 Alright, welcome everybody, listeners to the seventh episode of the Law of Liberty podcast. I'm Dave with my co-host, Strati, as always, and today is our lucky number seven because we have with us Mr. Stefan Kinsella. Stefan is a patent attorney and the undisputed heavyweight champion of Liberty. Stefan, thank you so much for taking the time today. We really, really appreciate it. It's an honor to finally meet you. Glad to do. We hope we're not some disrespectful punks. So you guys saw the Twitter stuff. You know, that's my Michael Malus inspired filter. You know, that's my mechanism. It's like, listen, I know how this is going to go. If you ask me a question, and if you're not really serious, you know, then let me go in and cut to the chase. Yeah, you know, so that's kind of my, my, my filter, you know. Well, that guy, that guy in particular, I didn't read the entire thread, but he was, he was spouting some, you know, objectivist IP stuff. And I think even after, even after that was over and you had kind of left, he was talking about like how he'd be fine with the one world government and other kind of stuff. So I think one thing leads to the other. They're all tied together. Look, I'm always willing to talk to anyone who has an honest, sincere, serious question. But it's like, come on, guys, don't just throw questions at me and assume things because I mean, Twitter, Twitter and even the Facebook are hard enough to have a rational discussion on because it's such a limited format. So if you really are serious, you know, ask a question or talk about something, make a coherent point, give an argument for it. And that's fine. And then you can have a coherent discussion. But if you have a punk attitude and you really have a, you have a predisposed idea with no backing for it and you're just going to stick with it no matter what, then what's the point? You don't want to be educated and you're not going to educate anyone. So what's the point? I guess that's how I look at it. Yeah, definitely. And we've kind of talked about it before, how Twitter is just kind of not the best platform for deep intellectual discussions. No, no, no, it's not. But it's good for getting news and for getting nuggets from people. And if someone says, okay, look, if you want to learn more, here's a link to something else. But they never do it. I've noticed this among the modern young libertarian movement, like they don't really, they never read. And then they'll criticize you like, oh, you just gave me a barrage of links. It's like, well, what am I supposed to do? Cut and copy and paste for you? It's like, I get these people that email me all the time. I've been in this movement for, you know, 30 years now and been kind of prominent enough to start getting contacts for like 15. And people will just email you out of the blue. Hey, Mr. Kinsella, could you tell me like what to read on A, B and C? And you know what, if that's a polite question, I'll usually take the time to give them an answer. But half the time I'm thinking, you know, there is Google. I mean, this is not that hard. I don't really understand why you couldn't find this without emailing me first. But some people, anyway, total distraction from whatever you guys want to talk about. But Oh, no worries. We enjoy just talking in general. But I know David has a lot of things that he wants to talk to you about specifically regarding law. So David, how about you take that away? Yeah, sure. So, yeah, I got a lot of questions. We may or might not get to all of them. But the first topic I wanted to bring up was I want to talk a little bit about argumentation ethics, because we did an episode where we talked about it. I think it was our third episode, which was about three or four weeks ago now. And I was looking back over the talk you did with Bob Murphy about a year ago, where you talked about that. And you said a lot of really interesting things in that that really got me thinking more about it. And I first heard about argumentation ethics, maybe about four years ago, I think. And I was really, I was really captivated by it. I really liked the argument. So when you were on burning boots, I asked Derek to ask you about the relationship of argumentation ethics to natural rights. And after I heard your answer on that, I realized that one of the questions I had was a little bit more specific than that. And it was more about how argumentation ethics relates to the Izzot dichotomy. And so I'd like to, if I could just take a minute to kind of explain some of the thoughts I've been having on that, and then I can turn it over to you and see what you think. So the Izzot dichotomy was made by Hume, who was an empiricist. And I've heard that you kind of accept that Izzot dichotomy. And I remember seeing a quote by Hoppe, I think, where he talks about how he accepts that. And I think even Mises, I read Human Action last summer, and it seems like he even kind of accepts it, which is why he kind of takes the consequentialist route in his kind of ethical views. But my thought was I kind of, I'm having a hard time seeing how argumentation ethics is kind of sidestepping or not directly taking on the Izzot dichotomy. Because the way I've heard you describe it and Hoppe describe it, you're talking about, okay, you know, we live in a world of scarcity, our nature as arguers, all that kind of stuff. So it kind of seems to me like there are these kind of, you know, these factual Izz things that are being laid out before you reach the conclusion. And also, one of the things I thought was like the epistemology side of it was because, you know, Mises and Hoppe, and, you know, they take that methodological dualism, so they're not empiricists like Hume, that there's a causal realm and the teleological realm. And so my thought was Hoppe talks about the praxeological presuppositions of argumentation. And the way I understand it is that praxeology is and is because human beings act. It's a fact that human beings act and we deduce. And the same thing with the axiom of argumentation. So it seems to me that the way I've kind of been seeing it is it seems to me that it is kind of going from is to ought because Hume couldn't do the is to ought because he was an empiricist. But if you have the methodological dualism, then you're taking that praxeological is and then getting those odds from it because you can't, you can't argue against the praxeological presuppositions of argumentation without contradicting yourself. And contradictions can't be valid. So is there something I'm not understanding? Is there something I'm overlooking? Or do you think this train of thought might be onto something because it kind of seems to me that it is kind of going from is to ought? What's your response? I mean, I think what the way you just described it is roughly the way I think about it. So I think it's basically correct. It seems to me that so, yeah, I think you're right that Hume was an empiricist. Although Hume was brilliant and he had lots of insights and innovations that are very profound, even though he was, I mean, we have to remember a lot of these people from, you know, everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. And so you, you know, if someone makes a mistake, you know, like I criticized Locke. I don't criticize Locke himself, but I think Locke is wrong in the way he interpreted some of his theories, which led to the labor theory of property and then the labor theory of value and then intellectual property and communism and all that. I don't blame him for that. But it's just like tracing out the way ideas work. And, you know, he was dealing with with what he was dealing with at the time. So I don't really blame Hume for his flaws, but I do think his argument for the is-ought gap makes sense. So I agree with Hoppe's, I think, endorsement of it. So he basically, it's just, it's a common sense insight that the is-ought gap is logically unbridgeable, like that's how Hoppe would put it. You can't logically go from an is to an ought. You can't say factually this is the case, and therefore this is what we should or ought to do, because you have to introduce a norm to go from one to the other. And I think that's actually true. Now, I do think that, I was just talking online with Roderick Long, the other day about this, who's an Aristotelian, and he has this, now he's been a critic of Hoppe's argumentation ethics, which I can get into in a second, but he has this Aristotelian version, which is, he tries to sidestep the is-ought problem with what he calls the acertoric hypothetical. Okay, so that means that, so like if you take the Confian framework, which is that there are some categorical statements, like you should do this no matter what, right, but where do you get that from? Or if then, like if you believe in this, like that's a hypothetical, if you believe in the value of life, and if you understand economics, then you should favor a free market system, right, something like that, which is the consequentialist kind of approach, which I think makes rough sense actually. But the problem is the if is always, you could never get under the if, like the positive statement. I mean, even Ein Rand, who was kind of an Aristotelian, recognized this in her entire theory of morality and ethics and rights, when she said that it all rests upon the choice to live. But when she was pressed, like, so if all morality is based upon the choice to live, like quote, as a man, like the Aristotelian phrase, does that mean that you should choose to live as a man? Or you should choose to live? And she basically conceded, I believe, that you could never say that it's immoral or to commit suicide, because, you know, all morals rest upon the choice to live. So you could never have the first moral, which is the choice to live. Like that has to be presupposed as a given, or someone just does it. But this acertoric idea of Roderick is like he sort of takes the content idea of categorical, categorical imperatives and hypothetical imperatives. Categorical is you should do it no matter what, which makes no sense, I agree. And hypothetical, which is always contingent and sort of consequential, it's like, if you believe in human flourishing and human cooperation in peace and prosperity, then you should favor a free market. So it's always contingent. So he says, well, there's an acertorical hypothetical, which is since then, like since you believe in this, then that. Now, I think that's analogous to the Hopian argument, which is that since you believe, you've since that you obviously have demonstrated that you believe in peace and cooperation by engaging in argumentation in the first place to solve these problems instead of violence and fighting. What follows from these shared norms that we've identified by this analysis, right? What follows from that is the libertarian superstructure of norms, which follow from a little bit of logic and honesty and reason and economic analysis applied to the shared norms that we all agree with, which is like peace and prosperity and cooperation. Now, if you don't accept these norms, that's fine. And we're used to, but that's not really a fundamental problem for us libertarians, because we know of the concept of the criminal or the outlaw, the person that's outside the law that doesn't want to cooperate. So the entire idea appeals to the people that do want to be part of a community of civilized society, right? People that do want to, they do value each other, they have some empathy, they do want to have social cooperation and flourishing, and they wouldn't disagree with each other on those basic norms. So then the only question is, okay, well, what higher level political norms or interpersonal norms are compatible with norms that we all share? And if there's someone who doesn't agree with that, either they don't agree on the logic that deduces the higher level norms from these basic norms, or they don't accept the basic norms. And if you don't accept the basic norms, in a sense, you're the same as a lion or a tiger or a hurricane to me. You're just, as Hoppe calls it, a technical problem to be dealt with. And that poses a very small moral issue as well, because you know, I don't say some moral problem dealing with the danger of a polar bear attacking me or a lion or a tiger or a hurricane or a disease. I just have to deal with it as a technical problem. And if someone puts themselves outside of the province of society and law, then that's how you deal with them. And whether humanity can survive or not, given these realities, it's just another contingent technical question. It seems like we have so far for a few thousand years, so apparently it's possible and apparently society makes sense. And so for those of us that want to be civilized and share certain norms, so I think it emerges from that. So the question then would be why do we have shared these certain norms? What are these norms, right? From an ought, from an is statement? I don't think so. But I don't think you need to. That's not the purpose of political philosophy or law. You wouldn't even come to this question if people didn't come together trying to arrange your affairs in a way that we can solve problems in a way that lets us live together in a mutually cooperative societal way, to be long-winded about it. Sorry. No, it's okay. It's okay. So I think the main point is, or the main contention, I suppose, or the point for me that I'm not really quite getting is the sense part. I get what you're saying that since we're arguing, you've already shown that you accept these norms because you're arguing. You prefer peace to violence and etc. But can't you take that back to an is? Because it's like we have scarcity, conflictability, so we can come into conflict. So that's a fact, that's an is. And the only way we can resolve those conflicts is through argumentation because the very fact that we're talking about this at all right now is that we're engaging in argumentation. And so isn't that an is that precedes that sense? Okay. So look, first of all, I was just summarizing like Roderick Long's approach and trying to show how even though he probably disagrees with me, there's a similarity in this. I think there's a similarity in all these views. Like I don't think there's a I think I think consequentialism, not utilitarianism per se, which I think is a subset of consequentialism. But I think consequentialism and deontological or natural rights or principle type ethics are compatible because we're all talking about the same world. And they have to dovetail together. So I'm not surprised that they dovetail. So they shouldn't that I think that the Aristotelian perspective on things was even Rothbard, excuse me, Rothbard to a degree shared like Rothbard was a more Aristotelian influenced thinker and even he endorsed Hoppe's more Kantian influenced approach to things. To my mind, this just because imagine that there's another alien of another species of beings and another planet and they have a totally different language and concepts. And you know, if we meet them or they meet us, we both achieve a certain level of understanding of the world and the universe and natural laws and morality and interpersonal relationships. So even though we have different languages to describe it, we're always talking about the same universe, just like the guys with the elephant, you know, one guy's feels the tail and fills the trunk. They're all talking about the same thing. So I think that ultimately, it's, it's, we're describing grapple with the fact of conflict and only certain people want to do that. The people who don't want to do it, you ultimately have to treat them as a problem to be to be solved. So I guess I don't pretend to be a philosopher. I know my limits. I know what I'm good at and what I'm I'm just an amateur at. My personal opinion, but again, I'm not talking as a philosopher, is that in a way, the Hopiian approach is a way, it is actually a way to bridge the isodicotomy. I don't think he would put it that way. I think he just says it avoids the problem. But I do think that humor is right that you can't logically go from an is to an ought. But the gap is not unbridgeable. You can bridge it by recognizing that there are some primordial or primal or or ought, which are necessarily shared by people that engage in argumentation. So I think that the Hopiian approach, which is based upon, you know, some previous discourse ethics work of Habermas and other guys is more coherent and powerful than the achetoric hypothetical of the sort of realistic libertarian Aristotelians like Roderick Long, because they're sort of trying to combine Continism and Aristotelianism together. Podge Podge thing. I think it roughly works, but it's sort of an uncomfortable alliance. So I do personally my personal belief. I don't think it matters that much, which is why I'm saying it. I'll tell you what my opinion is as an amateur, but it doesn't matter that much because in the end, in the end, even if I'm wrong, we still come together as people that have commonly shared values and we take those for granted and we build upon them. So we're going to build upon these commonly shared values and we're going to appeal to them. Like when I make an argument to someone, like this is libertarian, the libertarian argument is to a normal person who's not a libertarian. You're telling them that, look, you're basically libertarian like I am because we both believe in peace and prosperity and human cooperation and harmony and society and all this kind of stuff. But don't you understand that the policies that you are in favor of on this side are in conflict with the basic views that we both share. So you're trying just to direct their attention. You're not trying to prove the basic norms. You're trying to direct their attention to the fact that agree with the basic norm that you agree with and that they agree with or that you share. Only say agree with because it's not a truth statement for peace and prosperity preference in a sense. So I'm allying with a group of people that I have some commonality with in basic preferences. Certain division of labor and a certain degree of societal development where you have enough wealth to even entertain these questions and do these things, really going on. And I think that's what Hoppe is getting at Asian Ethics idea. He is saying that to understand in a deep way the nature of justification of a norm or a value proposition, right, you have to recognize that there has to be a justification and that has to be that has to happen through discourse among human beings or people that are intelligent and that trade ideas and that are trying to use reason to get at the truth. And therefore this can only happen in a context and the context is always basically a proto-libertarian context because you can't have a conversation if you don't have the right to use your body and you're not being coerced to give the right answer, right? So like just that little tiny, if you admit like a little sliver or core of normative insight or normative presuppositions into the idea of normative discourse, you've given up the ghost and you can't, you can't then criticize people like us for having some norms or values that interlace our arguments because once you admit one little tiny thing, you've admitted this. And this is sort of part of my point that I tried to make against my friend Bob Murphy and my ex-friend Jean Callahan in our exchange a long time ago when they criticized Hapa. I said, would you, would you can see that there are some things presupposed by the participants in discourse per se? Yes. Are some of those things normative? And there was sort of an uneasy, I think, a rough yes. But once you can see that, okay, then what does that imply? And then I think libertarians can take charge and we can use our economic reasoning and our consistency and all that to go to level 11 on the dial. But once you let a little sliver of normativity in, I think that we win. Yeah, I definitely agree with you that ultimately it doesn't really matter. I mean, because, I mean, whether or not Hapa bridged the Isaac app or sidesteps or whatever, like I still think the argument is sound. It's just, I thought it was an interesting question about the, the Phillips. And by the way, this is, and this, I don't mind answering questions about Hapa, but, you know, this is Hapa's argument, not, it's not exactly mine. I just had been a fan of it. I have my own sort of theory called Ostopo, which is kind of based upon it. But it's a whole different framework for the rights, not different, but it's a different approach, which Hapa endorsed. But so I'm kind of answering what I think the hoppy and would answer instead of my own view on rights. Exactly. In this regard. Well, that's a great segue to our next question. And this is one that David has been very excited to ask. So David, how about you take it on? Yeah, well, I wanted to ask you about your Ostopo theory, because we brought it up a little bit in one of our earlier episodes. But I don't think I explained it quite right. So could you maybe just give a rundown of what your Ostopo theory is and how it's different from argumentation ethics, how it's based on it? What do you think it's doing that argumentation ethics like didn't or, you know, can you just kind of give a rundown of Ostopo? Yeah, let me let me try. So, you know, this is interesting because this is everything I'm talking about here that we're talking about. This is pretty high level stuff. So we're already making lots of people tune out or maybe this is your audience. I don't know. This is what we're doing. This is what we're here for. Okay, this is that's true stuff. So I'll tell you the way I think about it. So I was in law school a long time ago, and I was a libertarian already, and I was a libertarian, I think, looking back on it. And the only reason I'm going to biography is because I think it helps to frame things to think about how these ideas emerge, right, and how you stumble across them or what attracts you to them. And when I read Hoppa's argumentation ethics, I was like, yeah, that makes sense because here's like a really hardcore, final defense of rights, because the other ones are good. But like the Randian, the natural rights arguments, they're all pretty good. But they're all, if you see through it, they're all hypothetical, right? And if you have this sense of this is thought problem, you know, you kind of have nagging problem with them. And then, but for me, what the essence of libertarianism is, is that, okay, you have to conceptually identify what rights are. And you have to distinguish it from things like power, which is why the is-ought dichotomy makes sense, because Hume is distinguishing, and like even Mises does this a little bit in his works, like he distinguishes between the way things are and the way things should be, or the way he puts it, you know, possession versus ownership, legal ownership by a system, what you should have or what you ought to have versus what you do have and have control over, right? Which is why he like can have his whole Robinson Crusoe example, like, you know, a guy or maybe that's Rothbard, I can't remember, but you know, you can imagine economically a guy on a loan on an island, and he has possession of resources and he uses them. But there's no norms at all. There's no, well, I wouldn't say there's no morality because I'm a little bit Randian, but, you know, he's not hurting anyone's rights. He's not hurting anyone else. So if he does anything wrong, right? So, sorry, remind me where we were. Stop, I would just want to ask, you know, yeah, what's, what's the basic argument? So in libertarian, in libertarian thinking, there's basically a symmetry, like a symmetry idea, like, I'm not a pacifist, right? I can use force against you, but only in response to you're using force against me, which means initiate. So like, you're the initiator, and I'm a, I'm a responder, defensive or retaliation or whatever. But the point is, there's a symmetry there. And this is sort of why all the libertarian ideas about defamation law and blackmail and all these other things make sense because even like, oh, okay. So if you want to say that you have a right to the copy of your, of your movie, you know, file. Okay. And if I violate that, that's fine, but I'm not violating with physical force by copying it. So you can retaliate against me, but it has to be proportional and symmetrical. So you could copy mine. Okay, that's fine. But you can't use physical force against me because once you do that, that's disproportionate. And you're, you're going from one realm to the other, right? So like, there's this sort of symmetry built in. So it like, if I insult you, you can't punch me because I didn't punch you. But if I punch you, you can punch me back. If I use physical force, you can use that. So physical force can only be used in response. So to me, there's this idea of symmetry built into the libertarian idea. And so in, in law school, I started learning in contract law about this idea of a stopper, which is, it's one of the legal ideas about how contract law has developed. It's about how you can get out of a contractual obligation. I'm sorry. It's how you can be be bound to a contractual obligation, even though you didn't sign the contract, let's say, to be simplistic. And the idea is that if you do something, so the normal idea is that to have a contract, to be bound to an obligation, you have to have an agreement with another person. You both make certain statements. You exchange certain understandings. And then you each give each other some kind of promise of consideration, like a dollar, $10 or, or whatever, whatever it's going to be. And that makes the contract valid, right? So that's kind of standard contract law. Now, the problem is that would sometimes result in, in, in what people would call inequities. Inequities means an injustice or an unfair result. So for example, if I showed up at your house, like if person A calls me to paint his house, and I show up at person B's address on accident, like his next door neighbor, on accident, and I start painting his house. Okay. So theoretically in the law, I'm committing trespass. I'm painting someone's house. Now, probably Pearson person B wants me to give him a new paint job and do his house. Now, person B shows up and sees me painting his house, and he realizes, oh, this guy is accidentally painting my house instead of my neighbor's house. He's made a mistake, but I'm going to be quiet about it. Let him continue painting. Let him finish a job. And then I don't have to pay him because I don't have a contract with him, right? I'm going to get something for free, which the law calls unjust enrichment or whatever. So this doctrine of a stop-all would be invoked to say, okay, no, you technically, you don't have a contract with a, like homeowner B doesn't have a contract with a painter. So the painter couldn't use contract law to sue me to make me pay him. However, if he did sue me, my defense normally would be I don't have a contract and he hasn't fulfilled his burden of proof. But the doctrine of a stop-all would step in and say, well, I'm a stopped or prevented from saying that I didn't have a contract because my behavior led him to rely upon the understanding that was going on. And he painted my, so like, I walked up, I waved, I'm thinking, I'm going to scan this guy. This guy made a little innocent mistake. This is similar to the idea that you have to like mitigate damages. Like if someone harms you, yeah, they owe you a recompense or a restitution. But you have a duty to mitigate damages. If they do a thousand dollars worth of damages, you can't just let the fire rage that they started and say, oh, it was 100,000 now. Like you have to take reasonable steps to mitigate. So there's all these reasons, and that's part of equity law, which is part of the English Common Law. Anyway, this is where the idea of a stop-all came from. So when I was learning about this in contract law, it occurred to me, well, this is sort of the reasoning behind the libertarian idea of symmetry, right? Like, if I harm someone by my voluntary actions, and then if they seek to come after me later for damages or for punishment or something like that, then the reason that they can't, that the reason that they have this claim is because I don't have a good defense. And I don't have a good defense because I did the same thing to them. So that's, so I would be stopped. And so they would have the right to claim. So to me, that was like the beginning in my mind of an idea of how you could justify libertarian rights. And it's related to Hoppe's thing, but it's different in various ways. So anyway, that's my own perspective on it. That's actually how I got close to Hoppe. I wrote him and I sent him my review essay of his book in 1994 when I was a young lawyer with this article reviewing his second big English language book and including ideas for my stuff and his stuff. And, you know, so we became fast friends. So they're related, but they're, I would say, like an extension of Hoppe's idea. So basically the argument is that like if you were to commit violence against somebody, if you were to aggress against them, then you can't then say in court that he doesn't have the right to aggress against me for restitution because he did that exact same thing. So then he'd be contradicting himself and the court will stop you because you're going against your prior actions. You're arguing against your prior actions. Exactly. So basically it's relying upon the contradiction there that and this whole argument I think I've come to see rests upon a really legalistic notion of rights, which I have because I'm a lawyer and I'm a civil law lawyer because I went to school in Louisiana, law school in Louisiana, which is a civil law state, which has a certain particular way of looking at these things. Where and not all libertarians do this because they're not lawyers or legal scholars or careful thinkers, but legal thinkers, but you understand that all rights are correlatives of obligations, right? Now, libertarians recognize this in a rough way when they loosely recognize that positive rights legitimate, like they have this innate opposition to positive rights like welfare rights because they kind of recognize that, well, if I have a positive right to receive some kind of assistance or welfare, then the correlative of that, now they would never use this word, but the implication of that is that someone else has a duty to provide it to me. You're affirming ownership in yourself, but then you're saying that the other person doesn't have ownership in themselves that I can extract something from you, but you can't extract something from me, right? Right. And that's more of an even a Rothbardian point like communism doesn't work because everyone owns each other and like so no one owns anything. So yeah, but the point is that like these things come into conflict if you start diluting and distorting and muddying up what rights and ownership mean, and this is the problem with intellectual property, by the way, and other things, welfare rights and inflation of the money supply. If you think like, oh, if people are poor, let's just print more money. Well, printing more money makes people more poor because it dilutes the power of money. And if you grant people welfare rights or positive rights, it has to come at the expense of negative rights, right? And so you have this idea, this innate idea among libertarians that they're opposed to positive, positive rights because that implies positive obligations and positive obligations is basically slavery. Now, I will say that one exception to this in my view is that if you're a parent or if you do something harmful to some other person, like you have some causal, in other words, I'm not opposed to positive obligations per se, just unchosen ones. Just like I would say that I'm not opposed to transfers of property, as long as it's consensual or voluntary, right? But if the government decrees it and no one chose it or was responsible for it coming about, then it's unjust. That's taking, and that's what intellectual property is, right? So it's like the government telling you, so for example, if you own a house in a subdivision, which is part of a restrictive covenant, you know, community, and everyone's agreed that no one can paint their house an ugly color or use it for a pig form, something like that, they've all agreed to this what is called law negative servitude or negative easement. So everyone has a limited property right in each other's property. So every neighbor basically has a partial property in a neighbor's house. It's not a right to use it, but it's a right to prevent them from using it a certain way. And that's perfectly legitimate. The agreement is consensual, right? Which it usually is. But in patent law and copyright law, it's basically an unconsentative negative servitude. That's the problem with it. Like taxes, like there's nothing wrong with me giving money to you. But if the government makes me give it to you, then it's coerced and it's theft. It might be triangular. I think Rothbard has this taxonomy in his book, Power and Market, triangular intervention or between two people buy something. But it doesn't matter. The point is, if it's coerced, if it's theft, then it's not voluntary and consensual, right? Yeah. And that I think that kind of ties into why Rothbard was wrong in Ethics of Liberty about the example with starving your children or whatever. It's like, because of your actions by creating a vulnerable human being that's totally relying on you and can't survive on their own, like by your actions of procreating, you've assumed an obligation to take care of that individual until they're at the point where they can take care of themselves, right? It's a voluntarily taken on positive obligation for another person. I think, I mean, I personally think that's correct. However, I think in practice, he's basically right because just as a human being living on the earth, it's hard to imagine a legal system that's going to impose a duty on a parent to be a good parent. I mean, if you have to be forced to be a good parent, I don't really think it could be a good parent and probably the kid should be taken away. However, it could have implications in some narrow cases, like if you're Michael Jackson, let's say, and you have half a billion dollars, and you have a child that has some physical or medical problem, I do think that you have, I think there's an argument in May that you have a duty to take care of them because what's the alternative? It's either society is going to do it through the welfare system, so why should I pay for Michael Jackson's kids welfare, right? Or the kid is left on his own. Now, in most cases, he can probably be adopted. So the agreement's a little bit academic because it doesn't make that much difference. But I do think in theory, a parent does acquire obligations to their children because of their actions. So it's not like a normal positive obligation, which the state says we have, because we're a part of society and we've agreed, like the social contract nonsense. I don't have a right to support my neighbors by paying taxes to make sure that they have a basic guaranteed income. But I actually decided to create this child. So there's a difference, I believe. Now, I don't know if a lot of libertarians agree or disagree with me on this, but I actually think this could have implications for the abortion argument, but that's a hairier question. All right. So in the last answer, you mentioned easements a little bit. Now, Stratty has a question regarding easement studies that he would like to ask. Stratty? Yeah. So I was curious about how easements and use rights would apply to Native Americans. And what did they own and what reparations are they owed, if any? That's a good question. I think this one, we don't have a, well, put it this way. I think we kind of all know what the answer is, and we don't like it, but it means that basically, you know, there are certain victimized groups who have a right, like basically the Blacks and the Native Americans in the U.S. I think in some cases, some people do, look, earlier on they would have had a claim, right, because they were the ones who were victimized. Now it's their kids and it's where the kids are then and all this. I'm torn between the idea of a statute of limitations idea and just this kind of let the heavens fall idea, like where if the Indians want to claim Manhattan back, they get it back. Now, I think that it's a practical matter over time for a given person to claim, to make these claims. But in theory, I believe that property rights and justice claims don't expire. And if you can prove it, then you get it back. Now as a practical matter, I believe that what would happen in society, given the realities of these past possible claimants cropping up from time to time, would be title insurance practices where, like if I buy a mansion, I want to make sure that if I spend the money to buy it, not just a mansion, but a house anywhere, in any piece of property, I want to make sure that no one's going to come after me for it later. And so what you would do is you would hire a title insurance company like people do now and they would do a search and they would try to figure out who owns it. And if it's unclear, they would try to, you'd have to figure that out or you wouldn't buy it, you wouldn't risk it. So I think basically, I know a lot of libertarians like some of my friends, I'm not going to mention names, but they hate this idea that you can theoretically resurrect old claims to get your property back. But to me, in principle, there should be no limit. If you can make a solid claim, now, whether you can translate that to the restitution thing that the African-Americans want to do, I don't think so because that's so generalized at this point. There's no specific victims and no specific aggressors alive anymore. So, however, if you could find a plantation like in Louisiana or somewhere, which is now owned by the direct descendants of the original owner and the original slaves, kids can come out, maybe they should get it back. Yeah. I mean, I don't strongly disagree with that. But of course, that's not what the restitution is that they're asking for. But in my personal view, there's no theoretical time limit on getting your scarce, tangible property back if you can identify it and if you can prove it. It's just that it gets harder over time. It gets really hard to do over time. Now, that may not be true in the future. That might be true in our perspective from 2020, looking back 200, 300, 400 years because the records and everything were worse. But if you start from 2020 and you go 200 years forward, records are better. Maybe they could prove it. On the other hand, now, we have a different type of slavery. We have taxation. So, then you get into the whole problem of you know, if we ever achieve libertarian utopia, how do we unwind this thing? What do we do? But the problem with this whole mentality is that there's nothing to give restitution with. We're basically bankrupt. It's not like there was like a zillion bars of gold that had been distributed and we can just put them back into the owner's pockets. The problem is that lives are destroyed and there was loss incurred and it can never be recaptured. Sorry, that's my hopper ringtone. So, I think if we took over the state tomorrow, the state doesn't have enough resources to make restitution to everyone that is harmed. This is the problem with the state. It causes damage. It damages lives. So, like 99% or 90% has been done, it's gone. It's evaporated. It's like when a company goes bankrupt and every investor gets two cents on the dollar, 10 cents on the dollar. So, I think that's the best that could ever happen in a real winding up. So, it's just impossible to make restitution. If it was possible to make restitution, it would kind of imply that the state is not a problem in the first place because it's actually producing wealth or not destroying wealth. Which is not. So, my view is I'm pro-restitution and I'm pro-people being able to get their property back if they can make a claim to it. I just think it's really difficult. Right. Does that make sense? Does that make sense, your question? And that kind of ties in with in law, like the difference between legal theory but then the application of legal theory because those are kind of two distinct issues, right? And I think I heard an interview that you gave with the YouTuber GrossfriheitTV, a German guy. I think he talked to you at one of the PFSs. And that's, you talked about how like Randy Barnett talks about the difference between like legal theory and then the application of that legal theory. And that's. Abstract and yeah, he talks about abstract versus concrete legal principles. Right. That's, I think that's part of it. But I think part of it also is understanding what law really is. Like, there's a weird blend of the sort of pragmatic consequentialism of amesis and the way legal systems work and the way we have to theorize about these things. So, for example, Mises recognized in socialism, his book, the distinction between ownership and possession. And he recognized that, so you'll get these people that are critics of libertarianism. They'll say like, well, if you're in favor of blocking of them and homesteading, well, then the whole thing falls apart because you could never, you could never prove title of your property. I guess back to what? Adam? Adam and Eve in the garden. I mean, so like, because they're saying that like, because. That was the argument that that Locke was arguing against. I can't remember the guy he was responding to when he wrote, yeah, free to sound government. Fill something. He was trying to trace the title of the kingship back to Adam, right? Well, I think, so I think what Locke was trying to do is Locke was trying to argue that, so I think here's what happened is you had, you had people defending the existing regime, right? The elites. So they wanted to defend the monarchical idea. Even the people that were not the monarchs, but they were dependent upon this feudalistic system or whatever. So they had to kind of promote this myth idea that, okay, God gave earth to Adam and Adam was the first king of the earth and then everything came from there. So all these guys are emissaries of God and they're the true owners and you're all serfs and subsidiaries or whatever. And Locke said, well, God gave the earth to Adam, but most of it was not used. It was in commons and he gave everyone ownership of themselves. And therefore, everyone has the right to go use a resource as long as they leave enough and it's good for everyone else. This so-called blocking proviso. So I think he was trying to come up with a way to bend this biblical religious narrative into a natural rights thing where the monarchs are now, yeah, they have a special place, but they're limited in what they can do. Like they're the guardians of the people rather than their ruler or something like that, you know? So I think that's what he was trying to do. And I don't blame him for that. I think it was brilliant. But part of his argument took some unnecessary detours, in my opinion, which I've tried to lay out in some of my talks. And the main thing I believe and I think it was a mistake that he made. Well, I can't say it was a mistake. I see why he did it. I think it's wrong. But he basically said, God gives you ownership of yourself and therefore you own your labor and therefore you own these things that God gave to the world in common if you mix your labor with it, because, you know, the typical lacking argument. And so it's like a convoluted argument to overcome the monarchist, basically, right, and to overcome unlimited government, to come up with some argument for limited government rooted in theological Western ideas, which it did do. But then it led to this labor theory of property, like so property comes from your labor. So labor is something that you own. And then this led to ultimately led to communism and Marx and the labor theory of property. I'm sorry, labor theory of value. And then and also the intellectual property, because, you know, then you start giving this idea that, oh, we have property rights and things, that's great. And the reason you have a property right is because it's sort of a kind of reward or a natural result of your labor, which you own or, you know, it's like this kind of all these metaphorical vague notions, which most of them correspond with their intuitions about justice and practicality, like the way the world works, you know, like if you work hard, you tend to do better. So people tend to think if you work hard, if you spend your labor on something, you tend to succeed. So over time, when the law starts protecting the foundations of all this, people start thinking, well, property rights come from your labor and your effort. And if I produce something, I have a right to it. So then you have intellectual property, and you have the complete confusion of the law, which I think was spawned by this sort of walkie and defensive maneuver, right, against Fulmer and, you know, Fulmer, I think it's Fulmer, if I know I'm here. But what do I know, I'm not a political scientist. This is just my kind of... I think I have a good argument for the way libertarian rights have to work and the way scarcity works and the way economics interplays into this and why intellectual property law and all these things are bad, and why we claim rights and what it needs to claim rights. When you go a second level beyond it and start talking about how it arose, it's almost like when you have a friend who's a nut on something, and you know he's a nut and you can explain why he's a nut. I mean, you can explain why his arguments are nutty, but then you start trying to explain why he became a UFO nut or whatever. Then you're psychologizing. You're trying to explain like a level above. Like, okay, we're taking for granted this guy's wrong about UFOs or appearances or whatever crazy crap he believes. But I think it's because his mother abused him when he was young. So, okay, and you might be right, you might be wrong, but you're trying to explain... You're trying to psychologize. You're trying to explain why he was wrong. So, I think like some of the stuff you're asking me is like that. Like, okay, why did we arrive at the current situation, which is obviously wrong? Okay, I think maybe it's because of this or that. And I really am not enough of a political scientist to be confident to be sure. I'm pretty sure I'm right, but especially because no one else touches this stuff with an awareness of what's wrong with the current system like I like I do. So, I feel like he gives me a little bit of advantage. I'm really sure about what's wrong with the current system. So, that gives me a heightened perspective on, well, maybe how did it come about? But whether I'm right or wrong about that part, it doesn't really matter. The current system is wrong. How it came about is almost irrelevant, but can be illuminating. Yeah, for sure. So, just building a little bit off of the distinction between, you know, the abstract legal principles and the practical ways the legal system enforces it. I just last night, I was doing some work on a law school assignment and I was on high and online, and I saw an old article that you had released with one or two other people, I think from like 97 or something like that, where you talk about the exclusionary rule. And I haven't read it, but I was just curious, what was your argument in that paper? Because, you know, that kind of gets into that issue of we have the Fourth Amendment, which is this abstract principle, but then the exclusionary rule is the practical way that they try to enforce it. So, what were your kind of arguments in that paper? Yeah, so here's what's interesting. So, I have a book, you can see my picture. I have a book coming out probably in about three months. So, I'm doing this book. Can you see the picture? Yep. Law in a Libertarian World. Right. So, in that book, I'm collecting my essays and things, and I'm actually not including that essay. I think that was by me and Walter Block and Pat Tinsley, if I recall. I'm not including it, not because I disagree with it, because I actually still agree with everything in it. It just doesn't fit into the sort of theoretical thing. And it's really mired in American constitutional law. The argument in that thing was really narrow, if I recall. It's basically, and I think it doesn't relate too much to the abstract concrete thing. It's more the logic, analyzing the logic of the, comparing the logic of libertarianism to the logic of what the constitution will say. And also appreciating the federal system. So, there's lots of things there. So, first of all, I don't believe that the constitution applies to the states at all. Like, I'm even way more anti-federalist, or whatever the word is, than say, or federalist. Even Tom Woods is like in his nullification. I don't think the constitution, now, as a practical matter, it does bind them now. But the original, the way I look at the constitution is that it was an experimental compact between 13 new states, who are all sovereigns, and it was clear that they had the right to leave. And so therefore, if any state, so-called, violates the constitution, then the remedy is that the federal government and the other states can kick them out of it. It's like if you join the Elks Club and you don't come dressed properly, they can eject you. If Louisiana or whatever did and abide by the rules, they could be kicked out of the club. But you can't go to war against them. Like, you can't make them stay part of the union. I don't think the federal government has any power. But even if you go with the mainstream view, and let's forget about federalism and that, the exclusionary rule is the idea that the federal constitution, and maybe even some state constitutions, provides certain rights to people, like the right to not be like the Fourth Amendment. Like, you can't be invaded. You can't be searched and seized unreasonably or without a warrant or whatever. So the exclusionary rule is the idea that if a state criminal court tries to convict you of a crime in court and criminal court and they want to use evidence against you. Now, if part of the evidence they got came from an illegal search and seizure, illegal under the Fourth Amendment or the state equivalent thereof, then the exclusionary rule says that the defendant has the right to exclude that evidence. Now, as a libertarian, who's opposed to most if not all state criminal trials, I am actually in favor of the application of and the substance of that rule. But I don't think it actually follows from the Constitution. Like, just because the government obtained evidence illegally doesn't mean that they can't use it to convict you. The question for me would be whether it's probative or not. Like, probative means whether it's a type of evidence that tends to prove whether you did the crime or not. So if it's a legitimate crime like, you know, murder or theft or something like that, and the government obtained the evidence by some search that was illegal, then the defendant would have the right to sue the government separately for damages for this breach of his civil rights or maybe reduce his sentence or something like that. And by the way, half the time it's not even a violation of his rights, it's a violation of some third-party rights, and so it's got nothing to do with the defendant. So we were trying in that article to say that the exclusionary rule is not mandated by the Constitution or by libertarian law. So the ultimate issue should be the justice of convicting and punishing someone for committing a crime. So then the question is, is it a real crime that they did it? And then what's the proportionate retaliation or response to that? But if someone's actually guilty, then the fact that you got evidence of it by an illegal search and seizure, so that was the argument there. All right. So I think Strati has a question about IP that I'd like to say next. Strati? Yeah, so I get into it a lot with people I go to school with about IP and why I think it should be abolished and why I think it's a bad thing. And the usual rebuttal I get is if I wrote a book or made a movie and someone was to go copy it and then sell it themselves. So I wanted to ask, is it possible to have IP via contract? Can you condition the sell of a book on not copying the informational content of the book? Let me ask your question. So are you in law school too? I am not. I am considering it. But law is just the interest of mine. Okay. So Dave is in law school? Yes. That's right. Interesting. I have several ways of responding to that kind of question. Number one, I think you can do anything you want with contract within the bounds of libertarian contract here. So yes, so you can, if you want to sell a book to someone and you want to have a contract with them, which specifies what they can do with it, you can do that. Now, you have to realize that, so I have a contract theory article where I argue against inalienability, I mean, I argue for inalienability. In other words, I don't think you could sell your body into slavery. Or I think that contract cannot be enforceable for various reasons. But even if you could, that wouldn't really affect my analysis that much. But the reason I mentioned that is because that's ultimately what you're saying is that like, so we have a contract where, so like, I sell you a book and I don't want you to use it in certain ways. So before I let the book go and take your $5 in payment for the book, I'm going to insist that you, what, make a contract with me, what, not to use it in certain ways. That's fine. And I can see that in certain business arrangements where two companies, you know, have a joint venture and they share technology and they want to keep it secret for a while or whatever. But the nature of a book usually is that it's a thing that's going to be published and be made public. And the purpose of the book is to teach people or for people to learn from it or be influenced by it. And not only that, most people that buy books are consumers and they're paying, as I said, $5, $10, $20 for a book. Not a big sum of money and they're doing it for convenience, just to get a little piece of bundle of paper that has some words on it that they can read and enjoy and learn from. So if the seller tells them, before you buy this book, you need to sign on the dotted line that you're selling your soul to me, you know. In other words, you have to agree to pay a huge amount of damages if you copy this or give a copy, give it to someone else or if you make a copy or if you learn from it and you make a, you make a sequel because it influenced you or whatever. Most people, I think, that are intelligent and aware of the way the law works, no, I'm not going to, I'm not going to buy a $10 book and obligate myself to potentially millions of dollars of damages if I use it in a way you don't like. I want to, like, if you buy a shovel, you know, for your tomato garden and the seller wants you to agree on all the ways you can't use it in the future and if you ever use it or sell it to the wrong person, you're going to owe them a million dollars, you'd say, screw off, I'm not going to buy the shovel for you, right? Or the contract just wouldn't be enforced because it's ridiculous, it's absurd. So I think that you could have a contract in theory, but I think they just wouldn't work. But the real point is that even if you did do that, it still wouldn't be IP. So intellectual property, and this is a legal concept or legal understanding that makes most people's eyes close over, but real quickly I'll tell you, I'll tell you this, most people that are proponents of copyright and patent would completely agree with me and they would oppose not agree with me, but they would oppose moving to a contract-based system because they understand, they know, that IP is not based upon contract and can't be based on contract because IP is, so in the civil law, there's something called an infersonum and an in-rem right. In-rem right is a real property right good against the world. Like if you own your car or your body or your land, you own that good against the whole world. Even if, so you don't have a contract with a guy in Taiwan or a guy in Kansas or a guy six miles down the road, but you still own your car and your property, even though you don't have a contract. So those are called in-rem rights or real rights or real property rights. They're not based upon contract. It's based upon the fact that this is a scarce resource that only there can only be one owner or two and the relevant legal jurisdiction has, excuse me, assigned an owner to it and it's not, it's this person, not someone else. So that's the way it works. Contract rights in the law is called the law between the parties because, and there's a concept, you have to have privity of contract for it to be valid. So A and B have a sale contract between each other. So if I sell you a book and I, and you agree not to use it in a certain way, okay, that's fine. And whether legally, like legal scholars could dispute this, they could say, well, here, how do we view this? Maybe the book is legally co-owned, like this physical book is co-owned, like if you share an apartment with someone, or if you co-own a car with your best friend, whatever. Maybe that's the way to look at it, or maybe it's a contract. It doesn't matter. It's still an agreement between the two people, but that agreement only affects them. It's like a closed little legal bubble. It doesn't affect third parties. From the outside world perspective, that contract doesn't bind them. So let's take a novel. I write a novel. I sell it to 10,000 people tomorrow on Amazon. I make Amazon, make every one of them sign an agreement saying, I promise never to copy this. Okay, fine. And if I do, I got to pay you a million dollars. Well, first of all, I think they would never agree to that. They would agree to $10 fine, which means one of them will violate it just despite me, and they pay the $10 fine, and then the book is out there in the comments. But anyway, forget that part. Let's say I have this closed community of 10,000 customers, or readers, or even 100,000, even a million, even 10 million, doesn't matter. They all agree. We will buy this book and we won't copy it. Okay. What if one of them cheats and just copies it and scans it and uploads it to the Internet anonymously? Now there's this text file up there on the Internet in the cloud, and everyone can download it. Now, all these people that download it, they never agree to any terms of service at all. So they're not subject to a contract lawsuit from me, the publisher, or the author. So there's no IP. So basically, contract can be used in some cases, like for non-disclosure agreements or for trade secrets, but it can never create IP because IP is an in-rim right. And this is why copyright and patent had to be created by statute. They didn't arise from the common law. They didn't arise from contract law. It's just statutes, the copyright act, the patent act, which refer back to the statute of Anne in England of 1710, and the statute of monopolies in 23. So these are all artificial decrees by the state, and they don't emerge from common law rights or property law rights or contract law, and they can't. And this is one mistake Rothbard made when he tried to disentangle copyright patents and all this kind of stuff in the ethics of liberty. He was pretty good on patents, but he was wrong about the idea that you could use contracts to create a type of IP. But in the end, I would say, yeah, whatever you want to do and can do by contract, go ahead and do it, but it's not intellectual property. And that's not what I'm opposing. Cool. So we're about an hour 16 into this. So, Stefan, do you have time to go maybe another 40, 45 minutes with us? Is that okay? I can go maybe another 30. Okay, sounds good. Cool. So we have just, we just have a few questions left. So maybe just try to, you know, so we can get through them, try to maybe. I'll try to be quick. I know I'm a long winder. It's okay. It's okay. We appreciate it. So let's see here. The next question I want to ask you is about Bitcoin and property ownership. I just, I rewatched your, your PFS lecture from 2019. And I really, really liked it. I agree, I agree with basically your entire framework that you were working with in that lecture. But I guess before I get into the main issue, I'll ask you, are you familiar with Conrad Graff, a legal Austrian theorist? Yeah, I'm actually, I know him and I've met him and I've read his stuff and we're friends and yeah, I'm very familiar with. So I read a little bit of his book on Bitcoin and property ownership. And I'll say that last year in law school, I took a class on blockchain and law. And I had to write a final paper for that, which I ended up presenting at the Austrian student scholars conference at Grove City College, where I met Jeff Herbner and Sean Rittenauer. And basically we read a, we read a paper for that class where both of whom I know and our friends, by the way. Yeah. So I've read a paper for that class by a couple of legal theorists named name Warbach and Cornell. And they released a paper in the Duke Law Journal called Contracts Ex Machina, where they were talking about how smart contracts with like Bitcoin or Ethereum and other blockchains and stuff have posed a problem for, for the traditional contract theory based on promises, because there's, because the, the blockchain smart contracts, when the conditions that are set on the computer code are met, they automatically transfer. So it's like when those conditions are met, there's no time period like with a traditional contract, the conditions are met. And then that creates the obligation for the person to do their end because the other person, you know, but with the, with the smart contracts, it just automatically goes through. So there's no time period there between the conditions being met and the, and the person having to perform their duty that just happens. So they were like, this is really tough for traditional contract law because it's kind of taking out the promissory obligation aspect. So I wrote a paper where I was like, hey, if we just adopted the title transfer theory, which isn't based on, which isn't based on promises, then this problem just kind of goes away. So I started writing it, but then I saw your lecture where you argued against having property ownership in Bitcoin. And I was just kind of like, oh, no, this, this might kind of destroy my whole theory because the entire contract theory is based on property ownership. And if you can't own these, you know, blockchain assets, and my theory might kind of fall. So what, what Graf says in his book is that, is that even though you're right, that the information on the ledger isn't scarce, it's just, it's just information. So that can't be property, but he kind of argues that there's still a conflictable, there's still an aspect of conflictability to the information because if one person were to guess the public, private key or whatever, and then take that Bitcoin, then, then it's not like taking an idea out of somebody's heads because if you get an idea from somebody, they still have the original person still has that idea in their head. But with the, with the blockchain Bitcoin or whatever, they, they can't manipulate the ledger information in the same way that they would be able to before. So there was kind of still a conflictability aspect there. So that's what I put, that's what I put in my paper, because I thought that I just kind of had to argue for that in order to save my entire thesis. So I just wanted to ask you, what's your kind of response to that argument that there still might be a conflictability aspect to the ability to manipulate the, the ledger information and that might, you know, do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I do. And I haven't, I'm not sure if I'm recalling Conrad's argument exactly. I think I didn't agree with all of it. And he hasn't, he has a somewhat different way of putting this whole thing. And he uses way more, he uses more metaphorical terms than I would as a lawyer. And he also, he tries to be precise, but he also engages in equivocation, not on purpose, but because a lot of people take for granted these legal concepts. I mean, honestly, I just, if I could do anything in my, not in my life, but like in my next intellectual evolution, it might be to expand upon Bombaver. He's got this, I think it's second chapter in his economic, the book about Bombavar things about legal legal legal concepts as economic goods or something like that. I think that's where you have to start looking. And I think that unlocks the key to understanding this. The problem is this would take, this would take hours and I haven't, I haven't even figured all this out yet. But what I really think roughly is this. Yes, the promise theory of contract leads you, so this is like legal positivism. Like if you take the existing actual legal system and the way they treat contracts, it does create problems when new things emerge. That's because they're not sound in the first place. And I think Rothbard and Evers are basically correct, even though neither were legal theorists or legal specialists or lawyers. So promising can't be the basis of that. And the concept of property, which is also the basis of contract law in either system, the title transfer system or the promising system, property is not based upon, so there's a distinction between economic resources and between resources that are protected by property rights. So we tend to conflate those things, right? And I think there's a little bit of that going on there in all these arguments. I'm just going to mention a few things because I want to keep the labor. So you mentioned this like smart contracts idea. So I'm a Bitcoin enthusiast. I'm pessimistic because I'm a pessimist in general. I think the state will kill it, maybe, I don't know. I think it makes sense economically and is the inevitable future of humanity whenever we finally emerge from this primitive age that we're in. But I am totally skeptical of the idea of smart contracts for several reasons. I mean, the primitive version of a smart contract is a vending machine, like a Coca-Cola machine or a candy machine, right? It's a vending. I mean, the word then means to sell, right? To sell something. It's got an automatic construction of rules. And that works for certain simple contemporaneous transactions, right? Most contracts are not that simple. They're not that contemporaneous. And most contracts involve a liability of one party to the other, which they don't have the ability to pay at the inception of the contract. Like most contracts have a sort of a credit or debt aspect to them, a risk aspect from the other side, you could say. And so, even Rothbard and these other guys, when they imagine contracts always have, you deposit the funds with some third party escrow agent, that just can't work. Most contracts, the guy that needs the extension of credit, extension of credit, in effect, the reason he needs it is he doesn't have the funds right now. He doesn't even always have collateral. It's just, it's a risk by the other side, the creditor. And so, you could, I would say 99% of contracts, except for contemporaneous ones, like when I buy a Hershey Bar or a newspaper, they could never be backed by security, you know, what do you call it in law school, security devices or security, or mortgages or security interests. You can't do it because there's nothing to secure. And so, there is never going to be an escrow agent that was going to have all the money you need to back it up. I mean, just think about Bitcoin, even Bitcoin contracts. Bitcoin is so volatile right now. If you want to use Bitcoin to make a loan and you want to have the Bitcoin as a collateral, I mean, what would you, as a lender or as a creditor, what would you? Crush the anti-fascist mob. Yeah, that's what I hop over. So, I mean, what, you know, if someone wants to borrow $100,000 worth of Bitcoin from me, no, sorry, all the way around, but whatever, if I want to borrow that much money and I want to use my Bitcoin as collateral, I would probably have to pledge 10 times or five times that amount as collateral. And I might not even have that. So, this whole idea, I think, is ridiculous. So, I think the idea of smart contracts, and plus, I think smart contracts require artificial intelligence. And look, I've been a lawyer for 25, 30 years now, and I've been trying to automate my contract, you know, templates all the time, and no one does this. It's not going to be done. I mean, you can't have some, there's no, AI is not even around. It never will be or not for a long time. Who's going to interpret these things? So, these automatic contracts, I think, are like a pipe dream. Like, they're only like 1% of all contracts. Now, I could be just lacking vision. So, maybe I could be wrong about that. Because I am a Bitcoin enthusiast. Oh, sorry. But I was getting around. What was the main issue? Oh, scarcity. Oh, so here's the issue about scarcity in Bitcoin. No, sorry. Let me, you steer me back on the course because I've lost track here. Just the question is, with the IP stuff, if you take an idea from somebody's head, they still have it. So, there's no scarcity there. But with a Bitcoin, if you take it, then they can't manipulate the ledger to the same extent that they used to be. So, there's a conflict. Right. Okay. Right. Right. So, let's just think in concrete terms. For me to take an idea from someone's head, there's only like two or so conceivable ways to do it. Number one, they tell me, or number two, you know, I use some strange device to extract the information from their brains. And that either involves coercion or torture or something peaceful. I don't know. But the point is, in every case, you can handle this issue with regular law. Like, if I coerce you, you know, if I put a gun to your head and say, give me the code or give me your information, then I've committed coercion and I'm guilty of that. And then there's consequential damages and all that. Guess it? I guess it's okay. But I mean, who can guess what's in your head? And there's no technology to do that. Right. So, for Bitcoin, I don't think there... So, I think the concept of ledger is a concept that we use to describe metaphorically what this system is that we find useful. But there is no such thing as a ledger ontologically. Like, there's no physical ledger that someone owns. So, I just personally think, from my understanding of this, I'm talking to lots of Bitcoin people, I don't pretend to be a Bitcoin expert. I'm just an enthusiast and I roughly understand how it works. The ledger is just a set of data that correlates encryption keys with each other with a limited set of entries on, you know, the blockchain. And that data is just... So, it's just data and it's stored on people's computers. So, to my mind, as a lawyer and as a libertarian lawyer, the answer, from a legal point of view, is solved by identifying that part. So, people own their computers. They own their hard drives. So, all these people around the world that have computers with hard drives that are storing copies of the blockchain, which is the ledger, right? And there's 10,000 or 100,000 of them, whatever it is. And they're synchronized every 10 minutes. This is just a set of data. And no one owns that data. And therefore, no one... So, I don't think that the... I don't think a Bitcoin or a Satoshi is a conflictable... And I like how you use that word. That's one of my ways of trying to avoid the confusion that arises when you... When you use the word scarcity, which is an ambiguous term, then people will say, oh, well, good ideas are scarce. It's like, no, we don't mean rare. We mean there could be conflict over them. I don't think there could be conflict over a Bitcoin because a Bitcoin is not a thing that exists. It's just a conceptual way that we categorize and think about the way this ledger represents itself. But it's just a set of data stored on people's hard drives. And so, then the question is, who owns the hard drives? And the answer is, they do. So, there's no way you can have ownership of a Bitcoin in the legal sense. So, the problem is that people use the word ownership in dual senses. They use it in the practical sense of the ability to control. And it's a practical matter. It's like, if you have a password to get into a special nightclub, the guy might let you in. It gives you the ability to get into the club. It doesn't mean you own the nightclub. If you have your private encryption key to transfer some Bitcoin entries on the blockchain from A to B, from you to someone else, you have the practical ability to transfer it. And that gives you the ability to use that power to insist that someone pay you or do something you want them to do. So, you can use that in economic exchange. But legally speaking, I would say that you don't own Bitcoin and you can't own Bitcoin. So, the concept of ownership, I would restrict in a technical sense to the legal right to control a resource. But since Bitcoins are not a resource, they're just information stored on people's resources that are owned by them. You can't own that because they own that. I guess that's my answer. I've been really interested in how Austrian economics applies to legal theory. And I know that in the title transfer theory Rothbard talks about the idea of implicit theft. So, if you don't meet the conditions of the contract, but you have possession of the other person's property, then you have possession without the title. So, therefore, you're a thief. So, under that contract, you could sue for restitution to get your property back. But also, I was wondering how the idea of time preference might come in to getting payment and restitution for the loss use of your property because there was time where you were deprived of your possession of it. And my thought was that, well, if you couldn't sue to get some kind of recompense for the lost use, the lost possession, you might fall into the socialist arguments of, well, you're not using your land and because you weren't going to be able to use it, then absentee ownership or whatever that they don't like. And so, I thought that even if you're not using something or you wouldn't have used something that was implicitly stolen from you, I think we still need to have some some way to pay restitution for that because if we don't, then we're kind of falling victim to the idea of, well, you weren't going to use it anyway. And first of all, how do we even know that? The future's uncertain. We don't know whether or not they would have used it. Do you kind of see what I'm thinking there? So, do you think that the idea of time preference could justify paying restitution for not only giving the property back in an implicit theft case, but also getting payment for lost use of that property? That's like five questions packed into one. Let me let me try to take them a little bit one at a time and you can stop me for a liberation. The one I disagree with is the time preference idea. I think that Austrian economic and economic thinking in general is essential and can help illuminate these legal kind of issues. But the one that I'm not sure really helps. I mean, I find it fascinating but so I agree with, so here's the way I look at it. All property, start from the basics, all rights are human rights because there's only humans as far as we know and all human rights are individual rights. The rights held by individuals, not states or groups, and all individual rights, property rights are rights to legal rights to control scarce resources. They have to be because rights are enforceable aspects, so like there's this kind of symmetry just built from there. Then contract law comes out of that. Contract law is the owner of a resource, like that's what property law is. It identifies the owner of a resource based upon certain like first owner contract. Contract is the transfer of ownership from A to B, so that's why the title transfer theory roughly says. Okay, now based upon all that, then you think about what's the non-aggression principle. Yeah, so when lefties and other people say, oh, if someone walks across your lawn, they're not committing aggression, like I agree, but the non-aggression principle is like a shorthand description of the basis of our rules of property assignment, right? So the core rule is what some people say self-ownership, even I have, but I think that's confusing is you own your body, like who owns your body. So you're a human actor with a body in the world and you own it and when someone physically punches you or hits you, that's aggression and so the rule that we say is you can't do that, which recognizes that there's a scarce resource, the body that someone owns, etc. And then we extend that to other resources that we use in the world. So we use the non-aggression principle to extend there. So it's an unfair criticism to say that it's not aggression to walk on someone's lawn because you're using their property because the reason that we say that you can't use their property is because it's an extension of the body owning rules, right? Now, once you get this basic libertarian idea, you understand that when you use someone's resource that they own, which includes their body or something else that they've homesteaded or bought by contract from someone else. When you use that without their consent or their permission, we call that aggression and call it whatever you want, but the point is you have violated their rights and then they owe some kind of, you're entitled to some kind of response because they can't complain because of a stop. Now, but that's limited by bounds of proportionality for obvious reasons. And therefore, you can use that right to respond to exact from them in negotiation some kind of restitution payment. So that's where restitution comes from, right? Now, the time preference thing you mentioned, sure, I guess that you could incorporate into this analysis the fact that things now are more valuable than they are in the future. Just like you could incorporate into the analysis, the fact that if you steal my blank notebook, my blank notebook from my home, it doesn't hurt me as much as if you steal my notebook containing my unpublished manuscripts of my novel, right? So they're physically the same thing, but they have different consequential damages to me, different consequences to me. So there's different consequences of damages. So once you identify the act of aggression or trespass or force that violates someone's property rights, then the consequences of that come into play. And that's the only point where I think time preference would weigh into the matter. As for the others, I think Austrian theory, specifically Mises and his Praxeology, which a lot of people roll their eyes at or don't understand, or they think the word is just an unnecessary word made up, is essential to understanding all this stuff. I used it in identifying causation theory, like how you decide who's responsible for a crime or an action, negligence, tort, whatever, because you have to think of humans as actors who employ scarce resources or means to achieve certain ends. And that's what the crime of murder, for example, is basically ending their life by an action, right? So if I pray that someone dies and they die, I don't think I'm guilty of murder. I might be a horrible person, but I didn't cause them to die because there's no cause or link. There's no means there, right? Or if I don't cause someone to die, but I tried to, that's also not murder. It might be attempted murder, but it's not murder. So like that can help there. And I have a whole article on that, which will be in my book. On the idea of implicit theft, that's one thing I think Rothbard was a little bit shaky on. Like in this contract theory chapter in Ethics of Liberty, he talks about implicit theft. And Walter Block, his student does that too. And Walter and I, our friends, and we've argued about this, I do believe there's such a thing as implicit contracts, but I don't think there's such a thing as implicit theft. Because when you say implicit theft, it's never clear what the owned item is and where the act of theft is. So for example, if I loan you $1,000 and you don't pay me back in a year, $1,100, did I, Rothbard and Block would call that implicit theft? And therefore theoretically debtor's prison would be justified. But then Rothbard backs off on that and he says, well, that'd be disproportionate. So he knows that that's too far. So he goes too far with this theory. But the question for me is like, well, then what's implicit theft? Like, did someone steal $1,100 from me, that they owed me in a year, or did they steal the original $1,000? And Walter gave me both answers. He said, oh, he stole the $1,100. I said, but he doesn't have it. He's broke. Because if he's not bankrupt, he, then I only $1,100, I own it, and I just have to go reclaim it. He says, no, well, he stole it. He says, okay, you're right. You can't steal something that doesn't exist. Like, if someone's pennyless or they're dead, how can they steal it? So it can't be the future $1,100 that's owed. So then he says, oh, okay, well, then they stole the original $1,000. I said, so one year later, we determined that retroactively in past time, what we both thought was a consensual transaction was actually theft. You see, that doesn't make any sense either because the whole purpose of property rights is to allocate who can do what with things right now. You always have to know in principle right now. Not only that, when someone loans money to someone else, the whole purpose is that they can go spend it to fund their enterprise or whatever they want to borrow their money for. But if they can't spend it, they have to own it. And so the title transfer of the $1,000 that was lent is unconditional. It's unconditional. So there's no theft there either. It's related in that there's another transfer. But the other transfer is a future transfer. Like, I give you $1,000 now, 100% unconditionally, so that you can spend it. But in return, in exchange, the only reason I'm giving you this is because you're giving me $1,100 in the future. But we both know that that's conditional and uncertain because the future is uncertain. And so when that future day arrives, if the $1,100 is there, yes, I now own it. But if it doesn't, it doesn't transfer because there's nothing to transfer. So there's no theft. So the simplest theft idea to me is problematic and actually inconsistent with Rothbard's title transfer contract. So like Rothbard came up with a brilliant title transfer theory of contract. But he didn't follow it all the way to its end. I think we've gone over the half hour that you said, but we still have one question left. Can you take it? I have a few more minutes. Go ahead. All right. Strati, you want to ask our last question? Yeah. So we started this podcast because it was my idea that we need more libertarian people in the legal world. So I wanted to ask, what's the state of libertarianism in the legal profession? What legal positions would you suggest libertarians get involved in? And what other advice do you have for young libertarians thinking about law school? Oh, that's another interesting. You guys are good at this. You packed three questions into one. I think the first question, I mean, I would say it's still nil. So libertarianism is not that widely known or respected or simplified by the legal profession. However, it's probably way more well known now than it was 15, 20 years ago. I think by now people know what libertarian means at least. I think usually, although, you know, you still hear people conflated with conservatism or whatever, that there's been some progress because there's just so many more libertarians now. I love law school and I love loved it, but I'm not normal and not everyone's normal. So law is analytical and it's practical and it's in the sense that you have to say, forget your rules, but you have to realize that paying you for that kind of stuff usually, you know, navigate the legal system and solve problems. Now, you can, luckily, society has developed enough and we're rich enough and we're big enough where we have a big enough legal system where if you want to avoid doing things that are obviously unethical, you can do that. Like, you don't have to be a prosecutor for the DA. You don't have to be an IRS attorney, you know, whatever. There's lots of things you can do that are totally morally clean, I think, luckily still in this country. Probably wasn't that way in, you know, Soviet Russia or East Germany during communism or whatever. You pretty much had to be corrupt to do it. Like, even as a patent lawyer, even someone opposed to patent law, I could come up with justifications for being an aggressive guy who defends people suing people for patents, even though I'm opposed to it, but I just chose not to do that. But I was, I had the luxury of doing that and partly because I steered my career in that way. So, as a practical matter, I think law school can still be a good career, but I would say a couple things. This is just me as a lawyer, not as a libertarian. Number one, only go to law school if you either love it or you think you can do well, right? Like, you have a deep passion for it and you're going to do it no matter what or you think you'll do well. To do well, I think you need to, number one, be smart, go to a good law school. I don't mean some po-duck law school. Go to a good law school, do well, like be in the top one-fourth of your class, right? And be willing to work your ass off for the first seven or so years of your career, which is fun, if you're young and ambitious, at a medium or big size law firm or some kind of career that gives you good experience. And as for the fields you should choose, I would try not to choose a field that is a boiler plate field that the dumb ones can, I don't want to say that it's going to immigration law or whatever. I mean immigration law is a fine little specialty, but anyone can do it. The plaintiff's law is fine. Some people make lots of money, but it's luck of the draw. So the fields that I think, but some of these are just my personal interests, but like I would say tax law, you have an LLM in tax law, corporate law, securities law, mergers law, M&A law, mergers and acquisitions, high level stuff in New York, you know, that kind of stuff. Some types of IP law can be good. Maritime law, if you live in the South or anywhere near a port, certain places where they do maritime law. So like there are special fees you can do that sets you apart and that are not something every grunt can do, but you can make a decent amount of money at it if you're good. And then there's other advice I have too about law school, but that's a whole different topic. All right, thank you so much, Stefan, for taking the time today. We really, really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you very much. I enjoyed it. You guys take care. Thank you, everybody, for listening to the Law of Liberty podcast. And we'll see you next time.