 Then let me just say what happened so I'm on Twitter today minding my own business someone cites my book against IP and This chick Nina prevo Who's got a YouTube channel she goes by some cocoa Chanel type name on Twitter starts Attacking my me saying I don't know IP law. Oh Tweet out the link. Okay. Good idea. Hold on. Let me do that Tweeting out the link hold on a second. I just tweeted it Okay, I guess you can just guys just texture any questions and I'll try to answer them So And then she said he won't debate me because he never debates of course So she hasn't done anything she hasn't read anything about my stuff because she'd know that She'd know that I debate all the time and so she says she's read my stuff, but I think she's just lying and And So then she accused me of being mean because I answered her bluntly after she started with this these scurrilous attacks and I Re-listened I had heard before her her little inane comments on the other YouTube video. I'll post a link later Arguing for IP. She's just doing the same old thing that lawyers do she's saying all the law does this the law Does that and she's she's using emotion. Oh, I feel I feel that it's stealing if you copy someone's stuff You know, she repeats the same old crap like Well, if you put time and effort into something then you should have a right to Stop people from copying it. You know, that's just the Marxist labor theory of value argument You know this idea that you have some kind of right to a profit if you spend effort Which of course is nonsense because value is subjective. So I don't have to say I'm always willing to debate people and I would have been polite with her if she had just been polite Yeah, no Should have I should have practiced this Is there anyone out there who knows how to do this, right? I could go off real quick and start over I mean, why is this so complicated? It wants me to get some kind of streaming software or something Anyway, why don't you guys ask any questions if you have I mean all my arguments for IP are well known and out there already So I don't know if I should repeat them here. I would have grilled her on What her arguments for IP? But she didn't want to do it Anyone? No, she didn't show up and plus I don't know how to add anyone anyway So I guess I screwed it up. Well, I don't think she came in Okay, you say there's no good arguments for IP. What's the best argument that you've come across? Honestly just there are none. It's like it's like saying what's the best argument for the drug war I guess for the drug war there's some arguments people shouldn't do drugs and it's harmful if they do it And they they're they're more likely to harm themselves if they do drugs. It's not a good argument It's not a libertarian argument, but it's coherent I Suppose the best argument is if you create something you own it But that's a mistake because creation is not a source of rights as I explained many times Then there's other arguments that were better off with IP law But even that's not a good argument because you could never know that and number two That's not the purpose of law To make us better off right just by going in and tweaking and intervening in the free market to fix market failures So there really are no good arguments for IP Every one of them have heard is completely dishonest or are flawed based upon extremely flawed flawed premises Why the libertarian party should adopt an anti IP plank? Well, if you if you take take for granted that That IP is clearly un-libertarian and very harmful to the human race, which I think it is and then it should be in the plank because the primary purpose of the libertarian party is to Is to clarify and announce our principles and to educate people about them So it's not to win elections because we're never going to win elections It's only about to educate That's why if you water down our principles and sell out to try to get someone elected somewhere that's not trivial Then what good are you doing? So you have to stay principled even if it costs votes because we're not going to win anyway Yeah, I'd debate your own Brooke. I would debate Probably the three I will say strongest But the three people that would try to cobble together some kind of argument would be Richard Epstein Adam Moss off and maybe you're on Brooke Um Moss off and Brooke would argue from randian premises, which I disagree with but I think if they're civil and reasonable We could discuss why I think they're wrong and why even Rand herself Was self-inconsistent and some of her views contradict her pro IP views So I would take rand one against rand two so to speak Um and Richard Epstein is a utilitarian That'd be a slightly harder to argue against because his entire political philosophy is chicago utilitarian based And he'll never change his mind on that So he thinks that the job of the government is to identify market failures and free rider problems and hold out problems And to intervene to harm some people a little bit to benefit everyone else more than that And to take some of that surplus and to reward the people or to compensate the people that were harmed That's his takings book So I'm sure he would apply that to intellectual property although According to his takings book He says that the burden of proof is on those arguing for a government intervention You have to demonstrate that the pie gets bigger so that there's a surplus left to compensate the people that were expropriated And there is just simply no empirical evidence to show that IP law that he favors It grows the pie So even by his own takings rubric you can't justify IP law And I doubt he would admit that but I'd be happy to talk to him. I don't think any of them would talk to me Randians wouldn't talk to me because They'd be sanctioning the sanction or something or because they'd be embarrassed or they don't want to talk to an anarchist or something I don't know Epstein I've met him before I spoke at a thing he moderated before on ip But I think he probably would not debate me on this topic Probably thinks it's beneath him, but I could be wrong I shouldn't do what I should do is gene epstein should should have a ip Debate on the soho forum and I'd be happy to do that He'd have to find a worthy opponent and there just aren't any so the only two that have any kind of Coherence at all would be some prominent randian like um your own brook or um moss off or a door or richard epstein Okay, any more chats? Let's see here. I might have missed some try to see The all right. The most plausible defense I've heard is that it incentivizes innovation Why do these chats go away? Innovation for otherwise expensive research projects. Um Yeah, so that's the pharmaceutical argument and so a lot of people that are skeptical about ip they'll say well The strongest case for ip is in pharmaceuticals. I actually think it's the opposite I think the the strongest case for ip evolution is pharmaceuticals because pharmaceuticals are lifesaving And important to life and anything that impedes innovation Um is bad, especially in important fields. So I would say pharmaceuticals are the strongest case to abolish patents um, the argument that there's a lot of research cost is just not an argument because every entrepreneur faces costs And the cost of competition and they have to take that into account in their business plan Um, and one reason the cost that pharmaceutical companies face is so high is because of FDA regulations and taxes and other government regulations um So that'd be the main way to solve that problem I haven't read much. I've read a little bit by besen besen and murer the patent failure comment you're talking about Um, if I recall I don't remember. I don't think there's that much principled and solid in their stuff Uh, wait, I could be wrong. I think I have a blog post Uh, besen and murer duke. There are there are pretty strongly anti patent. I'm sorry. That's right I don't know. I think they have a more utilitarian case But I think they are pretty strongly against it and they I think they conclude that there is no Solid empirical evidence that patents do what the proponents claim that it does um I'd say the strongest case from the utilitarian side is from Um, bolder and levine and they're against intellectual monopoly, but even those those cases are always flawed because um Well, number one that even they as strong as they are against patents They say that well, maybe instead of having patents the government should just subsidize Basic scientific research or something like that. So They all see that there's a market failure. They just want to solve it in a different way with more government intervention um I think they're also for trademarks, which I I think they're wrong about um In some of their arguments, I think their conclusions are right, but some of their arguments are flawed because for example, um Um Like they argue that italy and switzerland Had no patents on pharmaceuticals for a good 30 40 50 year period in the late 1800s 1900s and they were Among the powerhouses of pharmaceutical production, but the problem with that argument is that You know, they were still selling presumably into other markets where there were patents like the us so They could still I guess benefit from the patent system giving them a monopoly price to subsidize their cost So you can't really argue that those are counter examples um Just because they didn't have patents But I think that may be because they don't quite understand how the patent system works because it's very arcane and really only patent lawyers understand it So there's a few mistakes like that Which by the way, none of the ip proponents have pointed out because they don't even understand ip Um, I haven't pointed it out explicitly because i'm not in a mood to weaken their case But it's not the strongest argument Oh dull geek. Are you saying that best in a mirror? Let me see if I can find their quote Say that patents are not are good for pharma, but not for software Um, let's see c4saf.org on my against ip page. I have a post about the empirical case Against patent copyright. Let me see what best in a mirror say here No, they say that On average the patent system discourages innovation It seems unlikely that patents today are an effective policy instrument to encourage innovation overall And that patents place a drag on innovation on innovation um There's clear empirical evidence that the patent system is broken. So I don't know maybe they make an exception elsewhere in their in their paper um Or in their writing about for pharmaceuticals, but in the quotes I found from them um They're pretty strong about the patent system not having There's no empirical evidence to show that it's it does what it claims to do But the the basic argument is that The libertarian rebuttal to all this anyway is that the purpose of the state and law Or the purpose of law is not to make sure there's an optimal amount of innovation in society I mean you could have any number of goals that are that are outside or apart from um the goal of liberty or the goal of protecting individual rights Like as robert nosig explains in his book that the essence of libertarianism is the belief in rights And rights are what he calls side constraints like you just you can't trump a right the way everyone else thinks about things It's all a big balance There are many values we pursue in society conservatives believe this and liberals believe this they all believe this um, so yeah Individual liberty and life and prosperity are one value But it's not the only value after all we're not monomaniacs like you libertarians You think liberty is the only value which is not true either We value many things as human beings. It's just as libertarians. We think that it's unjust to commit aggression Okay, so what they're what they're what they're anyone who favors Considering other values in their balancing formula for laws that we can have other than liberty What they're saying is I'm against I'm against aggression usually but not always So basically they're saying there's sometimes in favor of aggression because other values justify it But that's just the same old argument for murder or tyranny or genocide or the drug war yeah Usually I'm against putting people in cages, but in this case we have the value of stopping the drug the use of drugs That's so important that we can violate the value of liberty So your only value politically can be aggression non aggression. That is opposing aggression That's a side constraint Which is why the value the goal of the law cannot be to maximize innovation However, if that was your goal, I would say the way you maximize innovation is to Have a free society free people that have free minds and they have the wealth that comes from a free From a free market and capitalism that's supported by a property rights system So you have to identify and define property rights Respect them and then people will innovate as much as is humanly possible within that system. You don't need to artificially support it Yeah, I'm taking I'll take second questions FEMA Do you make similar arguments against IP when you argue against copyright? Why do these things disappear? Hold on And trademarks and how would you differentiate them? Well, what happened is these are all separate legal systems and they arose for different reasons And when some of them came under attack by free market economists in the 1800s The the Pro IP interests that had been dependent upon them started defending them and they said they're not monopoly privileges They're they're intellectual property rights. So they came up with this term intellectual property and they group under it all these different types of Of rights like trademark patent copyright trade secrets Because they all have to do with the creations of the mind is the reasoning but they work in different ways So the arguments for them are all Or somewhat different and the arguments against them are somewhat different. So Copyright and patent are both very similar in that they both can be viewed as negative servitudes That's that is the owner or the holder of the patent or the copyright Um has a negative servitude or negative easement over other people's property Which means they can use those rights to stop people from using their own property like they want to And the the reason that's unjust is because the negative servitude was not granted Consentually by the owner of what's called the burden to state If you grant it by contract, it's fine. That's what restrictive covenants are in neighborhood associations Like when you're not permit permitted to use your home for commercial purposes because all your neighbors have this negative servitude Or this veto right because you gave it to them and they gave you one for their house But the government in the case of patent and copyright just takes it and gives it to people So it's just a taking of your property Trademark is a little bit different. It's it's more similar to defamation law It basically tries to establish a reputation right Everyone thinks that trademark is about protecting the consumer from fraud, but it's not because It doesn't require a showing of fraud. It only requires a showing of Likelihood of consumer confusion and consumer confusion is not the same as fraud And a likelihood of it is not a showing that it's happening anyway And furthermore the trademark system gives the right to sue to the trademark holder Not to the defrauded consumer So everything about trademark That people claim is based upon fraud is not true trademark really just protects the right of the reputational rights Of a company in the value of a trademark or brand name that they've developed in the market So it's very similar to what defamation law does it protects your reputation And it's unjust for that reason The best argument argumentation ethics question Oh, someone says why does against ip have a copyright from the mesas institute? um Well, the short answer is it's a mistake Um, it doesn't have a copyright. It just has a notice which is mistaken They put it on there without my permission. They didn't understand And It's just false. They don't have a copyright I have the copyright because I wrote it and I've released it in the public domain So that was just a mistake. I I'm not really blaming them because this was early on before I started ringing the alarm bells loudly about all this but um Copyright law like all types of statutory law. It's very arcane and people just don't understand it So people think that you can put a copyright on something because you have permission to publish it. That's not true You have to own the copyright to do that And the only way you own it is if someone signs a writing a written assignment, which I never did So it's just a mistake. Oh someone asked me about my comment on mutualists Oh, yeah, I have a long blog post about what I disagree with in mutualism But there's aspects of at least the idea of mutualism as I understand it Um Which is the idea that we look we live in society you have certain rights But you don't have a right to have those rights enforced Like you don't have a right to have your neighbors help you enforce your rights But in any workable system, you're going to need their assistance So you're like if you have a jury trial, you're going to need your neighbors to voluntarily Show up as witnesses and show up as jurors And help you enforce the the sentence to be carried out So there has to be a sort of give and take there and if you abuse the system If you're suing people left and right for five dollar offenses all the time people are just going to ignore you because You're not worth their time So that part of mutualism I think and and and there's there's something in the fact that we live in a world There are some uncertainty in some gray areas. So we have to be willing to compromise We have to be willing to be reasonable. We have to be willing to submit disputes to third parties And accept the judgment even if we don't agree We have to be willing to do all those things because the alternative is just violent conflict Which is the primary thing we're supposed to avoid now where the mutualists are wrong is They basically want to accept the marxian notion of exploitation, which is completely flawed on Austrian grounds But it's the idea that if you're an employee if you're the employee of an employer then The the labor you put into The effort to to to make the products for your employer Is the source of the value So when the when the employer sells the products that you make The profit that they make is really due to attributable to the work that the employee put into it So if he's paid a salary But the employer makes a profit if there's any profit at all That profit is the surplus labor value, which is being stolen from the employee Now, of course, that's complete nonsense But because they don't like employment And they don't like the idea of property they don't like the idea of a band of What they call a distant There's another word they term distant ownership something like that Like if you're removed from the situation you you own you let's say you own a factory, but you're not there Or if you own An apartment complex where people live in it and you're not there They basically think that these people The the employees own the factory because they're the ones using it And they think that the tenants or the the the people that live in your apartment complex can homestead it and own it And of course, this is just abolishing ownership and abolishing the distinction between possession and ownership So what they're saying is possession is all that matters So what they really favor is a might makes right world You can you can own something as long as you hold on to it Which means there's no such thing as ownership now Their argument to get out of that is they say that well, we just are further down the spectrum Than you on the idea of abandonment So like I might say if you abandon your house And it grows over with weeds and you've been gone for 30 years Eventually some squatter is going to squat on it and they might own it because you can be said to have abandoned it And they say well, we just believe the abandonment time period instead of 30 years It's it's only a year or a month or something like that. So it's just a difference of degree not of kind That's what they argue, but that's a flawed argument because Because in the first case the reason We have to come up with this With with with some kind of answer to the question when this property become abandoned When there's no explicit Communication given by the owner he disappears and we can't find the guy So yeah, some societies might say One year five years 20 years that the land is declared to be abandoned at some point Just like if someone's missing you eventually declare them dead at a certain point Or just like the age of consent is maybe 18 or 16 in different societies. Those are more Spectrum or continuum issues, but they only arise when there is no Knowledge of where the real owner is and what he really consents to So if I leave my factory and it's down the road and I'm I'm taking the profits from it and I'm owning it And all my employees are running it for me There's no doubt about where I am and I'm not abandoning it. In fact, I will say no I I'm not abandoning it. So you don't get to the you don't get to the default issue The you don't get to the point where you have to come up with the default rule To decide when we finally say the guy's gone forever and we have to declare the property abandoned You don't get to that if you know where the guy is and he's saying he owns it and he visits it on occasion Since it sends his guard his security people over to to police it And furthermore when you have a tenant living in your In your building or employees working in your building you have a contract with them where they basically Are possessing your property on your behalf as your agent So the mutualists have to abrogate contract rights. They have to ignore Contracts between people Which is again what robert nosig says that you know, we we libertarians believe in capitalist acts between consenting adults Socialists ultimately don't and mutualists don't which is why they're partly socialist in my view All right, let me see what other chats i've missed Property becomes abandoned if the owner doesn't remember the thing he left instead of time is based on memory um possibly because If you lost your memory, you wouldn't complain when someone starts using it Okay, harry sanders. We don't need property to explain The relation between an absentee owner and a factory manager We could just say the current possessor the factory manager has a contract. Okay, I keep going I don't understand if you're agreeing or disagree with me. Uh, harry so you can feel free to elaborate if you want um I'm just simply explaining why does I have a long blog post about this on my or my stefanconcello.com Benjamin, do you attribute any value to economics or or any other kind of utilitarian argumentation? When making the case for libertarianism um It's funny how this is turning into a general Yeah, I think first of all knowledge of economics is essential and especially austrian economics Uh, just like knowledge of logic and having a having a language. There's lots of disciplines that have to and you have to know history as well um This is why I reject the thickest of my idea like people these libertarians just say well We libertarians have values other than liberty. Yeah, that's true And we have to know things other than libertarianism. We have to know history economics math You know how to write how to read how to think how to argue how to be honest how to be consistent All these things complement each other and they're necessary, but they're not the same, you know We need doctors and dentists, but they're not the same thing. Um But as for utilitarianism I personally have never accepted the idea that there's a conflict or a dichotomy between um consequentialism Or pragmatism or or good results um, or practicality and Principles are the what's called the deontological approach. Um, I think the deontological approach is basically a principled way of looking at moral matters which is essential because Moral matters are not empirical factual matters They are normative values and judgments and assertions and propositions That are always based upon some lower Evaluation or value that we have So you basically deduce from Some presumed or given or shared values up up the chain but Since we do have a similar to human nature and we evolved a similar way. We all tend to have similar base values And so it's not no surprise that these tend to be practical Right. So honesty is practical, but it's also a principled of ethical value So I think consequentialism and um The principled case for liberty they complement and support each other I don't even unran said this. She said the practical The moral is the practical. There's not a conflict between them. You don't have to choose between one or the other Now utilitarianism, I think it depends on how you use the word um And if you mean it in this uh economic sense that you can measure value or utility In a cardinal way I think that's wrong But if you mean it if you use it to mean just a type of consequence So I think consequentialism just means the consequences of actions matter Which is perfectly compatible with a moral or a principal view of things And I would think of utilitarianism is a subset of consequentialism Randy Barnett makes this point in the introduction to his book the structure of liberty so Utilitarianism is problematic because of uh if economic concerns number one, but consequentialism Is broadly speaking compatible. I think with with a principled or rights-based approach to liberty lsu question I think what's preferable is what happened is we had the best season imaginable And it was worth paying the price that we're going to suck for a while because we probably would have sucked for For a while anyway, but at least we had that amazing year and I went to the game by the way And trump was there. It was cool um Did I get into ip law Because of my stance um Neither one it's kind of a coincidence. I um I was always Curious about the ip argument in law school and in undergrad Because it didn't make sense to me It was one of these libertarian issues that I was having trouble with figuring out But when I started practicing law and I finally went into patent and ip law for just for career reasons um I turned my attention more to it because I thought I had some extra uh ability to understand it because now I understood the law So as I started thinking about it, then I figured out pretty quickly like Basically the same year that I passed the patent board in 94 Is around the year I concluded oh ip is the illegitimate. I was trying to I was trying to come up with an argument to defend it for years and I kept I kept failing And I finally realized why I was failing. I was trying to justify the unjustifiable It's impossible to justify it. So once I switched my assumptions everything made sense um So I was cautious about announcing my views publicly at first because I thought it might hurt me in my career but Over time I just said I don't give a I don't give a damn and it never hurt me Anyway, people don't care what your personal views are It's just like who you vote for or What your religion is people don't as long as you know the law and you can do a good job That's all they care about Thoughts on max sterner and I don't I have never read sterner. So I can't comment on sterner If you had infinite knowledge about knock-on effects in ultimate steady state of laws, utilitarianism will boil down to yeah, I think that's right yeah, because the the purpose of law um is to Basically, I think What are the common values that we all share as libertarians and as civilized decent human beings in a general way we all want We all want good for ourselves because we're all self-interested, but we also want everyone else to do well And we want to live in a successful world where people are happy and flourishing and there's prosperity And then there's peace We get along peacefully and cooperatively and we trade Instead of having violent conflict with each other now, there's a small percentage of society that is not like that These are the sociopaths and the psychopaths But by and large we we evolved as a social species to value Cooperation and we have empathy for each other. So we value each other's well-being. So if you take those base values When because the world has scarcity there's a possibility of conflict violent conflict and since we prefer peace That is why we prefer property rules to assign owners in a fair way That allows us to avoid conflict So property rules are consequentialist or pragmatic in the sense that they they solve the problem That we would have more of the things we don't want which is violence And conflict if we didn't have property rules. So it's no surprise that consequentialism and pragmatism um Go together That said when you have difficult issues, we need to resort to principles and we need to remember what our base principles are We have to remember that we came up with the principles of non-aggression as the way to implement our revulsion for and loathing of of interpersonal Strife conflict and violence. So non-aggression has to be the touchstone So we can evaluate these claims About what laws are good or bad By going back to first principles Someone says I can set up a live stream with oh shit. I could have done zoom too. I have I have zoom I'm going to do that Hold on a second. I'm going to do zoom And then I'll just put the link in here I don't know what I was thinking Because that one we wanted to be live streamed. That's what the problem. I didn't want to be live streamed I hold on Zoom hold on. I just take a second guys Then everyone can talk Let's continue with the questions. I think I missed some of the chats earlier. All right Anyone got anything? What would you say or can I go first? Go ahead What would you say is the best argument you've heard against argumentation ethics and what and how would you say said argument falls apart? Oh, no, I so unlike IP. I think there are good arguments against argumentation ethics I understand why some people don't agree with it Um, so one of them is that you can it can be taken too far And frank van dunne actually does this and some of his defenses of argumentation ethics like 90 percent of which I agree with and I like But he he goes too far like he even says like you know if you If you're arguing with someone and like let's say their son works for you And you threaten to fire his son from your job from his job if he if the guy doesn't agree with you That that's not a legitimate argumentation tactic and therefore You can't be fired from your job For a bad reason. So so so like you see you could You can go too far with it. I think and that that sounds more like uh I don't know why but like That doesn't really uh Debunk it more so it kind of shows that it goes to uncomfortable conclusions if you will um like I never really saw that as like a good argument to gain something like conclusions a conclusion regardless of how you personally feel about it is What I what I'm trying to get at I agree. It doesn't I don't agree with it, but um uh And I guess another one would be maybe the strongest one is the idea that um The ethics of argumentation only apply During argument but not outside of arguments. I think that's wrong too, but I understand that argument. So what they say is Any ethics that apply to things you do while you're arguing Uh, don't apply once the argument's over That one is confused and wrong I think but I understand why people make that argument Yeah, also, I I think you and what would be interested in this. Um, it's let's a question and more, um Are so I was reading the other day about of this article is a a pdf file it's this it's a uh page called um a defensive roth barian ethics via a mediation of ha of hoppa and ran basically taking iron rans objectivist teleological um Ethical egoist ethics and sort of merging it with hawn's hoppa's argumentation ethics. It's by a guy named cage share Um, you should check that out. It's actually very very fascinating. I don't recall it if I don't but it sounds interesting Yeah, by the way, did anyone here listen to that? Uh, this woman Nina's uh Meandering thing about about ip You mean her tweets or did she come out and like say something? No, she had a youtube video a few months ago, which I posted a link earlier I don't I didn't know if anyone had I just posted it the last minute So I don't know if anyone had a chance to um look at it I didn't know so she has so many different alt identities on twitter I didn't know that she had posted One um, but I've been in just trying to have a discussion with her about ip for I don't know a couple of weeks now and I didn't realize that I was having the same discussion with three different I thought I was having the same discussion with three different people all ended up being the same person um and so Like I I have never gotten to the point where she's actually made an argument. I will go look up that youtube video though mostly Well, I I don't understand I mean I just don't believe she's read my stuff because she she doesn't engage with it. Um So, you know I don't care if she thinks I'm a hack, but I mean, what's what's her argument, you know, her argument is that I I feel that it's theft. I feel that it's theft. I feel that it's wrong That's that's exactly I I find uh, I have not gotten any actual substance substantive argument out of her at all yeah Well, you know, I she's irrelevant, but um, I I guess it You know, maybe some of you guys will tell we'll do it again if she'd be on I I'm happy to I just hate debate formats because You speak for three minutes and they speak for three minutes and all this kind of stuff. It's ridiculous. Um um I ask a question then they respond. I mean, it's better to have a give and take a back and forth. Um, I think Well, I'm just trying to understand the arguments Like I read your book and I found it convincing and I'm trying to understand the arguments against it it seems pretty straightforward to me and it makes sense and So when somebody came up and said hey, this is completely wrong like I don't know why I don't know why it's wrong yeah And I'll there are a few things in there. I mean, I wrote that 20 years ago I I do plan to to update it and and massage a few things. Um Like I would use the word rival was More than scarcity now just because people Equivocate on the word scarcity and they'll say well good ideas are scarce So we use the word scarcity in a technical economic sense to mean rival was basically so if I said that it would remove their ability to do that um I was too soft on trademarks And there's some additional arguments I've come up with in the last two years I need to add but I don't really disagree with anything in it anyone Uh, what are your thoughts on uh the animal rights issue? Because I saw the water block and some other guy uh debate and I and I thought like Walter blocks argument were really uh, not that good I'm more of a randy on this. I I don't believe animals have rights. Um Primarily because animals can't respect our rights So there can't be sort of there's sort of an agreement or again the mutualist thing. There's a there's a there's an agreement here where We acknowledge each other's potential to harm each other and to use our resources, but we all agree On a certain set of property rules Um so that we can avoid conflict with each other and cooperate and trade with each other I think that just requires a certain amount of Ability to communicate and rationality and animals just don't have that Doesn't mean it's it's it's not immoral Portrait or even to kill animals As an ethical matter, but I think I think rights are right I mean if you don't feel too sick Not now Hey jack, can you please give me your mic Someone needs to mute Yeah, it's jack There I just muted jack. Okay. Sorry go ahead Um, but could you name the trade Like what's true for animals that if true for humans, it could be right It would be right to kill humans. Like if you say intelligence Uh a person less intelligence than me. I could kill them if you say if you say it's natural if it were natural to eat Humans, it would be okay that That's named it's right Well, I mean, I think if an animal kills a human it's not wrong and it's not murder um The whole purpose of rights is that we can agree to respect each other's rights and you know discuss things rationally now If you're saying does that logic mean that Certain people can be killed because they're I don't know. They're they're they're retarded or their infants or they're old and then the coma um I guess you could argue that but it's an I think those are edge cases I mean, there's a book that influenced me early on by lauren lamasky Which many people haven't read it's called persons rights in the moral community Now he's not an anarchist, but he's a good libertarian And he's got this argument. He calls it piggybacking where It's almost like a contractualist view that in society we have rights because we're all rational beings and for the people that are marginal We attribute rights to them because they're almost human or they were human or they're on the stage of becoming human they sort of They get the benefit of the doubt so to speak um I think that's probably the most reasonable way to approach it. I mean, I don't know what else you can do You could I guess you could ask god to give us a commandment and tell us but If we're figuring out things with reason and rationality and these are the rules that we reasonable rational people that communicate and interact with each other have come up with It doesn't automatically easily apply to people that are helpless um So we have to come up with some civilized rules to to treat with them Yeah, but I don't see why those rules couldn't apply to animals like It's that human that could that couldn't could never Argument or logically think or whatever like an animal And you know He can't and you say he's a human but yeah, but how do you find? How do you define human like it's her genes? Well, he might do a he could do a Gen test and he's not a human like Well, I wouldn't say I wouldn't say only humans have rights. I would just say humans are the only animals we know of that have rationality. So any any any animal that had um What we call sapient right would have rights um So if the dolphins evolved into intelligence or an alien species landed We would all have rights with respect to each other because we could communicate and agree to cooperate with each other um But I guess the question for you would be why restrict animals I mean, why would only animals have rights? What about what about planets or rocks or molecules? Right or or plants why animals? Yeah, sure because they they couldn't uh, they are sentient. They are sentient okay, so sentience but And really I think that argument comes down to the pain argument like they can feel pain and it's wrong to inflict pain Something like that. What about insects? And there's no evidence for the insects being sentient. So I am agnostic on this topic So if a creature is aware of his existence In some sense, you say it's wrong to in that Yeah, sure Well, I guess one problem with that argument is that what about the animals themselves Out in the jungle between the animals. They're all killing each other all the time So are they a moral? I think we should kill the the predators Sure, well, but I mean half But the world is I mean half the animal kingdom is predators and if you kill them then you would ruin the whole ecosystem. I mean Why are you utilitarian? No, no, I just think I just think that um So your goal would be a world of Docile peaceful Vegetarian creatures that there's no there's no there's no predators. There's only prey or there's only Only peaceful animals Uh, yeah, sure. That's kind of my goal I think it's in a in a in a potential. Yeah, sure Within the animal kingdom, there's a lot of quote-unquote Friendly and they're who the animals that aren't actually friendly. I've been to I've been to a zoo when I was younger. I I know that for I know that from personal experience that a lot of these, uh Was it herbivores that eat plants only? Uh, yeah herbivores omnivores, omnivores. Yeah herbivores. Uh A lot of herbivores are Just as violent if not more violent than a lot of omnivores and carnivores Yeah, we should we should apply this to humans like if you violate others rights, then you could violate his rights I I remember there was a There was a Q and a session with lindard peek off one time years ago and someone asked this animal rights thing And by the way, I ran his lawyer, Henry Mark Holzer, who was kind of libertarian. He he came out in favor of animal rights himself later um but uh He wrote a great book called sweet land of liberty about the constitution, but he's also animal rights kind of guy but um someone has speak off about animals rights and and something about the mosquitoes came up and He said well the mosquitoes can have rights when they petition for them In other words, if someone asked you to respect their rights, I guess you should respect it But animals don't ask us to respect their rights I Don't I do not believe in animal rights, although I would say I sort of accept them accept them as kind of like a rule of thumb If you if you know what I mean You get what I'm trying to say positive right Yeah, you can say that I am sympathetic to the argument that if we come up with Synthetic meat, which I think we will eventually That at that point there will be very very little moral excuse for killing animals for food For medical experimentation is a different issue, but for for food. Yeah, I think then then you would have a hard time justifying hunting and And farming and killing animals because you could get just as good meat from from a lab Well, I mean that's That's like saying, uh, there's going to be a point in which we don't need to steal from the rich To give to the poor so therefore in that case it will will it only be moral like morality it should be like always Well, yeah, but I don't think animals have rights if it was a rights thing it would be Yeah, we can't do it at all, but I'm talking about the the morality you could say that there are different factors like if it's survival Um, you're not violating the rights because they don't have rights, but if we need animal food to live Which I guess you could argue we don't because some people are vegetarians um Oh, and it's even healthier to be a bacon or vegetarian than a carnivore This is this is not what I'm hearing from the from the bit coiners That they think that red meat only is the only thing you should eat. So I don't know who knows. I don't know Show the evidence Ask them to to to prove it They claim to have it, but I don't know. I'm it's not my bag Yeah, and I could say and I could say I'm god and I had the proofs of it, but I don't and enjoy I don't show it to you I would argue god is already on this meeting I'm kind of curious about the animal thing. It's like if if some like elks say we're to Damage another deer. How would you give restitution to the deer? Pardon could you repeat please? Yeah, sure. So how would you give restitution to like a victimized animal? If another if a predator were to say or even not even a predator, but something would have hurt it in some regard that isn't killing it How do you how would you do it to humans? Monetarily, I mean whatever that that human were to one, right? Or whatever, you know, when some kind of arbitration process between that human and the person that hurt them. Yeah, okay That's kind of a problem. I don't think a reason Yeah, that's kind of problem, but if Well, we have a person that can't think and It costs any problem to another human. How a human? How? How could you Result that you mean? Result that you mean if an animal hurt a human? I don't know a human who can't think because he's regarded or whatever. I see what you're saying Yeah, that's a little bit more of a border case. Yeah, I don't know Yeah, I would say that that if there's a human that's so incapacitated he harms people He's not really responsible because it's not really an action. It's just behavior, right? Now you can use force to defend yourself from that and then and stop it, but You don't treat them as a responsible agent if they're not doing it consciously Just like animals. We don't regard animals as evil for trying to hurt us But we step on have you ever Considered it in the context of like your essay how we come to own ourselves And that you can only one person can possess their own body and you can't be in possession Of another person's body How does that work for animals because how can you possess or own animals? Because Only the animal can be in direct control of their own body, right? Doesn't that Sort of make sense that argument Yeah, so that so one problem I had with like Rothbard's the way he argued against voluntary slavery contracts is he says that Your will is inalienable and so A contract is null and void because your will is inalienable But the problem is Rothbard believes and so do I that Sometimes you can use force against another person like in self-defense But in that case the person you're using force against has free will he still has his will But what you're doing is you're overriding his will with force so The fact of the fact that you're the direct controller of your body doesn't mean That you always own it. It means you're the presumptive owner when there's a question about who owns it But you can lose that right right by committing an act of aggression So it's just the answer to the question When rational people get together and they they want they have the question Who has the best connection to that body? The the default answer is the person who controls But the question doesn't arise for animals because they're not part of argumentation. They can't They're not petitioning for their rights. I mean, look, this is this is the the libertarian view which is about rights of Of sapient creatures, which is humans the only ones If you believe in animal rights, then the whole thing is is different and I just I just don't But does that make sense? So in other words The fact that someone has that doesn't make sense Doesn't mean that you can't use force to override it. So when we control an animal we take into account It's nature. I mean the word animal means something that can move right so unlike other objects in the world. It moves on its own That's the nature of it. In fact, you know the ownership of cows They we know they're going to roam around so we own them by branding them so that there's a sign placed on them You own things according to their nature and if they're movable things they move around on their own The way you control them is by coercion basically or by by by pinning them somewhere where they can't escape but The way you control a prisoner is you coerce them Right or the way you control someone trying to hurt you is by coercion Um, can animals act in a mizazian sense? I don't think so because um in the mizazian sense, that's why he called a human action. I guess um action means To have a purpose in mind. I mean I guess in a crude sense they do right in a crude sense they They have a goal And they it's like You know if he wants a banana he'll climb on the bales of He'll climb on the tree to climb up and get it and he'll peel it to eat the fruit inside So he he uses means to achieve ends. So I guess you could say they act It's just on a less conscious or different level than than humans Uh, Stefan can I tell can I uh tell you about something that kind of uh I don't know what words to use pissed me off or sort of like baffled me but um Basically I was in a discord argument with a socialist and we were discussing morality and you're aware of sort of like the um common refutation that uh, we give we give to the sort of idea of uh, what's it called again that Well, we humans can't own each other because well, we would have to get permission from 7 billion people to do that all that stuff and it would be Literally impossible to do that this rendering it a non a not moral system I presented that to him and he straight up just said well, that would mean that humans are fundamentally immoral because we can't live up to the one true morality And I'm like, okay, how do I respond to this guy? I mean, how do I respond to this guy? It's like saying like like I refer I base fun I don't know where I read or I was reading a uh pdf for uh Big more basics of uh morality and something about like ought implies that you can do something and then I sort of And then he he he completely threw that out of the window and he just straight up said well, if humans can't do it Then that means we're fundamentally immoral beings Yeah, I mean what the hell They're they're he's basically confirming that the criticism That socialists effectively or for they're not for human life. I mean some of these people are explicit They they want a world where humans have been killed because they think we're evil Right. I mean that's what the vehemence movement the voluntary human extinction movement um Yeah, and I find the same kind of criticism the same kind of problems in the works of a manual con I I think that his uh that the uh This could be the Objectivism talking because I used to be an objectivist and I still hold a lot of the things like I Like I supplement ethical egoism with argumentation ethics and whatnot. Um, I find sort of like Immanuel Kant's uh categorical imperative to be Too rigid to be workable in sort of like a We can't actually we can't actually take that seriously without falling into the kind of problems that roffard found Yeah, um I mean, I guess at a certain point Like I think lit if you want to be objective this Leonard picoff says like in opar What do you do with someone stubbornly irrational and they just they keep you keep pointing things out to them? They say well, so what? But this you finally just have to you have to walk away because you're talking to someone stubbornly irrational Or that she has values so antithetical to ours that There's nothing to be gained by By you just have to I like hoppa says treat them as a technical problem. Just keep an eye on them I just when that happens. I just trolled them and make fun of them until they cry until they cried to their thumbs or something I don't know but like At that point you just troll them until they leave Let's see someone else here in the chat someone says Have I seen mesas institute turkey? I don't recall learning anything about them. I do go to turkey every year for the hoppa thing. I'm going this september I would think there'd be some overlap. Maybe it's just getting off the ground This is a bay record Uh, if you want to explain what you're talking about, I'll be happy to field it, but I don't know much about mesas turkey Someone says Yeah, I have a Quick question for you. So, um, why can't we just dispense? With the notion of property and just have possession And contract Isn't that enough to explain everything? for example, um any possessor And for example, you loan out anything that's just a contract kind of contract, correct? You could explain it with contract. Couldn't you theoretically explain everything with just possession and contract? Well, I the way I think of contract is is subsidiary to property So when you when you're an owner of a resource that means you have the right to use it or the right to possess it Um, and you can use that and what it means to have a right to use something is really It's not a right to use it. It's a right to exclude people. So it means you can deny people permission to use that thing Um, it doesn't mean possession because that's just the ability to use it So it's the right to they have to get your permission And the reason you have contracts is because it's just the exercise of ownership. So you're saying, okay I'm giving you permission to use this thing That's right when you give some permission And then when you give someone permission, that's a sort that could just be a kind of contract, right? So you're the possessor and then it's just a special kind of contract that you have Oh, you can be the possessor under these circulations That whenever I say I can have possession back Or something like that, but if you don't if you don't own the resource, they don't need your permission So the contract wouldn't have any effect. So I I give you my car and I say I'm gonna loan you my car for a week Would you have to return it? But If I don't own the car as soon as you get it now you're possessing the car. You don't have to return it So the contract well you do because I'll see break the well no because a contract is just A title transfer, right? Yeah It's title of something that you own But if you if there's just possession you're not transferring you're just handing manually possession But once they have the possession of it, they don't need your permission Anymore It only makes sense if you own the resource because if I own the resource And you don't return it at the end of the term now you're stealing something that I I own You can't you can't say I'm doing anything anything wrong unless I'm still the owner The breach of the contract follows from ownership. You would be violating the contract, right? If a contract don't have a You're thinking of a contract as a binding promise Which is what right you agree to give the car But you give the the possession of the car back and you broke the contract, right? Contracts are not binding agreements. So they're just transfers of title to property So in other words, if you don't have ownership Contracts are not what rockport said they are they're not transfers of title because there's no such thing as title There's no such thing as ownership, right? That's what you just said. We have possession not ownership Right So if you have possession Now there is something in the law. So in the law, there's something called the right to possess which I never get into because it's confusing to layman, but um So there's three things really in my writing. I usually talk about possession, which is a factual thing That's how mises talks about it. There's the factual authority over a thing and then there's the legal Right. So juristic and prescriptive and descriptive, right normative Or juristic and and causal and descriptive or factual But there's really three things in the law. There's there's actual possession, which is the ability to control something Which even right robinson cruzo on desert island has And then there's ownership, which is the right to own something Which means that if someone possesses it and you still own it you can get it back from them using the legal process But in between those there's something called the right to possess Which is more of a procedural thing which is like let's suppose you own a house and uh someone Kicks you out of the house You can sue to get them ejected by saying you're the owner But you could also sue to kick them out because they they they disturbed your possession of it But that could work also if you're not the owner So let's say that I go on vacation for a year and I come back and there's someone in my house um They they might be presumed to have the right to possess until you prove you're the owner So until you prove that they have a right to possess and if I physically kick them out The law might put them back in possession of it until we resolve the ownership issue So there's a sort of intermediate thing which I think I'm bringing this up because I think that what you're describing And what the mutualists talk about is really more what they believe in It's not quite fair to say they don't believe in property rights at all They just think that the the statute of the statute of limitations of the abandonment period Is so the threshold is so low that it's a it's almost like This might make right and there's only possession But it's really more akin to the right to possess in the law, but That's a kind of I don't know. I never I think um Yeah, the uh owners the owner left the factory, but the factory is not abandoned, right? I mean that's sort of like a misnomer It's not it's never there's always there's people they're working They just agree that they just have an agreement with the owner that they are So the the mutuals have to disregard freedom of contract, which means that Effectively what you're doing is you're telling someone you can use my property Under this condition under the condition that um any Rights that you would homestead from it if it was declared abandoned or something like that come to me You could it's the same thing for like let's suppose you have a company and there's there's unowned wilderness out there And instead of you going out there and homesteading A farm You pay someone to go do it for you you pay your agent So he goes out there and he homesteads a farm I think the mutuals would have to say he owns it because he did it Whereas the Rothbardian would say The employer owns it because he has a contract with the guy Where the guy agrees to automatically and instantaneously transfer To the employer any property that he homesteads As soon as it happens. So that happens by contract Let's see we we had I had one question in the chat. Um John galt I don't know if you're still here Uh, he says why can't ideas be homesteaded by creating a virtual or tangible representation of them? And that's kind of ran's argument the mistake there is everyone assumes that Creation is a form of owner is a is a source of property rights, but that's a that's a confused notion the only sources of property rights are Our original appropriation and contract that's it So because you can't create things out of we don't really make things even on ransom is we don't create things out of nothing We rearrange things with our intellect But when you rearrange something You have to have possession of it and if you want to own it you have to own the things that go into it So you can own the end result of a productive effort If you own the input factors But you own them not because you created anything you own them because you already owned what went into it So like if I make a car out of my raw materials I owned the car, but I didn't create so I created a car But what that means is I produced the car I rearrange materials that I owned into a into a more useful configuration So I owned the output result because I owned the input result And by the same token an employee on an assembly line working at the Ford Motor Company Does not own the cars that he makes because he is rearranging material owned by someone else So the source of ownership follows ownership of the input factors So creation has never been a source of rights We use our intellect to more efficiently and productively rearrange things making them more valuable which creates wealth And we also use it to come up with ideas and knowledge And that knowledge is useful because it helps guide our actions and make us more efficient in what we do But you never owned these ideas in the first place because they're not scarce resources that can be owned It's just knowledge in your head that guides what you do It's nonsensical to talk about owning it because ownership is an enforceable right a physical Force is a physical thing that applies to in fact It solves the problem of conflict which is violent conflict Which is physical force between two physical human beings with physical bodies fighting over the use of a physical thing That's a tool or a means of action that they both want to use This is all physical. So it only applies to physical things all laws only You know we libertarians forget side of this but we sometimes say that all laws are enforced at the point of a bullet ultimately, right So ultimately it's all about force So force can only apply to physical things physical things are always what force applies to So property rights are always and things that have a material body that can be affected by force So when you have intellectual property law that says you own an idea That's not really true. You cannot own an idea. It's impossible It's just a disguised way of assigning the ownership of a scarce resource Namely someone's factory or their printing press It gives a partial right in that to the holder of the copyright a negative servitude as I said before So it's always about rights and physical things The question is how do we assign those rights and the libertarian and the private law answer is we assign them according to The two principles first first use of it when it's unowned and then Contractual transfer from a previous owner. That's basically all of libertarianism The rest is details What are your thoughts on the Kind of indigenous people question here? Oh, it sounds that sounds Nazi, but I mean like In chili, there's a debate over whether We should give back or the state should give back land to the Mapuche who lived in the south and like I of course is regarded the The argument that it should be given to like the community or Mapuche society But if someone can prove that he or his ancestors Owned a certain piece of land Even if it's in the middle of a city, do you think they they should be given that land? Yes But however, I think in a free society, this wouldn't be a big problem. So what would happen is When you buy property you want to make sure that your title is secure and that someone's not going to come along later And say it was stolen and all that so what you would do is what happens now You would get you would you would get property title insurance and that company would sell it to you They would give you an insurance policy guaranteeing To pay you if you got kicked out later And to make sure they don't have to pay out often they would do a search and they would make sure it's got a clean title Right, so I don't think it would be a real problem in reality It's a problem now because we have the state and the state has messed everything up And they've made it just as impossible and they've created victims So the result If you don't give them restitution It seems like a horrible violation. And if you do give them restitution, it seems horrible because you would ruin a big city But this just means that when the state comes in they fuck things up and they break things and they cause misery and damage And they have done that and the misery the misery is there. It's just who's going to bear it But I think ultimately the libertarian has to say yes if you can prove a claim you should regain your property It's just that it's harder to do as the claims get older and older because the records get lost Witnesses are all dead Claims are not specific anymore But yeah, I think you can make a case You can certainly make a case like I don't believe in Reparation for slavery and all this except you could argue that The federal government is the inheritor of a criminal gang and it's in possession of A lot of property like all the you know millions of acres of wilderness in the u.s Why not auction those off and pay pay the give the proceeds to victims of the state? Including including slaves or people in jail for drug crimes On the question of the reparations. I was thinking Of course, it's going to be a time when it's just too hard to find out who the actual let's say real owner is but in a way it gets me thinking if If we're deriving morality for our condition as humans is there a point in which we have to say that Whenever it is humanly impossible to determine the actual owner or of the actual person with a title The actual right itself has changed And the actual right depends on our human capacity to To determine who who has it Like if someone used to own it so an indigenous people And 300 years later it is simple impossible to determine whether he had it or not Does that mean that it's not his right anymore or is it or or or the right is there? We just are always going to be ignoring it Yeah, I mean, I don't think of rights as metaphysical things that exist in some platonic realm like that It's a practical solution to a problem And there are epistemic epistemic issues to To the if if something is totally unprovable then What can be done? Because any any any realistic system of justice you have to appeal to the community and ask for their For their support on your claim, but if you can't prove it You know all this means is that Crime is possible and injustice is possible. I have a question for you. Um Are you there? I think it froze If there was a free marketing internet services providers, then Um, are you aware of the libertarian and or could capitalist move it Brazil? Yeah, that's why we lost you for a sec How about now you cut out Really? Oh, yeah, am I back now? Yeah, yeah, you're back. I think my son opened the garage door and it messed up with my wi-fi. I don't know why Uh Someone asked about the integral capitalist movement in brazil. Yeah, I've been there. I've spoken there Um, I know it's it looks like one of the largest movements in the world as far as I can tell very yeasty Someone says can ai have property rights? I think so. I just don't think ai is possible anytime soon And yes, I do think it would own the computer. It's running on this is an argument I made with falter block one time and this is similar to my argument for In when I said when to how do we come to have rights? How do babies have rights? It's not really by contract Although you can make some kind of argument along those lines I think it's simply because the baby when he wakes up and has rights. He has the best control over his body So the mom owns the material of that fetus Um until we say that the baby has rights and then she loses it So if a computer network woke up then the computer would lose rights to it and the computer would now own that I guess that's a hard one. Uh, but I don't believe in ai Uh, I've never seen dr. Who Anti ip arguments the existence of ip infringes the property rights of others. Yeah, that's exactly the problem with it That's why I call it negative servitude Uh, one of my high school this from thomas Unless you want to say it here One of your high school friends dads has a library in an extension of the dr. Who question Okay, sorry I like sci-fi, but I just haven't seen dr. Who Oh, I have a question for you stefan. Um, staniel, um, have you are you familiar much with like the They have to call themselves post libertarians And um, they they look at a lot of like the menches bull bug and nrx kind of stuff Yeah I can't get them straight, but yeah, i'm Neo reactionaries and all these guys There's a group of libertarians that are kind of growing like matt erickson Who's like got to show us jason sebelton? It's like andrew guy popular liberty on twitter talk about this kind of stuff Nick cland Yeah, I haven't read much of him But um, I'm just trying to understand like where they're coming from because they talk about let me be like engineering liberty Which seems kind of strange, but we'll also talk about how you know Libertarians as humans liberty is not our highest goal per se, but I guess exactly is but Their kind of argument is like well, we can engineer liberty by using the state. They seem very authoritarian But um, and they're also talking about the leftist a lot And they'll be like the left will like destroy everything We must like stop the left because they'll destroy our order and stuff, which is a little hoppy and sort of a lot of Was highly influenced by han's hoppa even though he may have At least in my opinion misinterpreted some of the stuff that hoppa wrote Yeah, so I just kind of wanted to hear definitely if you had any thoughts on the kind of that whole movement stuff I haven't been able to Read it my eyes lives over when most of them are very meandering and long-winded like a bull bug I think bull bug is brilliant But I can't I can't follow it and he drops all these arcane terms and I don't have time to Google 150 things every time I want to watch something or read something um They don't they argue in this linear fashion instead of like systematically Yeah, I think ultimately they make the mistake that I mentioned before that liberals and conservatives do they they say that liberty is of value But it's just one of many values Once you do that you give up libertarianism I don't think they're libertarians as far as I could tell they're kind of neo fascists or They're almost strong men niche in like The strong will survive kind of guys a lot of them pick up artists bullshit I mean, it's a weird confluence of things right macho men shit. They used the word cuck a lot I don't know. I'm turned off by all of it. I have never learned anything from these people But I haven't read a lot in there either. It just It doesn't seem to me deep libertarian theory that I'm interested in they don't have a lot of principles that I can tell that you can relate to them on Yeah, the one uh neoreactionary uh individual that I sort of uh I guess you could say like is uh that nick land guy, uh, he's sort of like a uh Well, he's not necessarily a neoreactionary person But his ideas certainly have influenced that school of thought he is most known for something called accelerationism Yeah No, is that is that like the worst is better idea like we need to go ahead? No, it's a lot more complicated than that. He took nick land talks a lot about feedback loops and stuff and I think a lot of it stretches back to a lot of Stuff he was doing in the 90s. He used to be a uh I don't know if he still is but he used to be a philosophy professor at this uh university or something down in the states, but basically he uh used to be kind of like a Lefty marxist person, but Yeah, he had a lot of bizarre ideas, which I think Is doing part to the the fact that he was doing he was doing a lot of drugs back in the 90s like a lot of psychedelics and he talks he talked a lot about how Capitalism is no and I'm not joking when I say this that capitalism is an artificial intelligence from outside of space and time trying to seep its way into the material world But since he's come off the drugs he uh in the mid 2000s He read mold bug then made a sharp turn straight to the right and I have no idea what he's doing right now But he's following me on twitter for some reason Um, I guess yeah, I have a few friends that have gone from libertarians more this kind of neo feudalist neo monarchist and feudalist stuff or monarchist stuff and Basically what I notice is they drop they've dropped their opposition to aggression because if you ask them point blank Do you oppose aggression? um principle They'll they'll deflect or evade or change the subject or so. I'll say no like sometimes you they'll say oh Or they'll do that dishonest thing where they'll say well, you need to use you need to use aggression to stop Criminals, which of course is not aggression, right? So they try to equivocate, but they're not against aggression ultimately because Peace is not their only value Right, maybe having the white a white continent is their value. I don't But I'm like I'm loving these guys together because I don't really follow them my closely Yeah And could be best said to be a some kind of an cap if I'm reading him correctly I think he's an an cap Well, I just I just kind of wonder how much of papa is this is fault I don't know if it's his fault at all But like I guess you can take any reader and kind of take him to it because we'll talk about Low time preference and high time preference and like, you know, we'll talk about that a lot But like they'll be like, you know, you're not taking this far enough That's this is one guy at the Andrew popular liberty who was talking to me about it He was like I'm just taking papa's economics to its logical conclusion And you know, but then he's like, yeah, stefan, you're right. Like they don't really care about you know Using state aggression or whatever there's like well, it's kind of necessary, you know Yeah, I think but I always get this niche impulse from these guys And it's kind of scary way, but um I don't like I also don't I don't like to Panic about these guys like like the like the sjw's do. I mean the sjw's are probably even worse in their way, but All right, someone just asked about bitcoin in El Salvador I think it's a very positive thing. I'm not sure what the results would be I don't think the u.s. Is going to do anything about it. I don't think they care I do think other countries will will do something similar Um, the only thing the u.s. Might do is they might modify the u.s tax law to either To change how we treat foreign currency like there's some kind of tax advantages To us citizens once a thing is called a foreign currency So This could help bitcoin use in the us a little bit And if the if the u.s. Doesn't like that they might get rid of that so they just might not respect it as a foreign currency But I don't I don't think they would do anything to El Salvador But I could already adopted as a currency in japan or something as a legal tender in japan or something I don't know. I hear these exaggerated claims by libertarians and I I never get a direct link proving it like to the law It probably was just legalized for some kinds of uses um I don't see why El Salvador would be getting all this pr of the first country to adopt it if japan had already done it So I don't know but I don't think it was done As legal tender and I'm not even sure if El Salvador's law made it legal tender. That's what how people are describing it um El Salvador doesn't really have They they don't have money they have they use the u.s. Dollar So I don't know people some people are saying that Isn't that a little bit counterproductive because then your man the state is mandating the acceptance Of bitcoin right whereas we don't want the state to mandate anything, right? Well, that's what legal tender law does I'm just simply saying that if they declare it legal tender there it could help americans Using it here. Um Yeah, I'm against legal tender law of course But that's why i'm skeptical that it really is like i'm skeptical that If you owe someone a debt in El Salvador Let's say you some some night some 80-year-old shopkeeper you owe him a thousand dollars And you give him bitcoin and he doesn't know what the hell it is. Do you have can he be forced to accept that? I find it difficult to believe that the legal system in el Salvador is going to Force everyone to accept bitcoin and payment for debts But I guess I heard that they can immediately convert it I have one more follow-up With that. I just um, do you think it's a good like uh competing currencies Along with the dollar. Do you think that's a good stepping stone or do you would you think that's counterproductive because I could See like if you were to make other things legal tender for example um gold As legal tender or silver as legal tender or something alongside the dollar just to compete with the dollar So therefore the dollar doesn't have monopoly well, I think that anything that the u.s. government could do to Remove the tax capital gains tax status of bitcoin or gold Would be good and if declaring it legal tender would achieve that that's good um Although again, I don't like people being forced to accept something and payment for a debt if they contract specify some other means of payment, but On the net the net result of such a law would be great And I don't think the u.s. government would ever do it because they want to tax these I have a also but in the constitution doesn't say only gold is legal tender. So how why is it I guess what was the uh, how did We get to the paper money thing if the constitution Doesn't it specifically say that only gold is legal tender? I could be wrong, but I don't think so. I think it says that um I think it gives congress the power to make to to to coin money So that means that they can out they can preempt state laws on it It could be one one national money and I think it could be whatever they want so And and the courts interpret these grants of power very broadly. So just the power to coin money has morphed into the power to Make it paper money Yeah, are you all familiar with Yeah So there is a discussion in brazil That algorithm is not compatible with libertarianism. What do you think? uh to the extent I can understand it and I actually Was listening today to a podcast by uh, victor Coleman who was a science fiction writer who was friends with Sam conkin who was the kind of father of algorithm and he's putting his papers together Had a meaning to read more into his book about that As far as I can tell it's sort of a tactic or a strategy It's saying we should have counter counter Countermarket activity or something so we should kind of deal with ourselves To build up a free market. I don't see I've never heard anything about algorithm that sounds unlibertarian I don't think it calls for violation of rights or not respecting property rights To me, it's just a way people they think you should live And the way you should build up counter economics to fight the state power structures whether it's a good tactic I don't know I I don't know I I don't I don't think it succeeded in the last 50 years Very well, so I guess uber and bitcoin could be Maybe an example of that But to me, I don't know why you need to attach a special label to it and get credit to the agris for that It's just a natural phenomenon people Trying to come up with solutions of To to avoid problems caused by government government, you know government institutions and like government money and I mean, I mean would you say that when people use the home school Or when they send their kids to private schools, is that algorithm because they're not sending the kids to government schools? Yeah, free market. It will be Yeah, it will be like I think there are free markets and and his theory Or more, I don't know but black gray and white and if the government prohibits it It's black market and if it's legal in the libertarian Legal theory it will be counter economics in this sense Yeah, I don't really get in the strategy and tactics I just I'm waiting for liberty to happen on its own because it has to be in my mind liberty has to be natural um It has to emerge on its own because even if we Run around advocating for it all the time. We finally succeed It's just gonna it's gonna fade away because it's not going to have this movement behind it all the time I think for it to for it to succeed forever. It's got to be natural and therefore to get there. It's got to be natural And I think we are moving that direction because of technology and wealth and international trade You know the internet Social media all these things I think are helping it. I think it's happening. Anyway, and bitcoin is going to hasten it along I believe because I'm a big bitcoin enthusiast Yeah, so conkin said that like bitcoin will be a extremely agoristic means Of money like he would say gold In his time because bitcoin wasn't a thing and the internet wasn't a thing but when he Became aware of the internet He said about he talked about cryptocurrencies like in a very early stage and was It it was kind of prophetic It's very nice Yeah, I'm intrigued by him and what's interesting about conkin was in a way. He was the very first guy In the modern libertarian movement to start getting intellectual property rights Um, really, I think was windy mackerel to be honest, but I think she and he were doing things He wrote an early article called copy wrongs if I remember the title right It wasn't comprehensive and it didn't give all the arguments, but it was very good in the right direction And then windy mackerel brought it a whole level further. I think she ushered in the modern anti-it movement in the libertarian movement building upon the earlier work of benjamin tucker, which was Which was good, but it was mired in some of these lefty anti monopoly anti property ideas So conkin was really good on that too and the interesting thing that he was really good friends with with jaynail shulman Who was a who was a good buddy of mine? He died two years ago And he was of course a hyper pro ip guy because he was a novelist, I guess Um and influenced by rand. So it's interesting how these early california libertarians Um, we're there at the beginning of the flowering of a lot of these ideas Is there a bloke with jaynail shulman and windy mackerel and you right? well Yeah, he called it a rigid tense. Uh, it was really, um I think he he took One of his essays and then windy's response to it and got me to write the introduction But it's like a little it's really like three short three articles mixed together. I think I want to read his book is like The moon the earth mr. Is not here No, his book alongside night. Yeah. Yeah, I want to read that I really loved it in college, but I reread it two years ago and I thought I can't believe I like this but but um It's it's got a lot of agorism built into it and he's gotten an appendix talking about conkin's agorism agorism It's an interesting book the movie is horrible, but the book is All I say is I like the book in college. You might like it What do you think is the the best introductory book to libertarian ethics? That's difficult because I used to say it was For a new liberty, but I reread that recently and it's it didn't hold together nearly as good as Rothbard's favorite book for me now is the ethics of liberty. Um, but introduction to libertarian ethics I'd have to think about that. Um, I mean boss deals the law in a way, right? Um, just about The the logic of plunder which is theft and how No group of people Can do anything that their members can't do That I mean that logic is kind of the essence of libertarianism. Um I could I have some lists of books. I had to think about it and let you know depends upon your Your level like if you want to introduction actually jake jake of hubert's book libertarianism today is pretty good I won't say it's advanced, but it's it's really good It's a really good overview of the modern libertarian movement, but from a solid kind of rothbardian Austrian point of view libertarianism today It looks kind of rompoly from the cover, but it's it's it's more than that. It's just pretty good I mean, I'm trying to think about the books that influence me But some of them are dated and some of them are randy and like for a new liberty I mean, I'm sorry, um I'm rands the virtue of selfishness and capitalism the unknown ideal Milton Friedman's book capitalism freedom, but those are more about free market ethics and you know things like that um I'd have to I'd have to think about it We better go in about five minutes. So let's have a couple more questions anyone Don't just say don't don't you accept any level of utility? by at your moral system Do I accept any level of utility like utilitarianism? Yeah We kind of talked about this already. I think that um consequentialism is in other words looking at the consequences of policies and laws is fine and in fact, if you think about it There's consequentialism Is built into any principal defense of liberty because the only reason we oppose A bad law is because it has consequences. So for example, if the government says it's illegal to To use marijuana, but they didn't do anything about it Then we wouldn't care if they just announced it, right? The reason we care is because they will come and get you and put you in prison so It's consequences that we care about really um Utilitarianism usually implies that we can have a policy. We should adopt laws and policies in order to maximize overall utility, but that presupposes that utility is Cardinal has a value of a number attached to it and also that it's intersubjectively comparable In other words, you can compare utility across people So for example, if we were to tax bill gates or billionaires and take Half of their wealth and give it to the poor some utilitarians argue that makes the world better off on the average because The the rich don't value their their their billions as much as the poor do because the poor are so poor So they're actually trying to put numbers on these things or some kind of quantity or magnitude But of course, that's totally illegitimate um, and then the other problem with ethical problem with utilitarianism is You would have to say that if we had a technique to remove one person's eye And give it to a blind person You would have to do that because The person who is has his eye removed can still see He's hurt but not hurt that much But the blind person goes from no site to some site. So he's benefited to a great extent So ethical utilitarianism would lead to all kinds of horrendous consequences. I mean, ultimately we have to have principles Because so for example, I would say that even if you take bill gates's money and give it to someone poor And they value that more it's still wrong because it took bill gates's property. So you ultimately have to backstop everything with principles So consequentialism is fine within moderation But utilitarianism is problematic and I would view utilitarianism as a problematic subset of consequentialism Hey Going back to the books Did you mention Leland Yeager's ethics as a social science or Haslitt's foundation of morality? Do you are you a fan of those ones or Not Leland Yeager really too much. Um Although I haven't read that book too much. Um Haslitt I'm intrigued by um And I think it was in that book where he coined the term co-op cooperatism As a better term for libertarianism, which I kind of like to be honest because it gets at the essence of what we're about We're about a system that allows us to cooperate Instead of having violent conflict Um, I I intend to re I've been intending to read that book from beginning to end I I read through it years ago, but I wonder I want to study it more. I'm intrigued by him actually Mr. Kinsella I don't know if you know, but brazil is the First in the ranking of online piracy In the view of NTI people should I be proud of that? No, I had no problem with I had no problem with um, I have no problem with like I don't agree with some libertarians Like even randy barnett as a quasi anarchist These guys come up with these arguments for why there's uh an obligation to obey the law even if it's unjust law I don't agree with that at all um I think that if the law is unjust and if it's obviously unjust there is no moral obligation To respect that law there could be a prudential obligation like it could be unwise to to to to violate laws But I think evil laws can be evaded And I think copyright is such a law So I think that actually the rise of torrenting and encryption And file sharing and digital information has allowed widespread evasion of copyright law, which is a really really really good thing um What i'm hoping for is something similar could happen to patents When 3d printing matures Now I think this may take 50 years from 3d printing to get to the point where you could print an iphone or a car But I don't see why that's not possible someday But once you have 3d printers that are extremely advanced, I think you'll be able to circumvent patent law Just like we can circumvent copyright law with with encryption right now so you'll think like a 1700 Switzerland but decentralized like no IP laws and everywhere like everywhere is a Switzerland of itself Well, I don't I'm not sure what you mean. Um, I'm I'm an anarchist. So I favor decentralization And as many small city states as possible would be good I'm not sure I see the connection to the ip issue. Um Switzerland had no IP laws in the 1700s. I think it's Switzerland So I was just saying that it will be every houses is a Switzerland of itself well, if a country If a country doesn't have IP law They're not pirating because it's not illegal then piracy means violating the the copyright or patent laws of your country um, so like in china and in brazil and in turkey other countries Piracy is more widespread. It's piracy is widespread in the us too, of course Which just means people are evading the local copyright law um But if a country decided not to have copyright like let's say that um Let's say that switzerland withdrew from the burn convention and they abolished their copyright law That would be completely legal in under international law so If they copied hollywood block clusters and novels and software In that country without permission they they would actually not be doing anything illegal Because you don't but you can't violate us copyright law in switzerland You would only violate swiss copyright law. So that wouldn't even be piracy But I don't see any country doing that but they could countries could do that in brazil like it's something that I don't really understand when I Search for something in english and I want to download it in on the internet in brazil when I search something in portuguese it's So easy and I get so Baffled that if I search something in english, I just can't find it. It's Almost impossible in brazil you search for it. You can't download it. It's great It's very good It may it could be that you know the the big giant well-known tech companies are in the us like google And they they comply with the strict copyright law more maybe it's that I don't know Yeah, you'll see that google search is taken down because of the dmca act and stuff. So that's probably why Yeah, it's that it could be one reason. All right guys. I need to go and thanks for putting up with my Incompetence in the beginning next time. I'm just going to do zoom from the beginning since I know how to make that work Thank you Nice good night