 All right, step up, sorry, step up is a practicing patent attorney and a libertarian and a right-wing entity. I'm now the executive director of the libertarian page. I'm going to turn it over to the journal of the libertarian study. The former anti-global professor had gone through a remunerable charge of a libertarian and a right-wing entity. In conclusion, the anti-global attorney and the foreign economy, both in the libertarian world and in the foundations of the free free society. He received an LLM and an international business law named, a JVPSTE, MSTE, increased in college students and if you're talking to a non-independent, they are the best at having themselves. Hello. Hello, I'm glad to be here. Thank you to Ian and Mike for the invitation. I do have my 11-year-old son with me. Second or third time he's seen me speak. He's been to Auburn with me. I went to Comic-Con with him on Thursday, so turn about, spare play, although it was fun. Comic-Con is great. I have 15 minutes. My topic is libertarianism after 50 years. What have we learned? And if I get cut off, I will continue this in a private podcast, so if I run out of time. So you can find more information if I run out of time, because this is a big topic for 15 minutes. This is my own view of libertarianism. It might not be shared by everyone here, but what I would like to talk about is what is the libertarian movement? How old is it? Where do we come from? In my view, the libertarian movement is about 50 years old, the modern libertarian movement. I think we can date it. The glimmers of the movement started with Rand and Patterson and Lane with their books in 1943. Of course, there are precursors to libertarianism in the Enlightenment and the liberal movements and the classical liberal movements. There were other writers, Leonard Reed, Milton Friedman, but I think that we can really date the dawn of the modern libertarian movement to 1957 with the publication of Atlas Shrugged by Ein Rand, and then the works of Rothbard, more importantly, with Man-economy State, 1962. So the movement's about 55, 45 years old. It's a relatively young movement as far as ideologies go and political philosophies go. We still have our disagreements over certain controversies like abortion and other issues, but a lot of progress has been made in the last 50 years. We've had a lot of development, partly because of incessant libertarian internal debate, criticism by outsiders, criticism by menarchists, criticism by insiders. But at the 50-year stage, I do think it is a good time to stop back and reflect and think, what have we learned over the last 50 years? How can we use this going forward to further refine and develop our ideas? So let's talk first about what has become clearer in the last 50 years. And again, not everyone's going to agree with this, but this is my take. And my take is from the position of an Austrian-influenced anarchist libertarian influenced heavily by Rothbard, Mises, Ein Rand, and Hanserman Hoppe, who I regard as the greatest living political theorist in Austrian economy. And this first insight may not be the most popular to everyone here, but I think that one thing we've learned is that political activism as a primary means of progress is limited at best. I don't want to discourage people from doing it, but not everyone agrees with voting or that electoral politics is the way to go. And the sort of story, history, and state of the libertarian party since 1971, incompetence, corruption, and inefficacy shows that electoral politics has not succeeded very much so far. I would also say that we've learned that a principled libertarian position is preferred over an ad hoc or single-purpose one like normal or marijuana legalization or a utilitarian approach. Those have their purpose, they have their role, but a principled approach is superior and necessary. You really need to have a love for liberty, a love for libertarianism. You have to believe that aggression is really wrong, not just impractical. It's become clear that libertarianism has to be 100% anti-war, not just like even Rothbard said. Rothbard said, in the history of America, there have only been two just wars, the Revolutionary War and the war to defend the attempt to prevent the independence of the South. And I think even that is we need to condemn both of those wars. The Revolutionary War and the Civil War on the South and the North side. These are both wars waged by states, and in the case of the Revolutionary War, it was a war that involved conscription, shooting deserters, tons of war crimes, taxation, inflation, and it resulted in the current state that we have now. So I think that the Revolution was a complete failure as well. Libertarianism is anti-state, or at least it's increasingly becoming so. There's an increasing number of libertarians, and the increasing number of those get drawn to anarchy. What's the old joke? What's the difference between an anarchist and an anarchist? About six months. To be against aggression, you have to be against all aggression. Private aggression, that is crime, and public aggression, or institutionalized aggression, which is what the state always does. Libertarianism is radical. It's not incremental, nothing wrong with being incremental, but it is really a radical doctrine, and it's also unique and radical and different from and superior to the left and the right. We have to recognize that. We're not of the left, we're not of the right. Also, libertarianism is now increasingly overwhelmingly anti-intellectual property. Intellectual property, patently copyright law and related laws like trademark and trade secret, used to be the boring province of specialists and policy wonks, but with the advent of the internet and the increase of the global trade and high-tech, the so-called abuses of patent and copyright law have become evident to all of us. And this kind of view, we have to realize that intellectual property is one of the top five or six horrible things the state does to society. After war, public education, the drug war, central banking, intellectual property is up there. It's one of the worst things that help support the police state and suppress individual liberties and reduce innovation and impose hundreds of billions of dollars of cost on the globe every year. This kind of view upsets a lot of the old guard libertarians, objectivists and minarchists, but modern libertarians, left libertarians, protect libertarians, young people, people who actually use the internet all know that there's something wrong with a law that prevents you from learning and sharing and what we call in the free market competition, another wrong competition. Another thing we've learned in the last 50 years due to the work of writers like Grinnell Leone, Hayek, others, legislation is not the way to make law. Law has to arise from custom, from contract, from agreement, from decentralized processes like the common law or arbitration. Also, I think we've learned, due to the work primarily of Hans-Herman Hoppe and others, we've had to recognize that democracy was not a step on the road to progress towards a libertarian society. Moving from monarchies and the ancient regimes to democracy might have been better in some ways, but it wasn't completely better and it's definitely not a simulation of a libertarian or liberal society. And along those lines, I think we also have to recognize that we need to quit thinking of America as some kind of proto-libertarian paradise back in the days of the Founders. The Constitution is not libertarian, it was a centralizing document, it was a power grab, it is failed or rather it succeeded in what it really was meant to do, which is to centralize power in the hands of the federal government. So we need to wipe these illusions from our eyes about the Founders being great proto-libertarians. They were not. The Constitution is not libertarian. America was not a libertarian country early on. There's any number of victim classes you could ask and they would probably agree with this. Another thing that's become clear just in recent years has been the libertarian approach to peace and cooperation as informing the issue of children. That is, there's been a re-examination of how we rear our children, how we discipline children, and how we educate children. Thus we have the rise of an anti-spanking and a peaceful parenting movement and we have an increasing resort to homeschooling and even so-called unschooling. So these are all things that we are starting to learn. And the two most important things I think that have become clear, some of these were known to earlier thinkers before, number one is the importance of a solid understanding of economics to inform your case. And I think that means Austrian economics. You have to be economic literate and the rise in the popularity of Austrian economics has been stunning to see and there's a reason, there's a reason for that. You don't see the Chicago school, the Cossian school being passionately argued for by most libertarians now. And finally the most important point, it has become clear and we need to return to this and emphasize this, libertarianism is essentially about property rights. That's really what it's all about. Now there are still some issues that divide or confuse us. This is left versus right debate. What are we of the left? Are we of the right? There's the thick versus thin debate. Should we be thick libertarians or thin libertarians? You know, there's the debate whether we should be activists or whether we should be theorists or whether we should just mind our own business and not work for the state. You know, there's esoteric issues like voluntary slavery. Should I be able to sign a contract and sell my kidneys or is this the alienability issue? Right? There's sometimes debate about whether you should be responsible for the actions of others. You know, I've had people tell me that Adolf Hitler really never pulled the trigger, so he really didn't commit murder. Only the henchmen are guilty. You know, Truman didn't really drop the bomb on Japan. A mafia boss doesn't actually pull the trigger. His hitman does. So you have this kind of confusion, I would say. In terms of property, even though people are largely moving in our direction on this, there is still widespread confusion among people about this issue. And also about the basis and the nature of property rights. Okay? Now, one reason for this is because of lack of careful attention to speaking clearly, thinking clearly, and being aware of the danger of the use of metaphors. Metaphors are used, look, when libertarianism came about 50 years ago or so, it was so much superior to the prevailing thought that we could speak in sloppy terms. We are obviously better, but over time, as it gets applied to more and more issues, you know, harder issues arise. And the older ways of thinking and reasoning don't always suffice. We need to revisit our foundations and we need to think more carefully about this. Let me give some examples of metaphors or uncareful use of terms, things that could lead to equivocation by our opponents, things that could lead to confusion when we try to analyze these difficult issues. So one is, for example, most libertarians have always been against what we call public schooling. And in recent years, maybe in the last decade or two, I've heard libertarians say they've used the term government schooling because they want to make clear I'm against government schools. They're trying to call to attention of the proponent of government schools that they're really a favor of a government educating people. Well, even the word government, in my view, is a dangerous word to use. I use it from time to time, but I increasingly try to use the word state to make it clear that I'm against the state because the state has a definition. It's a monopoly in a geographic area over the provision of law, justice, and force. The word government has ambiguous meanings, and your opponent, either a monarchist, which we call a mini-statist or a regular-statist, by the word government, they mean the governing institutions in society. And they also use it as an equivalence for the state because they believe the state is necessary for these governing institutions. So if you say, as an anarchist, I'm against the government, they will take you to mean you're against law and order. So if they ask you, well, do you believe in law? You say, yes. And they say, well, then you believe in government. And I say, well, I believe in government as law and order, and then they say, well, then you must believe in the state. You see, there's that trick there. So you have to stay focused on against the state defined in a certain way. Okay? Here's another one. It's the use of the word aggression in slightly ways. Some libertarians or some of our opponents will use it just to mean force. So they'll say, well, even you guys are against aggression, why do you believe in force to defend yourself? Well, aggression is the initiation of force. And then you see other sloppy terminology like, I'm against the initiation of aggression. Well, that's saying I'm against the initiation of the initiation of force. It's just not clear terminology. Another one is just a little issue is the word coercion. Coercion technically means the use of the threat of force to compel someone to do something. Now, just like force or violence, which is sometimes justified, if it's used defensively, coercion can be justified sometimes too. You know, if I coerce a guy trying to rob me, there's nothing wrong with that. So we should quit using the word of coercion as a synonym for aggression. There's also the labor theory of property and its close cousin, the labor theory of value. This is what I think the fundamental mistake in a lot of libertarian thinking is, is what led to intellectual property and it also led to communism and the deaths of tens of millions of people in the 20th century. It all started with John Locke, who was responding to Filmer and understandably used this labor metaphor, but we have to stop thinking of labor as a special thing and we have to get rid of this confused idea that we own our labor. You don't own your labor. You don't own yourself, by the way. That's another big term. You own your body. Property rights are rights to control scarce resources in the world. These are the only things that can be conflicted over. Your body is an example and other things in the world are examples. Property rules always specify the owner of that thing. Owning your body is sufficient to allow you to act as you please. That doesn't mean you own your actions. It doesn't mean you own your labor. If you start thinking this way, you're going to get to intellectual property. This is what results. I own my labor. I own what I mix it with. I own my labor. I own whatever it creates that has quote value. There's no property rights to value as Hans Hermann Hoppe has mentioned. I could elaborate, but I would run out of time. Another issue is the word contract. Libertarians are confused about contract. Rothbard has written the revolutionary piece on this and so has Bill Evers. Viewing contract is the exercise of property rights and resources that are owned. It is not an enforceable promise. That way of thinking leads also to confused conclusions like debtor's prison, which leads to the idea of voluntary slavery, et cetera. Another one is the word fraud. Libertarians throw this word fraud around a lot, especially advocates of intellectual property. Also the word plagiarism. They totally confuse fraud, contract, plagiarism, property rights, labor theory of value, and patent and copyright law. They mix them together into a big gumbo of confusion. If you're against patent law, then you're in favor of fraud or you're in favor of dishonesty or you're not in favor of giving someone attribution for their ideas. These are all confused and they're all disingenuous usually, or they're set totally and total ignorance of what these terms mean and how the law really works and what property rights really are. There's another confusion, which is the common paired set of expressions that everyone takes for granted. There's two paired notions. If you own something, well, you can sell it, which is wrong actually. And if you sell something, that must mean you had to own it to sell it. That's also wrong. Those ideas lead to the idea of voluntary slavery on the one hand and the idea of intellectual property on the other. And I've taken those apart in other contexts as well and I can revisit them at some point when I have more time. Now, another source of confusion is the idea of where property rights come from and the idea that just because we believe that the first user of an unknown resource, like Bilock's idea of original appropriation or homesteading, just because we believe he is the proper owner of that resource, that because there's been this original sin or this taint of property titles throughout human history, because we can rarely trace our title to a resource back to the original owner, back to Adam, let's say. Then that means our entire theory of property rights is flawed. And then what's the next step? Then we're going to say, well, we're going to have to have redistribution someday. The current allocation of resources, the property right the rich had really came from conquest 700 years ago or something like that. So no one is really entitled to their wealth and that when we have a libertarian revolution, a left libertarian revolution, we need to redistribute these titles and everyone's going to be equal. Egalitarianism is driving these people. So whenever I hear someone say that there's something wrong with your theory of property, I hold onto my wallet because I know they're coming after it. The people that condemn materialism and rich people and money always want your money. So you have to be very wary of these people. Now there's another related problem which afflicts a lot of quasi-left libertarians and that is this idea that if you're in favor of property rights, you're really in favor of aggression. Now how do they come up with this idea? Basically they don't believe in ownership. They believe that if you are using a resource, you have the right to use it in an undisturbed fashion but as soon as you set it down and walk away, someone else is up for grabs. And if you maintain the right to use force to retrieve your resource or to get damages from them for damaging your property, you're committing aggression, right? So this is the fundamental problem that we need to focus on here. We need to understand that aggression is not the fundamental concept of libertarianism. Aggression is a shorthand description of our view of property rights. Every political philosophy, every person on the planet has an implicit or explicit view of property rights. The reason is because property rights arise only because we live in a world of scarcity, a world of scarce resources, which means a world where conflict is possible. And if you understand Mises in Praxeology and his analysis of human action and how human action is the purposeful employment of scarce means, right, things that are causally efficacious in the world to achieve your end, guided by your knowledge, which is why ideas are not property, then you'll understand that property rights are always the right to control a given resource. It's about that. Aggression is just a shorthand for our particular view of how property should be assigned. Communists, socialists, liberals, environmentalists all believe in a certain allocation of property rights. They believe the state should own the property or maybe the poor people should own the property. Excuse me, I'm getting a call on my iPad. So the question is, what makes libertarianism unique? It is our particular property allocation scheme and I will conclude by just summarizing the way I think we need to view a libertarian paradigm and how if you think about it consistently you will answer all the questions I just went through that are confusing to people. That is this. The rule of libertarianism is very simple. It is that when two or more people, because if you only have one person and there's no dispute, there's nothing, there's no problem to be solved. There's no social problem. When two or more people both want to use a given resource. When there's a possible dispute, okay, the question is simply for the resource in question, which of those two or more people has the better claim to the resource? And we answer that question by resort to three very simple and common sense and almost undeniably true rules. The first one is who had it first, right? Or as between those two, who had it first as far as we know? You don't have to trace it back to Adam. You can trace it back to a common ancestor as the law has it, okay? Second, was there a consensual transfer? That's contract. And third, did one person harm the other, commit a tort or a crime so that he owes compensation or rectification or restitution to the other guy, leading to a transfer of money or some resource from one guy to the other? So if you look at those three principles, that will tell you who owns the resource in question. If I had it first, I'm the owner unless I gave it to someone else and then they own it. They have a better claim to me. Every other philosophy other than libertarianism violates one of those three rules. They ultimately believe that someone has the right to a resource even though they didn't obtain it by contract even though they weren't harmed by the previous owner and even though they never found the resource and started using it and boarded it and put it to productive use. Basically, every philosophy other than libertarianism believes either in a lawless world, a world of what makes right, or in some form of slavery, owning the products of other people's efforts or owning their bodies. That is why libertarianism is superior and if we focus on property rights and this foundational view of looking at things, it helps us to move forward and improve the libertarian project. Thank you.