state which is exactly the lie that the state tells, they tell us this so you are part of the government that's why you can't complain about it. You have the right to vote, so you are the government, right so you can't complain if you don't get the results you don't like. So, you have these anti status, so called, doing the same thing that the status do they're all saying we're all part of the state, which is ridiculous. So, but then you have to ask, okay so why are these libertarians, why do they want to say that Facebook and Twitter and Google and YouTube. Who else. Amazon, I don't know, Amazon, Amazon counts Apple. Basically the Fang and I guess other companies. Why are they part of the state. Another reason from 1020 years ago would be you know their corporations they have limited liability or they they influence policy or they have lobbyists on in DC. They're in bed with the state they'll say, I mean, the chain of causation is not always clear admittedly it's not clear whether the state has warmed its way into corporate American business so that we have a type of fascism where you have nominal ownership of government is so intertwined that the influence with the government with business does, or where the business influences what the state does and they're there at the control of the corporate power which is sort of what the crony capitalists think. I think it's a mixture. But I mean, if you're going to say whoever influences the state is part of the state or responsible for it what about the voters. What about the average voter what about people who write articles that propose progressive programs taxation and public schools and war and all that. So this ultimately requires a careful and nuanced and cautious application of causation analysis which is what I try to do in one of my articles with Pat Tinsley on causation and aggression and the QJ AE years ago. But it's not just something you can do from your armchair blustering what I think is going on and I'll let you jump in a second but what I think is really going on is a lot of libertarians are impatient. This is why they're activist types they don't want to just think and have intellectual ideas and work for freedom in their own life they want freedom now for everyone god damn it. And then some of them tend to join the libertarian party and because they don't make much progress by advocating anarchy or radical men are key. You know they tend to compromise or settle for tiny improvements or even the tiny hope of a tiny improvement. So they go file a suit for the Supreme Court or they'll field the local candidate for office and, you know, argue for school choice and things like that. And some of them compromise and sell out or they refuse to push for radical things only tiny little things. So the desperate for some little win. Basically because they're kind of either libertines or the lifestyle libertarians or they're just impatient. And they tend to be the type that also are non conformist and contrarians and the what the regular ways people live their lives. They don't like having a boss they don't like having to obey rules. They're basically not just against political authority and unjust political authority, they're against all legal authority and all hierarchies in society which is sort of left libertarian problem right they oppose, not just the state and aggression bossing people around on private hierarchies. I think the natural approach is something Jeff dice mentioned recently which is where the hopper gets that you can have either private authority and hierarchy or you can have public hierarchy and authority. You got to choose you can have none. You have none you have literally chaos and no society. So the libertarian approach is really what you could call a right approach I don't think it's really right but it's basically a recognition of the natural place of natural authority, natural hierarchies in life the family, you know, natural civic leaders, business church, intellectuals leaders, all these things are going to arise naturally and that's a good thing. So I think what happens is you have these libertarians who they just can't use Facebook, like they want. And they get annoyed by it just like the average person does now when the average person gets annoyed by a business not giving them what they want like, you know for restaurant doesn't let blacks doesn't serve blacks. They want to pass a lot of fix it, you know, which they did in the 60s right forcing people to accept all comers which is a violation of property rights. And if Facebook, and then the argument of the mainstreamers has always been that if a business acts like it's a public thing like a town square, or if it acts like it's open to the public like a restaurant or movie theater. Then it has to be held to the same kind of standards that we hold the government to. Now why do we hold the government to these standards or the state. Well, we anarchists want the state abolished, but we're content. So we're also in favor of limiting or restricting their power as much as we can. Minarchists and classical liberals favor the state but they recognize that it has to come with limits. So we all favor limits on what the state can do, even if they're limits that would not apply to a private actor right so like I ran would say like the government, the state has no right to to hold an official position about what the right religion is. Right, not because a private individual doesn't have the right to have an opinion on religion, but because the state has a narrow crucial restricted role of enforcing law and because it's the use of force. It has to be really limited in what it can do. Whereas. So if you start applying government restrictions to private actors, you're limiting them to things that they ought to have the right to do, you know, a private company ought to have the right to be racist or sexist or have religious preferences, whatever they want now economically we would say that they pay a price for that right I think they do they tend to pay a price sometimes people willing to pay the price. That's what the market supply and demand the needle, you know the negotiation between customer and supplier employee and employers, social reprobation of approval of reputation all this kind of stuff results in a certain type of market playing field. So what I think is happening is these libertarians hate the left which I do too and I appreciate that they see that the tech giants have become ate up with dumb ass the dumb as we say in the south ate up with the dumb ass. You know, they're a bunch of soft dumb liberals lefties, and they're using that to influence what their companies do they're trying to push their narrative by the economic and business pressure and social pressure that they have. Basically by de platforming people that say things they don't like. And we libertarians, some of us are saying well, that's like taking my right to free speech because you know Facebook has become the town square. So they should be subject to the same regulations of a town which is a government agency. That's what they're doing. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to say basically, these companies have become so entangled with the state either because the state is influencing them so much to pass to enact state policies in a private sphere, or vice versa, you know that they're the lefty progressive views put into place it by law because of their influence over the government. That the state intervention in the market is effectively taking away the private status of these companies. So we can treat them like public, but what does that mean that means that there should be government enforced laws that apply not only to the government itself but apply to private actors so you have this perverse thing of libertarians who oppose the state having laws which apply to the private sphere. Because it corrupts them and makes them not fully private. And then using that as an excuse to expand the state's domain and jurisdiction, allowing it to pass laws that limit not only government power like the Bill of Rights, but limit what these private companies can do. So I think the whole thing is misguided and perverse. And not only that, I mean, we're never going to make progress towards a more private, less state society. If we just seek to identify people and call them villains so that we can use force against them either private force or public force. That's not the way we progress towards a more libertarian society. We sure should identify the way the state is making the private sphere less purely private and oppose that. So we should oppose the minimum wage we should oppose tariffs we should oppose government schools we should oppose all manner of regulations and subsidies by the government that taint these companies, but we shouldn't seek to vilify them and condemn them. We should oppose what their lobbying for and oppose the state's involvement. And that's all I think that we can do with, with, with libertarian analysis. Yeah, I guess, really what the important part is, is Facebook or Twitter, you know, committing aggression or helping in it. You know, even if you want to call it part of the state. Which, yeah, it's completely misguided. Or, you know, are they just receiving funding or they just cooperating or are they committing aggression, you know, are they cooperating trying to get the state, you know, give the state information, you know, to help commit aggression. I mean if they're not doing either. If they're not committing aggression, I just don't see why you would even want to classify them as part of the state. If they're committing aggression they're either committing private aggression, which ought to be illegal and is illegal and we oppose that we and we libertarians we actually do favor laws against aggression whether they're private laws or even state laws. And, or it's public aggression which means they're doing it at the direction of the state or using the state's courts and apparatus to do it. In any case, this why it's good to be an anarchist, we have the solution is just shrinking the size of the state down as small as possible and basically to zero. Once you do that, that problem disappears. There is no possibility of a state forcing a company to act in a wrong way. If the state doesn't exist, or of using state power to commit aggression against your, your, your victims, because the state doesn't exist. So all this left is private aggression. And if there's private aggression we can defend ourselves against that with with private defense means in a private law society. I know someone been like, yes that's the libertarian answer but we got to live in the real world I know. Right because they're like I said they're impatient. You guys are high time preference, impatient people and they're willing to some of them start compromising their principles so they're willing to. So the two 30 things a good example explain what that is so in the late in the 1990s under Bill Clinton. Congress sort of half serendipitously passed two things that some argue helped keep the internet from being killed. That's cradle by government regulation and that was the, the, there's two safe harbors one was a safe harbor basically from defamation liability. That was in section 230 of the communication decency act. And the other was that the safe harbor provisions for copyright and the digital millennium copyright act in 1996 and 98 I believe. And interestingly the CDA was struck down as unconstitutional later. I believe except for the safe harbor the Supreme Court let that stand which is good. So basically it says that you know if you're a platform. Internet internet service providers I think the term they use which used to refer to like copy serve and, and, and go daddy and things like that. Yeah, now. Yeah, good. That's the interactive computer service. So it means that if you have a service where your users can generate content so they're using you as a platform like they can put a website up or they can, or if you have a, if you have a website, or a blog with comments they can make a comment. Like you can make comments on YouTube videos now and you can make comments on different news articles on websites. The, the, the company hosting that providing these, these, these, these third party users the ability to post this information. They would not be secondarily liable or vicariously liable for acts of defamation or acts of copyright infringement performed by these users, because if they were, they would have to police these comments to avoid liability, or they'd have to just remove the comment section or the ability for people to create independent content with YouTube videos and websites and blogs. It would have stifled the whole way the internet works now. So, when libertarians say and so one of the arguments for the CDA thing was like, well, these, these platforms are not really editing and looking at where people do they're not curating it so they're not really the publisher like a publisher is a publisher, like if they publish an editorial or a newspaper report from their one of the reporters and it and it and it defames someone, then the newspaper can be sued because they're the publisher now I actually think that's wrong too for two reasons. Well the main reason is because defamation law is not libertarian. So I should be no defamation law there should be no copyright law either. But so one of the, one of the one of the observations was well these platforms, these internet service providers are not acting like publishers. Now that was not a condition of the safe harbor it didn't say so long as you're not a publisher, you get this safe harbor you just said look the internet's a new thing we don't want to kill it and it's, and it's cradle, as it's emerging so they don't have liability for for their users comments. Now the copyright thing wasn't as good of a safe harbor because it said you're not liable as long as you take down stuff when you're notified, which has led to this this take down thing where you know a million YouTube videos are taken down a month or something because yeah, robots tell them to and they have to respond to avoid losing their safe harbor. Yeah, lately has been affecting a Twitch pretty heavily with DMCA takedowns. It's horrible and there's very little liability if you file it maliciously or without substance or whatever because robots do it all the time Robots of one company file it file these takedowns against the company's own YouTube stuff I mean it's so ridiculous, but, and perversely some libertarians and conservatives and even liberals are arguing have been arguing for a while that section 230 needs to be eliminated or radically scale back. That's because they think it protects big companies from liability when there's no distinction between like a publisher or a platform in that section 230. Well, they think it's a government giving them a privilege. And it's just like the libertarians who oppose corporations because they think that the limited liability grant gives them a privilege, and the state should not be granting privileges and I agree with that but these are just not privileges and I can explain why the reason they think they're privileges is because they're totally confused about about causation liability for the limited liability issue. And also contract law, and they're also confused and they're confused about defamation and copyright law in the in the other issue in the CDA issue and the DMCA issue. And I would say to the contrary, instead of narrowing 230, what we should do is we should get rid of the DMCA copyright provisions and put them into 230 or expand the DMCA provisions to be more like the section 230 copyright provisions in other words, you should say that a publisher or not a publisher a platform is not liable for copyright infringement of its users, but they don't have to take it down they should not have to take it down. Because that's not there for the CDA you don't have to, if someone says Oh, one of your users posted a defamatory comment on your on your blog, you got to take that down or you'll lose your safe harbor that that's just not there. I would actually broaden the DMCA copyright safe harbor to be more like the 230 rather than limit the 230. So the reason 230 should not be restricted. Number one, even if so some people say well they're acting like publishers now because they are they are, they are curating content they're deciding what to let on what not to which is true I do believe that Twitter and Facebook are acting kind of like publishers to a degree but I don't think that should be an excuse to take away their 230 liability exemption for defamation. I think if anything, I do agree it also makes it creates an unlevel playing field between traditional newspaper publishers and and these platforms these internet platforms, and that was actually shown in a recent episode of the good fight which is the sequel to the one or two episodes ago there was a, there was a plot about that. But I think that the answer to an unlevel playing field is not to impose similar restrictions into hobble be like a's being hobbled is to unhobble a so I would get rid of defamation altogether. Certainly get rid of third party or vicarious live, the secondary or vicarious liability of newspapers for for defamation of authors who publish in that newspaper. So, you know, free them up to let's expand the CDA was expanded to all print and all in television and everything. Yeah, and go ahead. It makes little sense. Well first off, people are just wrong about section 230 but also makes a little sense for libertarians to even be talking about section 230. Like, what does that have to do with libertarian principles whatsoever, you know, but I've seen libertarians. It's because they don't, it's because they don't, they don't all recognize the defamation should not be a tort at all. I've seen, I've seen some that are like anti IP that still confused on this. And I mean yeah it does go back until I'm which they need to read your paper on it. They want to also read some Adolf Rhinox, you know, but I know there's a great article. You've mentioned it before. It's something like hello, you've been referred here because you're wrong. I forgot was about it's about it's on it's on tech there it's Mike Maznik site tech there they have a page called. Hello, you're, hello you're wrong about section 230 of the DMCA and there's a list of frequently asked questions and answers showing why you're wrong because. They're tired of answering the same stupid misunderstanding over and over again. I've been building something like that for IP as hello you're wrong about intellectual property. On the other articles. Awesome. You know it has a ton of information clears up a lot. By the way, let me mention two things there's there's something I never thought of until recently about 230. I have been in favor of it. I've always been a big proponent of federalism in the US system as well for two reasons number one it's a it's it's a sort of decentralized and a systematic and a structural way of limiting state power especially federal power which is the biggest one. And it's also in the Constitution, and not that I revere the Constitution but but it was an attempt to limit state power and they need to be held to it whatever it says. And so, because if they're not held to it then that means that they're free to do whatever they want. But the section 230, I guess there is one problem with 230 and that is that I think it, there's aspects of it that are unconstitutional because I think what it says is that states cannot hold you liable for defamation. State law thing mostly so like I guess I would say I would prefer if there was a section 230 thing in every state. I don't know if the federal government really has the authority to to overturn state laws for defamation, even though they're unjust. And because they're just I don't have too much heartburn over it sometimes I'm a results oriented libertarian and, you know, the only reason I'm in favor of the Constitution and federalism is because they have instrumental rights against you like they think it seems like they would happen to or tend to mostly push against violation of rights but I'm also against any violation of rights so you know there's a Supreme Court decision that is not constitutional but it ends up striking down an evil state law. I, you know, it, it doesn't necessarily violate anyone's rights, it just makes the government more dangerous by giving them more power and unleashing them from the tethers of the Constitution so you have this tension sometimes. And then the other thing I want to say is, so Jeff Deist is one of the few people who has a, what I think a sincere and intelligent pushback against the kind of radical legalistic Rothbardian can sell a hobby and block take on defamation law and things like that. So, I think like Deist has said in a couple of podcasts and maybe articles that he, like Rothbard's article against defamation and the ethics of liberty, I think it's called knowledge true and false, maybe chapter 10 I can't remember the chapter, but knowledge true and false. You know, where he says like, you don't own your reputation because that would be owning what other people think about you so all defamation law is wrong, no one owns a reputation basically. So all defamation law is unjust and should fall, even though it's state based and even though it arose on the common law it's not even legislation based always. And so dice points out that today's day and age is different, just like we, the Austrian economists of 50 years ago never thought of digital money cryptocurrency Bitcoin, and we might have to revise our application of economics to this new phenomena. So dice is saying that we never imagined a world where, you know, a company, a private, a so called private company like Twitter or Facebook could just take a decision. Or not only that someone could post something about you like saying, you're a child molester, and you're just basically the platform everywhere from your employer, you know, from loans from supermarkets from from from your from your domain provider from credit card processing. So it can basically ruin your whole life. So he's saying that the magnitude of harm is so much so that we might need to let common law judges decide this and apply these old principles to the new world of technology. I still have a problem with that intellectually because it's still missing the point that he's right that it can cause a lot of damage or harm. It can cause magnitudes more harm and damage maybe now today than it could in the past. But the standard for libertarians is never harm it's aggression. We have to choose is it is it is it harm or aggression that we oppose, because you have the right to harm people. If you do it by legitimate means so if I compete with you and I steal your customers, I'm harming you. If I steal your girlfriend I'm harming you, but it's all peaceful and not aggressive. So it's legitimate. Yeah, I mean I've covered that with you don't have a right and value. You know, like if your house goes down in property value because of someone else's house, you know, oh well, you know you don't have a right against that person to stop them. Exactly. Pretty much the same with, I guess with dice argument is that it goes back to, if it's not about defamation, and like reputations on his head or mind, then it would go back to value or kind of a right to future profits. Correct. Yeah, so so the problem have a dice is that I think he's correct that the magnitude of damage is potentially far greater now, but it but the standard cannot be harm. So the question, do you violate this what Hoppe says I'll link to all these in the show notes. That's what Hoppe says. Do you did you violate the physical integrity of someone's property. Now there are some continuum or gray areas or maybe difficult areas, which I touch on in my causation piece. For example, if you, let's suppose you're, let's suppose you falsely accuse someone of a crime that ends up causing them to go to prison unjustly. Now you can blame the jury system you can blame blame the law you can blame the, you can blame the jurors you can blame the judge you can blame the jailer, but I think you also could blame the person lying causing it to happen so it is a speech act but in that case the speech act was designed to and ended up causing physical harm like there's a physical violation of the person's bodily integrity. They played a causal role, they played a causal role, but they played a causal role not in harm, they played a causal role in rights violation so that's the difference that you can make the same argument about like. See this where I would disagree with Rothbard Rothbard says that incitement is never a crime like if you incite a mob to go after some guy, and they hate that they lynched the guy. It's the mob's fault but it's not your fault because you just spoke words I think that's totally wrong. Given the context, your words can be causal. They can be a causal factor in the harm, or in the rights violation that occurred. I mean, just imagine, you know, Truman ordering the dropping of bombs over Hiroshima. Imagine, you know, a firing squad commander saying ready aim fire only doesn't speak, you know, I mean, these libertarians that are so myopic and they think that only the actual soldier, or whatever is label only the underling is not the mafia boss who ordered them to commit a hit I mean it's ridiculous. Well it goes back to the free will, you know, but the problem is you have to look at it like what you point out in your piece in a praxeological kind of framework, and it just means and ends. Correct, you can use other people you can use another person as a means that's what cooperation is we we recognize as cooperation for good things like for economic cooperation but there's also cooperation for bad things that's what conspiracies are, you know, not the nutty libertarian tinfoil hat. No moon landing conspiracies but or or or the vaccine has microchips and conspiracies. But, but a criminal conspiracy which means people combined together to cooperate to do something so if you have a bank robber you have a guy that plans it you have to get away car driver, maybe the guy who funded it. You have to walk into the bank with the shotguns. So, some, some, some myopic libertarians say only only the guys with the shotguns reliable. And in fact, each one's only a lonely liable for what he did. Like there's no felony murder rule which which is the rule that like say two guys go into a bank with a shotgun each or let's say one of them as a shotgun. The other guy's not armed, and they robbed the place and then during the robbery, the guy with the shotgun kills an innocent person. Well, under the felony murders doctrine, both of them are liable for that, which I think is completely correct. But, you know, the kind of the the the nitpicky libertarian would say no it's only the guy with the shotgun. Fuck, I don't know why they don't just blame the shotgun itself why did they blame the guy, you know, right, he wasn't the pellets flying through the air that went into the body I mean, these guys have no. I think they're their mistake is that they have a mechanistic and a and a and a legally ignorant view of the way things work a mechanistic view of things. They falsely believe that if you give responsibility to the to the other guy or to the guy higher up the chain, like the general or the president or the mafia boss, or the bank robbery planner, if you give them responsibility. Like they think there's a fixed pie of responsibility like 100% and if you give 10% 50% 90% to the to the planner, then that that has less left over for the for the actual guy who committed it. Right when there's enough responsibility to go around. Yeah, you can have they don't even know the concept of joint and several liability, which means they're both 100% liable that that blows their minds because they're not lawyers they've never heard of this I mean this is a common concept over the centuries. It's not that difficult know about Rothbard strict causal liability or forgot the name of specific what it was. You know where he's a bit too narrow strict strict liability strict liability yeah wasn't that in his like air pollution. I, it might have been I and that's one thing I haven't worked on too much I would like to someday because I think libertarians have a well there's an underdeveloped underdeveloped theory of strict strict liability. And I think it's got a lot of flaws in it. They take for granted. Some aspects of strict liability law as it's developed which I think is wrong tort laws all messed up. So, you know, they seem to think, I think they're their fundamental mistake is they think that they think that liability comes from ownership. Instead of action that's their mistake, and I've identified this in a couple of long blog posts. But liability, and they'll do this kind of republican thing where you know republicans say well we have rights but rights come with responsibilities you know. So libertarians buy into this crap to the say well, if they do it implicitly they'll say if you own property, then you're responsible for someone being harmed by it. But actually it's not true ownership is the right it's not a responsibility. It's not a responsibility at all. You're not responsible for your property that's stupid. Your responsibility for your responsible for your actions because actions is what harms other people, or what violates their property rights. So, for example, if I, if I shoot you with a gun. I'm liable because I shot you with a gun, not because I own the gun. Right. Like, if that was the case, I could just avoid responsibility by stealing someone else's gun, and then I can shoot as many people as I want because I don't own the gun. Ridiculous. And likewise, if someone steals my gun, and they shoot someone with it. I shouldn't be responsible after all it's my gun. Right. So ownership of the of the of the means used to commit aggression is irrelevant in the analysis of responsibility. It's all about, it's all about action. And for action we just simply need to identify the structure of that actor's action and what means the employed what was his goal, and was he successful. It's got nothing to do with ownership, because you got to remember means is an economic concept. It's not a juristic concept. It's a descriptive concept, not a prescriptive concept concept means means some something in the world that can be physically or actually employed by a human actor to causally interfere in the world to achieve a result. This is all descriptive. It's all economics all things that could happen on a desert island has nothing to do with law, justice norms, property whatsoever it's got to do with control and possession and the ability to manipulate and handle. So that's what means are. And so responsibility legally for an action flows from your committing your, your taking an action that employs certain means that did causally efficaciously cause someone else's body or resources that they own to be invaded. So this is the mistake people make and I don't blame them for this because this area is is confusing and hasn't so far been developed very far, but we do we do need to do that we do need to distinguish between economic concepts and juristic or normative concepts. Yeah, really, the most work that's been done is just your piece. You know, I mean, unless I'm just missing on a major article or something. That's the best piece I know about and one of the first the only one I essentially gets it right. When it comes to liability, you know, and it's a lot to untangle, but really just thank God for I guess Adolf Rhinoch, you know, I agree and I mean the guy that guy this is Adolf Rhinoch, who was a great. I think he's phenomenologists kind of a Kantian type legal philosopher in, I guess he was German right or Austrian Austrian question. He died in World War One I think died more or one at a very early age and he was 40 yet he had already written a lot of great things and it's a shame. Well, of course the shame he died, but yeah, but don't know telling what the guy would have produced if he had lived longer but. Yeah, I think, and my work is not comprehensive and complete it's more of a sketch towards a theory but the only reason mine is solid is because I carefully built upon other foundations but I think the reason the other work is sort of unsatisfying is number Well, libertarianism really relatively new not so far not a lot of areas have been dealt with in detail we just deferred to the mainstream thinkers on this stuff and they're of course not going to be informed by Austrian economics and and by careful libertarian analysis so they might be good scholars in their little narrow field like legal scholars or whatever, but they're going to they're always going to miss something when they come to normative thinking because they're not libertarians. And by contrast, a lot of libertarians are really not sophisticated and deeply mired in legal theory so they don't have a lot of tools to bring those things in when they develop the libertarian take on things. That is so yeah, go ahead. That's why you're able to pretty much demolish IP, because I think so. It's because we have a small, we're a small group so there's only so many people that have the right intersections of knowledge. Like in my case of knowing Austrian economics and praxeology especially Rothbard and Hoppe's radical politics and hoppe's property theory. Yeah, which is borrows upon hoppe's and argumentation ethics and and also just knowing knowing the law the way it works, which you have to basically know at a certain point to understand strict liability to understand the way causation has been applied in the law and what intellectual property is, because these things are arcane and detailed. So you have to have people that know all that and there's a few of us growing out there. But even the ones that are pretty good like Randy Barnett's great, but he has a different approach to a lot of things. But he's made he's made some lots of contributions to, but there's not a lot of us out there. Hopefully in the future, you know, we'll keep growing and people will learn to build on our works and there'll be more progress made in the upcoming decades on, like I said strict liability, even like even the area of people always are getting confused about restrictive covenants and things like trust and the positive law the common law has one way of approaching that but it's really legalistic and it's just what the law is. Some libertarians just reject things out of hand that they don't understand because they're not lawyers. And they're actually kind of right to be suspicious skeptical, but in some of them say well you could never have restrictive covenant because the way they the way they have a crude understanding of what property rights and contracts are. But I think I could, I could explain why restrictive covenants are perfectly legitimate and lawyers would be able to craft a clever document to create one. And they explain how it just takes a while, and I haven't written on it much but I want to do that too that's another thing on my list to, to explain why restrictive covenants work. I mean at worst. I mean, even by their logic at worst it could be just hey you do this, you transfer ownership of X amount of money, you know or you do this you lose your rights to your home you know and I mean, I've seen many libertarians be against HOAs but they almost act as if they're many states. Yes, and part of the reason again is this is this sort of anti authoritarian this is they just don't like being told what to do. But the answer is, well then don't, don't own a piece of property and give parts of your rights away to your neighbors. Right. You know it's like don't go into, don't go into business with other people if you don't if you don't want, you know if you don't want co owners don't have a co owner. But if you do, don't whine about it. The only thing. Well, I mean, I guess with HOA is the whole co ownership thing because then I don't know it kind of for me it seems too similar to Rothbard's right. You know literally copyright, you know the common law will you don't have the right in this book to copy kind of thing you know it seems super similar and that's why I'm maybe Well, let's go into that so the mistake Rothbard made there was he said, well first of all he leaned upon this this legal doctrine of the bundle of rights which I've always found to be unhelpful it's it's the way of saying that well if you own a right. And the common law is really messy because of the roots and feudalism like so in the civil law you say you own a piece of land. You're the owner. That's it. Whereas in the common law is all these terms like fee simple and it's sort of feudalistic based you know, but what were we just talking about I had a brain fart. Oh, come out the cop like Rothbard's common law copyright and. Oh yeah. Yeah, so what Rothbard says he goes he goes so you. And Rothbard, it's strange that Rothbard messes up because he's the one who pioneered a brand new thinking of what contract should be, instead of being binding promises which is how the law conceives of it. Which then which then they have to fix undesirable implications of it like specific performance involuntary slavery that to fix that with a patch. And Rothbard even does that he fixes his own wrong interpolations of his own contract theory with his own patch like he says debtors debtors prison wouldn't. It's possible but wouldn't be just in most cases because it would be disproportionate punishment which is a patch she's not true. But Rothbard's contract theory views contract is just the exercise by an owner of a resource. The alienation of title to it to someone else is transfer title. And so, in that theory, you could have like a contract between people doesn't need to be complete it could be partial like I can loan my car to you for a week instead of forever, instead of giving it selling to you, or giving it to me to you, or I can loan you my car, or we can we can co own an apartment and I get to use it on even numbered months and you get to use it on odd numbered months so we're co owners we split it up that way. Right, so you can have a contract between you, which shows what ownership means. So that's the bundle of rights ideas you can divide rights up in different ways by clever contracting. Now, in the law there's a there's, there's some dispute about whether these divisions are contract between the people or whether they're called real rights, their, their ownership rights but that's another legal thing that you need to be aware of to make progress on these doctrines you know, like oil and gas leases are considered leases in some states and other states have different property rights in other states, different ways of looking at it but they have different results sometimes, depending on how you classify things, but in any case where Rothbard says is that if you have a contract. If you sell someone a book, and you have a contract or amount I think a mousetrap example you sell someone a mousetrap, and the condition is you can't copy this mousetrap. The way he envisions it is because there's a bundle of rights I'm only giving the buyer partial ownership of the mousetrap I'm reserving the right to copy. So he has this mousetrap with the with it's missing the right to copy. So if he sells it to someone else. They don't have the right to copy it either because they don't have a mousetrap with this right to copy built into it, but that's sort of an over extension of this bundle of rights idea. The right to copy was never part of the bundle of rights, the right to copy is is the implication of the libertarian non aggression principle, which basically implies that you can do any action you want in the world as long as it doesn't commit aggression against someone else, right or trespass. So the right to copy just means to use information that you have. If you acquire the information, then you can use it that's it so if you have information and you make it public that other people can use it. If you use that information they don't violate anyone's rights. So if I sell a mousetrap and, and, and the public aspect of the mousetrap that people can see reveals some kind of new feature or new design, then they're going to learn so I'm basically by selling the mousetrap I'm teaching everyone, I'm publicizing information. So then you can't, you can't whine about it so rock bar goes off track there. Well, now restrictive covenants are different because. So rock bar is trying to talk about information, information is never and cannot be the subject of property, rock bar almost recognizes this because he says that he has the key insight that all rights or property rights. Because his writing didn't stick as closely to the idea of scarcity scarce means as Mises and Hoppe did. He sort of lost sight of the importance of action involving scarce resources or scarce means so that when he said all rights are property all human rights are all rights are human rights and all human rights are property rights. He should have then emphasize the next thing which is and all property rights or rights of control over scarce resources. Right, that's what they are. You literally cannot have a property right and information information is another feature of human action. So human action has scarce means. So this is what means is his content practical logical framework or his practical logical framework and hoppa. They keep emphasizing praxeology humans employee means to achieve ends, but they do it with access to knowledge or information that guides their actions. So two things that are crucial about successful action. Number one, you have availability of a means that you can employ. And number two, you have knowledge that guides what you do. Those are two different things, and the means are scarce and that's why property rights make sense for those right. So property rights never can apply to information. It can only apply to means because property rights are enforced by force and force is a physical thing that only applies to the physical means in the world, the things that causally. That's that's how this all works. Rockbar loose. I think you lost side of that because he didn't emphasize scarcity and mean so much and praxeology and his writing. So he lost side of that when he said that when he said all property all human rights are property rights but he forgot to realize that that's only property rights in scarce means. So then he started thinking, well, they can be property rights and knowledge to because knowledge of the design of a thing is part of the bundle of rights and that's where he made that mistake. I guess the reason I was thinking comparison between HOA and that, which no understand why it's not connected to HOA was because of the idea of like co ownership, which I've always been pretty skeptical. Whether you can make arrangements and like, let's say if you co own, no, no time share with somebody else. Sure, I can easy to say, okay, you to have a better claim to it for better, better reason to be able to exclude others from using it, then some third party. But it just seemed like I had a problem, or I still have probably ownership just because it seems like there's can be conflict unless you just have some already pre made conflicts resolution kind of deal. It just seems like considering only one person can own something, you know, necessarily, it just seems kind of. Yeah, and hop up sort of in some of his property right he kind of implies there can only be one owner. But like it has to be invisible, but if you just imagine a marriage you know the husband and wife there, in a sense co owners of their property. As dispute resolution issues, or even amendments to the agreement. Those either are specified explicitly, or if they're not then the presumption the way the law works in the common in the common law and the way it should work I think in private libertarian law, is that there's a default to some there's default assumptions about what we call dollars or what we call suppelative terms. So, and so you, if in the absence of a stated condition, all the, all the dispute resolver can do like the arbitral, arbitral tribunal the judge the jurors whatever. All they can do is try to guess it what the party is intended. And if they have to take a guess that you say is wrong. So, when they're not explicit because they're lazy or they don't want to spend resources papering it or they don't really care they figured that whatever's reasonable, whatever the jury would determine using what they try to resolve using reasonable standards, they're fine with the outcome, which is basically the way I would look at it. So, and in the law. I think the law the positive law now would have different ways of looking at co ownership. I think in some jurisdictions they would look at it now they don't care too much because the courts enforce whatever they say so they get the results but I think some scholars would say well, a co ownership situation is where a and B both co own something and a white book co owner house. And what that another way to look at it would be that one of them owns it, but the other one has a contract right. So, and whether that makes a difference or not is, it's hard to see. I've never devoted a lot of time to that because it's premature. I think that maybe the way the positive law looks at it would be the way that private libertarian legal scholars would look at it after the libertarian law has been developed, but it's premature to guess, because we would need to first develop the private libertarian law, mostly along the current lines but then see the West would classify my my personal leaning is that the way it is is is like imagine the sale. A owns a car and sells it to be. Now, why does be own the car now be owns the car. The way I would say it is this. The sale as I characterize in my contract article is not a binding promise but it's an alienation of title. And the reason the alienation title works is it's effectively an abandonment by the owner, and then a re homesteading by the buyer. So it's an abandonment arranged in a way to put the buyer in position to it's like throwing it's like throwing a football pass you're throwing it the receiver and you design it so that only he catches it you know so I, I, we arrange it so that the buyer is in position to re homestead it by either letting him have possession of it, or some other some other technique okay but so why does be own it to own something is not a contract right it's a in rim right it's a real right good against the world. That means that someone can't take my car without permission, not because I have a contract with them but because it's mine. Right, so I don't need to go around having a contract with all a billion people on the earth to agree not to take my car. It's my car because there's only one car and I have the best connection to it. But in property theory and libertarian theory, the best connection is the first user the homesteader. Okay, now I'm assuming this guy found the found the materials for the car the first guy found the materials for the car himself and say the nature made the car himself that's unrealistic but let's assume he's the first, first possessor of the car. So he's the owner of it. Well, a is still the first possessor of the car. So why doesn't he have a better claim than be. Because he abandoned it in favor of be. But so from the rest of the, from the rest of the work from CD ease point of view, a owns the car, because he has the better claim to it because he owned it first, but I should have picked an apple or something is better than you find in the state of nature but anyway. But be has a better claim than everyone else because he stands, it's like subrogation insurance law he stands in a place because basically he can he can make a claim to see challenges be for the car. So he can say well a has a better claim than you. And I have a better claim than a because a gave it to me. Right. So, so it's sort of like a blending of contract and property law property law would be a claim because of first homesteading or homesteading, and B's claim would be based on contract which is, which is, which is an application of ownership is what the owner a did. In a sense, from the rest of the world, a and B are co owners of that car, because as a unit a plus be together have a better claim than anyone else in the world, but as between a and B, be can defeat a's claim because be a would be a stopped from claiming ownership of the car that's why my stop will come in okay. So I think of co ownership is similar to that situation so if a husband and wife, or two business partners own a building. Then, to the rest of the world, you can look at a and B as a unit, like, they're not really a corporation but they're just as a, as a, as a pairing a plus be together, have a better claim than CD and E. So basically, the rest of the world excluded. Now as between a and B, their usage of that depends upon their private contract with each other. So if we have a time share and 10 people on this time share condominium in Florida. Then there's a there's a contract between them that they've all signed, which is not binding on the rest of the world. For the rest of the world, these 10 owners own it. And the rest of the world can't use the condo because they they're not part of this agreement but as between those 10 owners. They have a contract saying, Well, there's a decision making unit like a board, which is appointed according to the following rules and then the owners get to vote on the board constitution you know sort of like a corporation like board of directors that kind of thing. And then it might even have say, Okay, the, the, the, the shareholders agreement or the co ownership agreement over this condo is written down on a piece of paper, and it might have a clause saying and it can be amended. The following procedure, like it can be amended if two thirds of the owners vote to amend it. You know, you can have things like that in there. And if you don't have it or if there's a cloudy provision or, or then if these if these guys have a dispute between the other, they have, there's probably dispute clause and they're saying if we have a dispute has to be settled by arbitration. The arbitrator's got to try to do the best they can, given the, given the, given the ink spot. Yes, what's called the ninth amendment, you know, is the ninth amendment meant nothing to him he said it's as if there's an ink, an ink spot on someone it spilled their ink over article nine of the Bill of Rights and, and a judge is trying to interpret it but there's an ink spot and you can't read what it says so he, he can, he doesn't know what to enforce, you know, private judges or arbitrators are in that position, if the parties were too lazy or incompetent or cheap, or impatient or whatever to include a provision addressing the, the situation that came up and it's basically impossible to have a comprehensive contract because the world is uncertain the future is uncertain. There will always necessarily be things that come up that were not contemplated, which by the way is why I think the whole idea of smart contracts is a complete bullshit this Bitcoin idea, this is a, a theory of idea of smart contracts I think makes no sense whatsoever, but that's me. I'm a crank on that issue. I guess my biggest thing was with partnership wasn't so much against the world but just co owners, because you know purpose slash function, I don't know like either of those words for of you know rides is just avoiding interpersonal conflict. So if you can, you can imagine just a husband and a wife disagreeing on what temperature to set it on you know and you do have a conflict or one swatting away the other hand you know it's kind of like, yes it's small, yes it's hard to do is from an arm chair, but, and you need more context, blah, blah, blah. But it just seemed like if we're going to have a comprehensive and consistent rights theory then it seems like, I don't know if you would need something that could at least guide. I think the way the law has dealt with these things is the right way to do it so basically, if the husband and wife can't decide what to do with the thermostat, then from the rest of the world's point of view, the husband and wife own this home, it's none of the rest of the world's business, how they do it. Now the husband and wife how does have a dispute with each other, you know, they're supposed to be married and cooperative. So they're supposed to figure it out between themselves but if they can't, then basically they have to get a divorce. And then the assets have to be split up. The same thing happens when like someone dies and they leave a big estate. Like, let's say they leave the family mansion to to three, three different airs three children. Now the three kids can't decide what to do with the house, like they could all use the house together. But if they can't decide, like if only one person disagrees, they can force a sale. So then you sell the house at the highest price at an auction, unless if they can't agree on how to do it they have to sell it in auction, and then the money split up according to the wills per rather, you know, the, the testaments division of assets. So, if co owners can't agree, then they have to, they have to split it up usually according to the provision in the agreement in the first place. But there's ways of handling these things. I mean, I definitely see, I guess I'm more convinced that partnerships possibility, though it does feel like something that has not been written on that much. It hasn't. And so that's what and it hasn't because most libertarians again are not deeply familiar with the way the positive law has dealt with this so they don't know what to borrow from and critique and adjust and tweak, or even just adopt wholesale. Or they adopted wholesale without thinking about you can't just adopt it wholesale they do this all the time they'll they'll just say, well the law says this and it's like well that's what the positive law says but it doesn't necessarily mean that's the right libertarian result. Right. Well many try to reinvent reinvent the wheel, you know, many that especially newer, especially newer libertarians seem like they want to reinvent the will don't want to read they just want to. Correct. I think sometimes we're forced to reinvent the wheel to some degree but we have to do it cautiously humbly and preferably as armed as possible with knowledge of all the other things so that you're, you don't do it, you do it to the bare minimum amount amount necessary. I think you're right that the ultimate purpose of war property rights is it's a practical social institution designed to permit cooperation and conflict to be avoided to make cooperation intimate conflict to be avoided. And so, I think probably the best way to look at it is if there's a co ownership situation what that means is that for the rest of the world, these, these co owners are the owner. But that's between themselves they have a contract, and that contract specifies how the thing is used so that they can use it without conflict I mean, look, if you take someone on a ride in your car and they're a passenger. Then you're giving them the right to use the car for certain purposes, but not in you retain most of the rights on that car is a division of rights is temporary but that's the way it is. I use the car if a this rents me a car hires, if I hire a car to bridge would say, I have the usage rights over that car which technically is a property right. It's the right to use the car, but it's a limited right. You know they retain the right the full rights the car with the, with the recent with the rental period expires. And while I'm using it, I only have partial rights over it even then I can't use I can't smoke in it. I can't drive to Canada. I can't blow it up, you know, I can't repaint it. I mean, I've heard. Yeah, good. I've heard you say this similar things before but I guess I don't know why right now it's more clicking together. Co ownership, I mean, I know you've said that stuff like 10 times in different episodes because it seems like in your episodes you go over the same things over and over again, you know which is generally the fundamentals, though. Well, like in Louisiana in the civil law, there's an interesting legal expression, like a husband and wife are said to, well there's community property so everything that husband and wife either one acquires during their marriage is a community property, and they're said to co own that in indivision. Okay, so that's an interesting concept in indivision, which means it's not divided, which means that's my conception of from the rest of the worst point of one piece of property that's 100% owned completely by those two people. So, but as between those two how they govern it is up to them to to agree upon or disagree or compromise or whatever, and if they can't then they have to get a divorce, and then it's divided. Right. Then it's not owned in indivision anymore because it's not indivisible it's been divided now, which means you take the asset you sell it and you split split up the proceeds have the cash goes to one. The other, they go their own ways, but so long as it's co owned its own in indivision, which simply means that the rest of the world sees it as an owned unit by this group of people, which is how corporations I think would work to to be honest. But anyway, I think I think we should close. Let's find it let's finish up what you want to ask now that I need let's close it out and we can do another session later if you have more. I guess to finish it up just with Facebook and Twitter and all that being you know going back to the first thing being part of the state the big thing is if they're cooperating or being funded by the main thing is are they helping commit aggression are they committing aggression and really calling it Facebook as a part of the state gets into dangerous grounds of opening up for legislation. I would say if they're committing aggression we should oppose that we should we should condemn it. And we should oppose whatever makes that possible which is usually the state so we should oppose the state forcing them to commit aggression, or regulating so much that it's inevitable. We should oppose the state being usable as a means for these corporations to commit aggression, like, like for example, if Facebook uses his patents, or not Facebook like let's say Apple, Apple or Google or Motorola or the you know, they use their patent or Microsoft. If they use their patents that to stop competition they're using the state's force in that case. You can blame the state to because the state handed out these so the state's intervening in the market but then you have private companies using state force against their against innocent parties right same thing with any trust law you can bring in any trust lawsuit in civil courts against your against someone who you think is a bad guy. And defamation defamation suits to copyright copyright infringement. So, but we already oppose those laws as libertarians. So the reason that these these corporate corporations are committing aggression is because they're employing the, the, the illegal arms of the state in a sense, you know, but the solution is not to say, well, the state's laws should be aimed not only at the state. And it's some private actors but you should be aimed also at these extra private actors, because that's expanding the scope of the state and the power of the state. But man, that's all I've got. Thank for this one. And thank you for, you know, allow me to be on. Yeah, I mean, I would, I guess like to do another one that summer time, you know, but it would be more inside baseball versus. Okay, this is more I feel like anything's fine with me. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thanks, Nick.