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They're helping make this show possible Do us a favor go support the people who support us try the service out save yourself some time Add some convenience to your life and help out the show that you love stamps.com The lesson of 9-eleven should have been to never fund another young rebel group in this part of the world again America's thought there's the smallest government in history and it's become the biggest government in world history at the end of the day It's all about freedom Here's your host ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to a brand new episode of part of the problem I am of course Dave Smith. We got a great show planned for you guys today I'm very excited about it couple quick announcements first I am headed out to Los Angeles first thing tomorrow morning The podcast and the stand-up comedy show at the comedy store have sold out This is what happens when you don't get your tickets when I first promote it and tell you to however if you want to I'm doing a meet-up with Jason Stapleton and Mark and Brian from the lines of Liberty podcast It's called Liberty behind the lines. That's on Saturday March 31st at 4 p.m. At the state social house So you can still come out to that if you want to And yeah, then when I return Just a couple more gigs to promote when I get back. I will next month April 16th. I'll be opening things up at the Soho forum Which features a debate on fractional reserve banking a topic made for comedy between the great Bob Murphy who's been on the show several times of course and is just fantastic and He'll be debating against George Selgin I hope I'm saying that That name right, but that should be a lot of fun I know that Tom Woods will also be in the building and speaking of Bob Murphy and Tom Woods I am happy to announce. I will be going back on the Contra cruise this year, which I got to say Is like the most fun thing I've ever done in my life. It's incredible. It's just a cruise fill of awesome Brilliant people and you can go get information for that at Contra cruise calm and This year it's going to be October 21st through 28th If you want to come on this thing and I'm telling you if you're a libertarian This is like the best vacation to come on move now because these things always sell out. So, okay Announcements out of the way. I'm very excited to introduce our guest for today's show I think he's one of like the smartest most interesting people out there and I've learned a ton from him about like advanced libertarian philosophy Stefan Kinsella, thank you so much for coming on the show. How are you sir? Hey, man, I'm good glad to be here. Hey, is it okay if I take notes? Of course. I insist. Okay. Yeah, I might take notes Okay. Yes, believe me. I'm I'm the one who's needing to take notes if anyone does but for people who aren't familiar if you're not familiar with with Stefan Kinsella, he's a Writer he's written several great books right a ton of amazing articles He's also a patent attorney and yeah for anyone who's not familiar with you. Tell us some more about what you do Yeah, like you mentioned, I'm an agent of the state and some libertarians call me from being a patent lawyer. Um, no, I'm just a the lawyer here in Texas and I I've always loved libertarian thinking and I write about it when I can I've got a book coming out in a couple of months Collecting some of my essays on this stuff. So yeah, it's kind of along the lines of a right theory and intellectual property and property theory and contract theory The things that libertarians used to read when I was growing up Yeah, well, you could just leave that statement that no one reads anymore and pretty much sum up our generation pretty well So what I'm interested because you're talking about how you always loved libertarianism and I'm always interested on how people You know like it kind of became libertarians You know, I have a pretty generic hacky story, which is just that you know I saw the Ron Paul Giuliani moment and I was like that guy's a badass And then I just got obsessed and you know went down this this rabbit hole But how did you become a libertarian and when did you realize that we were really all a bunch of secret Nazis? So I so my view is now that like I think that probably the three biggest Like feeders into the libertarian movement would be on Rand and Milton Friedman and now Ron Paul But that's a more recent thing and I came into it way before Ron Paul. So he's So it was so I ran like to chili says in his book it usually begins with iron rand I was in high school at a Catholic school in Louisiana and a librarian Recommend that I read the fountain head and you know, so it started from there. I just got interested in philosophy and Economics and and then eventually Rothbard things like that So I was like a menarchist Randy in for quite a while But finally became more of a of an anarchist, but I'd say since 1982 or so I'd say I was a hardcore libertarian, but before that I was nothing I was just some kid in Louisiana with no opinions whatsoever I mean I registered Democrat because my parents blue dog Democrats and That what should we be? You know, it's like my mom say hey daddy who should I vote for? Yeah, well, that's though it was rant I would say okay interesting. Yeah, no certainly a lot of people whatever One could say about iron ran. She certainly reached a ton of people I've always thought like with that's that's kind of what I'm always interested in what the next You know person is gonna be who reaches a ton of people like you know iron rand and Milton Friedman and later Ron Paul did I don't know iron ran did it through novels. I have a suspicion that it's not gonna be a novelist who is the the next great converter I Think that's probably right, but I think if I had to guess I think she may still be the number one Even now recruiting sort of tool, but I don't know who else it would be and maybe it's more maybe it's more diffuse now and Ron Paul's Influence is kind of fading right Rand. It's not really another Ron. It seems But yeah, I think you're probably right probably will probably won't be another novelist I'm still like Rand Paul is like a I feel about him like a girlfriend I was madly in love with who cheated on me or something because even now when you just say like a Rand Paul it looks like isn't gonna be a run my I still sink a little bit and in my chest and I'm just like oh, yeah That's right. He's not Yeah, I know but even libertarians who felt like that and they say things like that then like six months later They'll start looking at the landscape and they give them another chance because they're like Jesus Christ He's so much better than everyone else even though he's he's no wrong It's a weird it's a weird position to be in because you're like all The first thing I think of with Rand and I can't help it is the disappointment and how we had this amazing opportunity to keep the Ron Paul movement going because now we got his younger son in there And it's like all these things that I'm disappointed about him kind of come out first and then after you take a breath You're like, you know, he might be the greatest senator of all time Yeah, I know and so and then you're thinking yeah, but he's The better he is the less influence you will have to write so it's It's frustrating if you're into politics and that activism of that type, you know, which I'm really not so it I'm not I'm never disappointed because I never expect too much. Although I think the Trump victory Has not failed to deliver on the entertainment Value of his victory and even though he's horrible in some ways and libertarians don't like him You know, I just I keep saying look just imagine if Hillary was in there So, you know every day I have a smile on my face with he does there's some news about Trump It's always entertaining and some of it some of it's not horrible even yeah, I mean, I've You know, I agree with you on that although I've been as of late kind of a pretty Horrified at you know, the his some of his new appointments particularly John Bolton and you know And just the fact that you know, basically it's there's been a complete kind of neocon takeover And I think the tariffs are terrible and there's lots of things that are disappointing But I still hold on to a little bit of hope that at the very least Donald Trump has contributed to kind of degrading the system and just people I mean it once you see that a buffoon like Trump can get in there and that you know, I mean, I like the idea at least that There's something with with the 2016 election where like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump getting in there And you know, they just wanted to walk Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush or like Scott Walker or whoever were the chosen people and People are at least seeing through the bullshit of the system a little bit, but I'm trying to be optimistic Yeah, I mean it seems like that right now, but then we have this feeling of dread that when the Democrats come back in power They're gonna forget their skepticism about government, right? But yeah, I do this kind of calculus. I'm kind of simple-minded about this Like I boil it down to taxes and Supreme Court picks to I think he is better on that than Hillary would have been So I say, okay, he saved me or the country this much in taxes and everything he does bad I take away a little bit. I'm like, yeah, the tariffs are hurting us, but the net is still there But it's getting it's getting smaller smaller. You know what I mean? Yeah Well, I mean we used to me and Rob Bernstein We joke about this all the time, but it's kind of like what really sums up to me What it is to be a libertarian in 2018 is we'd look at someone like Barack Obama and you go Okay, he's he's the biggest status in probably the history of the world I mean, you know, I mean, obviously there's like guys like Stalin and Mao and people like that but I mean he controls a far more powerful government and he's like, you know Like the worst thing you could imagine and then we'll still go. Oh man. Thank God John McCain didn't win because that would have been really bad I know and libertarians keep changing. They keep adjusting their goal lines, right like They say they they always correct themselves to it's kind of annoying. They'll say something like you can't just say I prefer Trump to Hillary. You have to be really careful. You have to say I am I would be more upset if Hillary won than if Trump won like you can't just say something normal Like I have a preference. You have to say well, she's more evil than he's evil You can't just say it's better of a wins and b wins, you know, you have to do all these gyrations Yeah, no, you sure do. It's libertarians are a difficult group to please as a whole So anyway, uh, what do you think because I know that you're you know, you're like you're a anarcho-capitalism in the kind of in the Rothbardian hoppy and tradition What do you think like in terms of of the long-term prospects because after a while, you know We kind of all get to this point where at least we agree that a private property-based society is the way to go That the non-aggression principle is like a good Moral rule to follow But we also live under this in this status world where it seems like no matter who gets elected things just get more and more Socialized Ron Paul always said like this crash is coming and when that comes maybe we'll have a shot to regroup But do you think there's there's like more long term like it is there a chance we get to an ancap world in our lifetimes? Well, okay, so here's my here's kind of my take on things I admire people that know what they don't know and they stick within their own lanes And so I I do know a lot about certain things that I've studied and um in ultra property and legal theory and things like that, but Um, maybe one reason I stick the theory is I don't know if we can predict the future And I don't know I really I'm always confused about the right strategy although, you know early on I was attracted to political activism and these things but I think I got disillusioned pretty quickly with political activism because it never works And I just would imagine There were guys just like me 10 years 15 20 30 years ago in in they're having their all night bull sessions And they were saying in five years we're going to win And they were all wrong. They all died with a bigger state and more taxes than they were fighting against then so Why would I think I'm in any different period of history? And I and I'm very skeptical of the political process and political activism And I'm even skeptical in a sense of intellectual activism in the sense that You're going to change everyone's views in society or enough people's views that you make everyone just adopt a system um, I kind of have the fear that the reason we have what we have is just for Like political holdout problems and just the the free rider problem and just prisoners delimit type problems that are uh Inherent to a large society So my only real hope is number one that people as we get increasingly more technologically advanced and richer People can basically buy their freedom by just becoming richer in their own lives and just figure out how to navigate around the state But also I so I do actually have some optimism despite what I just said I I sort of think anarchy is coming It might be a while, but I think it's going to come out only because it's just a natural thing to do Because technology has made us so rich and powerful individually That the government just uh fades away almost in the communist sense But I don't think it's going to be because you persuade your neighbors or your uncles at Thanksgiving to read The latest Henry Hazlett pamphlet or whatever. I just I just don't see that working people don't read these things By and large because they're not like us. They're not interested in being intellectuals or um, you know, they're just spending their time on their families and getting Making money and having a career and their own hobbies. They don't they're not all so we can't count everyone becoming libertarian We have to I think the only way it's going to work is not if we nudge it or push it there But if it makes sense in a natural way, and I think, um That we're going to get there only because of technology and I don't mean we have to get in rockets and go land on mars Because the same thing would happen all over again, right this now but I just think over time people are going to get used to the idea of liberty because the internet because of just the um, the the antiquated way that all these old laws against homosexuality and religious Religious regulations they look so antiquated now um, the one thing that I turn to in my life is I always you know, I lived through 1990 when communism fell And I just can it sort of seems to me that There's a different level of understanding in general in the world now about communism And centralized planned economies People haven't read Friedman and and and these kind of books But there's a general understanding that we need free markets and that centralized planned economies just don't work So that event in history was a big teaching moment um, and so what i'm hoping is that over time just the As we get more and more used to capitalism and its radical excesses Right at individual freedom of the west that we just start taking for granted The underpinnings that are going to lead to more more freedom. So that's kind of my hope But it means that we don't really have much to do In our lives as activists except, you know, you can keep the torch alive You can keep the flame alive you can seek for personal understanding and seek for personal wealth and for protection from the state So that's kind of my approach to it is the kind of a A selfish And relatively disengaged point of view. Well, there's it's that that randian in you comes right back out Selfishness is a virtue. I know I know Uh, so yeah, there's something interesting there and and I agree with with you I think you know, there's there's a victory in the sense that like when you'll see people who uh are are You know Encouraged, you know people who love socialism People on the left who are and even when they talk about socialism now They'll kind of say like, oh, well, you know, like denmark or like sweden or something like that And so there's there's almost a victory inherently there that nobody's actually arguing for what true socialism is or you know Like that the idea that the government should actually own the means of production And there should be no private property and no market. So yeah, there's certainly something there Although I mean, I guess like in places like venezuela and stuff like that You still have what could be considered true socialism, but you know, it's not working out so good Uh for those people. Yeah, I think what I think what jeff tucker is a good buddy of mine He mentioned to me one time something I don't think I'd thought of it this way But you know originally the socialist claimed that they were going to defeat capitalism because they were more Productive they would make everyone richer. That was the original You know the kruschev banging his shoe on the table. We will bury you He didn't mean new because he meant we were going to outproduce you So that was the original claim and when that became hollow They switched to social justice, right? And uh and and in egalitarianism So that's their new goal and but no one really I mean even china which calls itself communists is becoming uh Some kind of capitalists, right? They want to make money. They want to participate in the market. They want to trade Uh, the people want to get rich they they're on the internet now They have their iPhones and and and and those other phones that some libertarian Jews, you know Yeah, no, you're you're absolutely right and there still is though. I guess um A lot of ignorance about the history of socialism in the country and it's it's really I mean just I would say disheartening isn't even a strong enough word It's just disgusting to see uh, uh, how how many young people view socialism favorably I saw the the other day at one of these, you know Marches well, I forget what they called it the march against guns or march for to save lives or whatever that they were having the other day and one of these uh students one of the parkland survivors is um She's wearing Like, uh, one of those communist green jackets with a Cuban flag on it. Yeah, and it's like you guys They're like these people who celebrate celebrate shea gavera and stuff like that and you're like, you know, he slaughtered gays, right? I mean there seems to just be nobody teaches Anything it seems like to these young people about like the horrors of socialism Yeah, it is disheartening and I kind of do fear that over time people It's all it's almost like the limousine liberal problem, right these these limousine liberals who they're very wealthy They're the live in the west And they take for granted things like, you know, uh individual rights and there's no laws against, uh You know miscegenation and things like that Um, and you know and they can fly on their airplanes around the world to conferences While decrying the use of fossil fuels, they're just totally clueless and I yeah, I'm a little afraid But on the other hand, I don't think freedom will ever be achieved unless it's something that's so natural in the background that most people don't have to, uh Learn about it or even think about it. They take it for granted, right? Like we take things for granted in the west to a certain degree a certain amount of liberal I think even on ran one time she was asked like What do you hope for in some future utopian society? She was like, uh You know a society where no one has to worry about politics anymore because she was into politics or political theory But you know really in a free society people most people wouldn't it'd just be the domain of the specialist No one would even worry about it because there's no threat to the free market Everyone takes it for granted and so established and ingrained But yeah, I kind of fear that that it will get um, um the people will um They'll forget their memories will get short, right and they'll start pining for socialism when they're really standing on the shoulders of capitalism, right? I mean they're Their educations paid for their parents made money with a job in the free market and things like that And they just don't even connect these things up. So in a way, it's like an embarrassment of riches It's it's a first world problem. It's I don't know how you can avoid that Yeah, I think you're absolutely right and there's something really interesting about uh, Just the irony of being a libertarian and something I've thought about a lot But it's always like I'm obsessed with shit that I think shouldn't exist to begin with So it's like, you know, like you'll be obsessed with the wars or the income tax or Mass incarceration or any of these things and you're like ideally none of this would exist And then I do wonder what I would have left to obsess over Yeah, and not only that I think the other irony is uh Libertarians Or kind of altruistic right because they spend so much time Trying to change the laws that would benefit everyone else But you know, they could just spend that time on bettering their careers and just make the money themselves and say Screw off. I don't care about you. So in a way libertarians are in activists, especially they're very altruistic They're like, don't take that job You know, uh come help us march on a Saturday. I'm like, dude, I want to take my kid to a soccer game So they want you to sacrifice for the for the whole so it's almost That's the other reason I'm a little bit skeptical of political activism because it depends a little bit on I mean it doesn't depend on the profit mode of exactly it's like an altruistic thing You're not going to personally benefit so much. I mean, you know, I've benefited from Trump's tax cuts, but I was a free rider. I didn't contra contribute to his campaign right So why would I it's it's a it's a holdout or a free rider problem Yeah, there is there definitely is something interesting about that and that libertarians are in general even though we're like, uh, You know seen as greedy capitalists that uh, yeah, there is something like, you know, the most libertarians I know are just concerned with kind of humanitarian goals and and just want to like help other people So I was uh transitioning Shifting topics. I was talking about a few episodes ago I did a short episode where I was breaking down To the best of my ability, but I was just kind of discussing argumentation ethics, uh, which was a Theory or a philosophy put forward by Hans Hermann Hoppe who's if not the one of the greatest living libertarians in the world and um I I there was a shorter episode I did and I just realized, you know, I've done like over 300 of these things And I've I've still never discussed that and I find it to be really really interesting I think he was really on to something Uh, uh with with argumentation ethics and I know we we chatted on on facebook We messaged back and forth a little bit about it and I've read a lot of your stuff on it I think you're quite a bit better at breaking this down than I am So I wanted to talk about that with you a little bit and I thought maybe you could give a little bit more of an expert outlook on it So why don't we just start start from the beginning and just kind of like explain what argumentation ethics is And uh, or your your version of it No, I actually thought you did a really good job, especially in a short space. Um I just was I was kind of highlighting the scarcity issue or the scarce means issue because that's something Uh in recent years, I've come to uh You know over time your arguments and your way of putting things shifts and in the last few years like with the intellectual property thing I've been obsessed with for 20 years now. Um, yeah, I want to talk about that as well Yeah, so it all ties in together But you know, you asked earlier about how I became a libertarian and I was libertarian already because of freedman and randon Rothbard But like in law school, I was like I was becoming an anarchist around that time around 88 or so and hoppa's um Work on argumentation that they sort of came upon the scene around that time. There was a big liberty Liberty was a big magazine that was popular among libertarians back before the internet Like reason was originally to right reason was a lot Sort of more ramshackle and like a newsletter But um, it was the like all you had was like reason and liberty magazine and Hoppa had this uh article and then there was a symposium With about a dozen or so other libertarian thinkers criticizing and commenting on it and most of them by the way were I don't know if you've seen it But most of them were very, um, hostile and negative to his theory Like Rothbard was basically the only one who adopted it whole fail But the other guys are all varying levels of critics at Tim Verkala and uh um I think David freedman and uh, uh, the rasmussen's dug and Denoyler rasmussen tibor McCann people like that um, but it fascinated me because the the logic of it basically to me is that Um, well, first of all, he recognized the is ought dichotomy, which to my mind makes sense. That was a david hum idea that When you're talking about what people should do what norms are what what laws Should be what people ought to do you're talking about a different category of statements than factual statements like that rock is there Humans have this biology whatever and that if you go and if you go from an is to an ought There's a logical gap you you can't assume something should be some some way because of the way that it is You have to insert an odd at some point Which makes sense to me and but I see no no problem with that because we do have values as humans um You know we all value some things that's inherent in the structure of action Which is another reason the the me and you mentioned praxeology and that then me's is as a view of the structure of human action Um, which to me is an extremely simple point Which may be one reason a lot of other other kind of semi austrian economists Don't respect it that much um Because they think it's too simple, but to my mind it's very powerful It has a really powerful way of analyzing human action It's just very simple Humans we we're we're acting beings. We have intelligence. We have purpose and we you and you said you said I think something like you act to do this and you're right, but What you're really doing is you're employing a means so you you take something you can control in the world That's a mean the scarce means of action or a resource You could think of it or a tool and you use that to help manipulate the world to change the outcome of the way things Otherwise would be in your mind. So you're using means and using intelligence, which is in your head, right? So you're combining those two things you're using knowledge Because you have to have knowledge to be intelligent to have goals and to have some idea Of what will make an effect in the world like what's a what's a causal effect in the world How can I achieve this goal? Like if I want to catch fish I've got to make a net that's not too fine so that it doesn't stop the water But not too big so the fish gets out, you know, you have to have some idea of things But you have to have the resource to make the net so you have to have both and We can return to this in a minute, but this unlocks the whole key to intellectual property because you can understand why You need physical access and control of these things But you need knowledge to but one of them is scarce and that you can have conflict over it And one of them is not that's why you need property rights over scarce things But it makes no sense to have property rights over knowledge because any number of other people in the world Can use the same idea like getting a net to catch fish. They could all do that at the same time There's no conflict so property rights in that idea make no sense Which is ultimately why patent and copyright make no sense But only I can use this this piece of wood and this is net at the same time So there could be conflict over it So if we want to avoid conflict and get along cooperatively We have property rights that emerge because of that. So it's just even the practical ideological framework helps explain intellectual property but what Hans was saying was that When you when you have these when you're when people are trying to get along with each other in society And they want to avoid this conflict that comes about because of scarcity of things like that, right? That we come up with rules and we say, okay, we're just going to have a rule that everyone respects That will say who owns this thing and therefore if everyone respects that rule Then there doesn't need to be conflict over then the owner can trade it He can use it to make Products that he can sell to other people he could whatever And that's where property rights come from and so his insight was simply that What kind of property rights could you come up with that would might satisfy this purpose? And which ones could you justify in an argument about it? His point was if you step back and realize that all this Discussion about which rights should we have which property rules should we assign? It happens in the context of two human beings or more Actually getting together in a physical context with their two bodies and having a dialogue with each other And when they do that, they're already respecting Certain things about each other. They're already they're already assuming the validity of certain norms, which would be like All right, I'm trying to persuade you with reason with what the force of my words not with actual force I'm not going to kill you if you don't agree with me like and I'm not trying to coerce you into accepting my argument And you're sitting there living So you had to have some control of some resources to do that and I have to think that you had the right to do that Otherwise we couldn't be together having a discussion. So there's sort of these um these fundamental presuppositions that are normative Moral presuppositions that are part of any discussion whatsoever So honda's insight was that you could never advance Successfully any kind of argument for any kind of norm that contradicted the very foundation of argument in the first place So all certainly he argues that socialism and the various norms of socialism Which ultimately amount to I can hit you but you can't hit me. That's really what socialism amounts to I basically am your slave owner and you're my slave and to one degree or the other But that's contrary to the two people sitting down as independent equal body owners having an argument So he's just showing that all arguments for anything other than libertarianism collapse because they're self contradictory So he's saying it's the ultimate proof and in my opinion the the reason a lot of libertarian Um Competitors in effect disagreed with them Was they don't want there to be a final argument like they don't like knock down arguments They like to play all you know, they want to argue all night to the wee hours They don't want someone to get it right and plus they're jealous right like we've been fighting with the utilitarian Consequentials things inching up to this saying on the one hand this on the other hand that this kind of argument And then someone comes out and says no socialism is like literally a contradiction So it's just flat out impossible sort of like needs is his argument against socialism in economic terms, right? So I think they rejected it partly out of jealousy Who's this upstart young guy because he was only in his mid 30s when he came to america Oh, you were wrong about that fact too not not to crit you said in the 70s He came to the u.s in 85 or so And he spent 10 years with Rothbard the last 10 years of Rothbard's life with Rothbard at unlv and in new york So um, that's kind of a nutshell of the argument and it's made a it's sort of had a lasting impression It hasn't gone away hasn't died away. There's still a remnant of libertarians who are interested in this But it never sort of lit the libertarian world on fire in the sense that that's what everyone believes Part of because so many libertarians are basically consequentialist or pragmatist, right? And a lot of them are or menarchists and they don't want something that's going to say the state is inherently by nature Criminal and just completely contrary to anything that could ever be justified Yeah, so that's a summary and it really impressed me and it fascinated me because I think it's one of the most Devastating arguments for libertarianism that gets around this is odd problem of saying earlier because he never makes He says this is his this isn't the value you should should hold because i'm giving you a factual argument for it He says this is the argument you already do hold and this is the value that you already do hold And that everyone that ever participates in in discussion does hold so if i'm talking to uh, the government is trying to put me in jail for Drugs or for for not paying taxes. They're not having a real argument. They're not trying to justify what they're doing They're just using force. It's might makes right, right? It's brute force over reason But they can't justify their views is the point It's not that they can't do it, but they can't justify it, which is why one of my favorite quotes is was by Papinian who's a roman jurist and he says something like It's easier to commit murder than to justify it and I think that's basically right So you can have a factual room. You can do something wrong. You can violate people's rights But you can never justify it. You could never have an argument to justify it Right. Yeah, and then you know hop is such a fascinating guy I don't I don't know of any other thinker who is more Misrepresented both by the his critics and by his supporters So like he's got a whole bunch of like so, you know, like like the kind of hoppy and alt right crowd that I'm convinced Have never read hoppa in in their lives But like think he's all about like throwing people out of helicopters or something like that And then his critics are all like, yeah, he's this nazi throw people out of helicopters guy And you're like guys, this was like a joke of a meme. It has nothing to do with the guy's actual work Um, but anyway to what you were saying, and I think that's a great way to kind of explain it There's something very because it was it was always put in terms of there's the kind of like the um There's like the natural rights argument And then there's like the utilitarian argument and to me it always seemed like Although I had just this kind of gut understanding that libertarianism was the correct way to go it seemed like there were flaws in both and the to me the consequentialist like utilitarian argument It's just it's kind of obvious that you could think of some areas where it wouldn't be better for the For most people to go into free I mean if we just all rob one person and split that wealth up amongst the rest of us You will I guess you could say have a greater result for a greater amount of people But we all probably would think there's a moral problem with that and with the natural rights argument You know people just saying well, you're giving these rights by god or you're giving these rights by your humanity Always seemed like a little bit of a cop out to me like I was always drawn to that But like what actual evidence is there that these things are given to us However, what hop is able to do is just kind of show by your own action of even engaging in an argument You are kind of already indicating That you agree with the idea that we should have some type of norms We can convince people with arguments and that we can attempt to avoid conflict because that's kind of the whole point Otherwise you wouldn't be arguing to begin with Yeah, and you know So like I think even I'm ran one time was asked um So then like, uh, could you really ever say someone should not commit suicide? And I think she or maybe one of her followers they kind of grudgingly admitted You can't really say that because every should in the randian point of view right is premised upon um, man valuing his life, right, but if you don't value your life Which is demonstrated in mesee in terms right demonstrated preference by the fact that you want to kill yourself You can't get under that and say that there's so she almost recognized that it is odd dichotomy there Because saying that you can't say man Should value his life because what her argument was that the fact that man does value his life Everything flows from that and I think in a sense. She you know, she's right But if you also think about um The mesees is type of Austrian economics, right, which has this type of uh dualism He called it which is distinguishing between the causal realm and the teleological realm The study of the way things work in a causal way in the world natural science is a scientific method and studying The implications of human action which is purpose driven and it presupposes people have choice And that we have values and ends and that we we we choose them that way, right? So that's why economics praxeology studies the second But we recognize a realm for the natural sciences But you see there's two ways of studying these things and hop a sort of because he's such a mesee zian and a roth bardian in his philosophy And his libertarianism he almost did the same thing. He took a type of dualism, right? Like you can say what people Do do what they should do And one is rights and one is more like possession. In fact, mesees has something I didn't discover until recently I think tucker pointed out to me It's in it's in his book socialism and the chapter on property rights and ownership Which is not a human action, which probably I've why I didn't notice it because he didn't You know, usually you think of human action is like the kind of a Some of everything he ever did like his final grand treatise Um, he actually didn't have some of the stuff in there. He had socialism about About property rights and also I think he improved upon so human action in his last book Or one of his last books the ultimate foundation of economic science, which he wrote in like in his 80s My favorite book by him is just the best book by him. But in any case it's about dualism again In socialism he pointed out that you can think of two types of property rights or two types of ownership One he called catalactic which means or economic and one that was juristic or legal So even in his mind, he was distinguishing between basically what we would call possession Like the fact of being able to control something some resource That's part of human action. You have to have a resource and control it to to act Uh and between the right to own something which is what the law recognizes and what it's socially recognized in a social setting So even me as well was recognizing this so haunt is just distinguishing these things haunt papa and treating them Uh differently. Anyway, you can see I'm getting a little geeked out here I didn't mean to go too far, but yeah, this stuff is fascinating to me Ever since I came across this little anecdote. I was in law school. I was in my first year class. Maybe it's 88 I think and I was in contracts class and there's this concept called a stop-all Which I've written on myself. I use that for some of my own theories about rights And a stop-all just means the court won't let you say something That is inconsistent with your previous action. They say you're stopped, which means you're stopped or prevented So if you lead someone to believe that you had a contract with them and they rely upon it Even though you didn't satisfy all the criteria in the law in the regular law for a contract Like you're missing consideration or something like that the court in equity, right? Which means fairness in an equity court They would say well, we're still going to prevent you from suing this guy We're going to stop you from saying there was no contract even though there was no contract Under the regular law the formal law We're going to stop you from saying that because it contradicts what you led this guy to believe So as soon as I read that I was thinking this is very much like hapa's argumentation ethics because And it's like libertarianism, right because libertarianism is all about The symmetry between Um an act of force. That's why we are kind of initial In intuitions. I think that resonate with those of us who are sort of principled Libertarians is this idea of the non-aggression principle, which is that you can only use force in a response to force You can't use force if you're starting it because anything you're start if you're starting force You're using force in response to something that's not force like if you insult me Right, or if you start a business that competes with me You're not using force against me. So I don't have a right to make a law about it I don't have to use force you see the symmetry that's inherent in that is that force is permissible And it is permissible unlike what pacifist would say Right force it. We're not against force or violence. We're just against initiated Which is a shorthand for saying we believe in the we believe in property rights assigned According to the rules. I mentioned earlier, right of first use and contract basically consent and the first guy that uses it So basically I saw right away that there's a kind of a kernel of intuitive understanding In this classic legal idea of a stopper, right? Of course used intuitively in equity cases with the with the basis of libertarian Reasoning as well, right? I can use force against you, but only if you use force first So there's a symmetry there so and that's what hopper's argumentation ethics is getting at as well You cannot initiate force against someone else Um Because the premise of any discussion is a peaceful A peaceful dialogue between people who respect each other's space basically, right? It's it's very interesting because I've always noticed In general with libertarians and obviously that you know 99.999 percent of them aren't as smart as Hans Herman hopper But just in general with people who are attracted to libertarianism. It seems to be people who are really Interested in being consistent and one of the things that you see with just about every other political philosophy Is people don't really care about being inconsistent like you know the the Republicans and democrats and you know right wing left wing guys you just see these inconsistencies all around They don't even seem to care about it And that's I think part of what draws me so much to this kind of hoppy and argumentation ethics thing I think well, I was actually talking about something very similar with jeff talker this morning We talk a lot on the phone. We're talking about like libertarians and i'm one But we almost have an autistic almost Or ocd obsession with consistency, which I admire and I'm with it But I think most people, you know, they have their day jobs and they're just not that interested in philosophy And that's why if you talk to a conservative or something and they'll they'll say yes, I I believe in liberty. It's it's an important value among many, you know They say that so they'll have an excuse to infringe on it later, right? But basically they're not that obsessed with consistency because if you point out well But you believe in the drug war and they'll say well because and then they just have an excuse, right? But they right away they're off of their liberty point, but we're like no no you have to hammer this thing out until the ultimate ends so Yeah, I think consistency is is really That's why I always think that to be a libertarian you just have to be relatively smart You have to have a passion for consistency and you have to know a little bit about economics Right, so if you have a basic economic literacy like on the level of haphazard economics in one lesson Then you start realizing well, you know the minimum wage might sound nice, right from a high level Sales pitch by You know Krugman or someone but when you think about economics supply and demand just the basic laws of economics And you know what this is going to do and you care about liberty And you think like like boss. Yeah, I said right like we just think that you can't have the government do something That people can't do and most people would say you shouldn't steal from each other They shouldn't commit murder But when the government does it You know when they commit conscription or they commit war or they tax you they say oh well, that's an exception That's different Right, so I think yes lack lack of consistency is is the big problem and lack of economic literacy is another one Yeah, I I agree and I think that you know haslet's book economics in one lesson It's still to this day like it's it's the best book to recommend is like a starter on economics If someone's like, you know, like coming from not really knowing that much and they're interested in these ideas You know, you don't want to throw a man economy and state right away Like there might be books that are actually a little no there are books that are a little more detailed I think tomasoul's basic economics is a really great book and there's other ones that are great But there's something about that one lesson that haslet gives you that you you can it's almost like a tool Where now you can see through a lot of the bullshit that'll be thrown at you I mean, I've gotten into arguments with with left-wing people who will you know, they'll you know, just say things like um They're like, oh, well, you know Social security is a great idea because uh, you know, I remember after the the 2008 recession Or people were like, man, if it wasn't for social security A lot of these old people would would be below the poverty line and now they're not and if you've read haslet You can just go right, but where did we get that money from? We tax it from young people who are actually a poorer demographic than the old people So this can't be correct. It's just like one simple insight that allows you to smack down like 90 percent of the the government propaganda on economics Yeah, I totally agree and uh, I there's a couple others In sort of my upbringing that I put almost on the same level, but not quite I think that's the main one, but like the law by boston. Yeah, it's great. I'm exophisms Um and also Milton Friedman's capitalism freedom, which just to me was It's just basic economics, right and then also in rands. I think capitalism the unknown ideal has a lot of basic economic Stuff which kind of opened your eyes to all these, you know, the lies that the mainstream The mainstream types tell so but yeah, I agree and there's probably others like you said like so And there's probably even nowadays or there may be better ones out there And people have written in the meantime, maybe some of Bob Murphy's stuff or Um, or other new primers or primers or however that word is said So it's it's interesting like the um There's something because it you know, like so Milton Friedman or somebody like that who you know, I um I know there's there's like a big division between the the Austrian economics like the mesas guys and the chicago boys And I I know there was a lot of like bad blood between Rothbard and and uh and and Friedman and you know Probably some of that stuff is is like silly and some of it is is legitimate But regardless of that, I mean I always there's like I mean Milton Friedman If you're talking about just like introductory things like I mean I I recommend go watch him on donahue. He's just Unbelievable. It's like some of the best stuff you could ever watch in your life And and I think with iron ran too like I loved her donahue appearances as well And there again, it is that thing that we were talking about before where it's like if you're drawn to Consistency and you're like reasonably intelligent You don't have to be a genius like but if you're if you're drawn to consistency and you want like there's something about that That's appealing, but I guess this is why I Uh once I found Rothbard and guys like that I was just like oh no This is this is where it's at is because it does seem like where they diverge Where where Friedman and and and Rothbard diverge it's like oh, yeah Rothbard was just that much more obsessed with being consistent than even you are like he would just take it to that final five percent or whatever And just he'd be like no no no we're we're going all the way with this consistency thing Whereas even those guys would it seems when push comes to shove Uh would would go like okay, there's this one exception to the entire thing that we've been building here Yeah, I think I think the consistency thing might explain the the political difference more so than the economics so for example like Friedman's son David Friedman kind of has the same Mainstream economic positive outlook on economics, but he's just more consistent in his politics So he became an anarchist So I think Rothbard's anarchism is probably attributable to just being more consistent about politics, but The main difference with Friedman, I think would be economic and I agree with almost all those criticisms I think his positivism His logical positivism right this idea that you do economics by empirical testing and I think it just it collapses dualism. That's why I'm a mzeezy and I think Mises is basically uh To my mind the great thinkers In that you need right plus a little basic economic literacy Which you can get from Friedman because that book and his free to choose they're they're great Um, but I think to me it's Mises and Rothbard and hampa Just with his hardcore emphasis on both all praxeology And also on especially for the latter two right Rothbard and hampa on Kind of a libertarian kind of a political realism about the nature of the state Right, I mean Mises held on to this menarchist kind of kind of view right You need a draft you need some minimal state, you know Sometimes you have to fight a war against the nazis you can understand His old world mentality, but uh, then Rothbard got more radical and then even hampa got more radical than him Rothbard sort of was a I don't say a middle period libertarian because he was basically The foundation of modern libertarian thought I believe But even he as hampa pointed out in this, uh, I think it was in the introduction to um The 1998 edition of Rothbard's ethics of liberty Um, he pointed out that Mises and even Rothbard had had this kind of nostalgic um pro-american And pro-democratic view like this kind of assumption that democracy was an improvement when we went from monarchy to democracy And that the original american founding was kind of quasi libertarian I mean really You have to make a lot of excuses for the deviations to say that I mean you could say except for the slaves And except for the constriction of the war and except for the expropriation of the british subject's property You know and except for the women not having the right property right, you know except for all those things It was a quasi libertarian paradise. I mean it's just untenable. I think you know um And also the view that democracy was some unalloyed improvement from the previous world order which is kind of these These these uh these parliamentary monarchies um Which which is why hoppe got kind of famous after his earlier works for his democracy view right and for his anti Uh anti democracy work, which again like you said his his critics and some of his fans Um, miss it misattribute what he says he he actually never said that he was a monarchist and he's not a monarchist He just was pointing out how monarchy was Not inferior to democracy in some respects, you know, which is a reasonable Right point to make but this is why I made the point that I feel like those those uh critics or or even in some Point it's those like proponents of him. I feel like they haven't read the book the book democracy the god that failed is unbelievable I highly recommend it. I think it's one of the best books. I've ever read in my life It's like it's a masterpiece like every chapter stands alone But it also still builds to this incredible argument But there's no way you could read it and think he was actually advocating for monarchy because he disclaims it like Dozens of times in the book he keeps mentioning explicitly explicitly like he keeps saying like no no no I'm not arguing in favor of monarchy. I am for a private property-based society However, if you want to compare monarchy to democracy monarchy is preferable and and he he addresses the fact that it's basically Just an accepted given in modern society that that was an improvement and it's like well Let's actually look at this and it's a fascinating argument. What he what he basically uh, uh argues is that Because monarchs uh, essentially owned their their governments they would act as property owners whereas, uh, politicians in democracies are temporary decision makers So they're kind of incentivized to do things like I don't know rack up 20 trillion dollars in debt because they're just passing out favors While they're in there and then they're gone if you're a monarch and you're passing 20 trillion on to your kid You might be like Actually, let's not go that way and then in addition to what I think there is You know and this is kind of like what Rothbard touches on although he didn't he didn't take it to where hoppe did the idea that You know in just anatomy of the state, which is also one of the first things I recommend to people It's democracy has been able to convince people of this illusion that I don't think monarchy was ever able to Like monarchy. It's just kind of like yeah, this is this guy asserting that he rules all of us Whereas in democracy people buy into this bullshit of like the government is us and we are the government and they were chosen by the majority Therefore they must be great Well, not only that I mean, so I think that and that's Hans Hans emphasis I don't think that none of those all his original insights, but he emphasizes this stuff repeatedly that yeah, so Democracy can get away with more plunder of the people because They're under this delusion that we are the government We have the right to vote after all you can't complain and there's nothing you can do you can't kill You can't kill the head of state There is no head of state anymore It's dispersed whereas in a monarch at least if you have a if you have an idiot or an evil Monarch who's born and inherits a crown he could be Everyone all his advisors and his uncle they all sort of take care of things for him and they keep him under control And if he gets bad enough he can be killed right and the people know that they're not the government They know that's the monarch and that's us So he can only get away with so much taxes like wait a minute I thought you're supposed to be giving us protection for these taxes and so there's a limit. There's like more natural limits to this, but um, but uh Yeah, so that's one I agree with you. That's one of his great contributions. Um By the way, uh, I talk a lot about this Just for viewers reference. I did a means, you know means of the academies is kind of I guess it's still going on but they do these online courses And I did three or four a few years ago and I did one on I did like a six lecture course On hoppa's whole social theory. So it's all free on my website now. So if anyone wants to look into this stuff more detail I have you know, six lectures going in detail about a lot of hoppa's Hoppa's views. Yeah, okay. Yeah highly recommend it. Um, and uh, of course mesis is mesis Institute is the greatest organization in the history of the world and I highly recommend everyone go check them out Rocking one of their shirts right now But you know, there is and and this is just kind of I think too To to kind of back up hoppa's argument, which again, it's just taken as a given that moving away from monarchy toward democracy was like a Was an improvement in the human condition and of course things did I mean the standards of living At this point are higher than they were under monarchy But just to kind of you know contribute to that argument and to also point out, you know the the Problems that come along with regime change and Going out and and getting in wars to overthrow other governments So which obviously we see a ton of right now in the Middle East like nobody's really defending What a great guy Saddam Hussein was or but obviously Iraq's a lot worse now And it's a lot worse in Libya without qaddafi and now we have slavery Rising up in Libya or not rising up. It's risen up at this point But you know, and I remember papu cannon made this point in his book at papu cannons A guy who I don't agree with on a lot of stuff But I think he he makes some very interesting points But you know Woodrow Wilson the original the original neocon if you want to think of it that way The guy who said we're going to make the world safe for democracy And we went into world war one They had that basically Europe was ruled by monarchs not to say that they're great people or that this was the ideal system But after the monarchs fell you had you know the rise of Lenin then Stalin you had the rise of hitler. I mean things Undeniably far far worse than than the monarchies that that came before them And so it's it's interesting that no one really looks at that Yeah, and I think you know, we've had this sort of egalitarian revolution and this sort of uh human You know people couple things together and so they they associate the modern western system with the modern liberal traditions that we have now Understandably right so they think that if you if you want to go back to monarchy you want to go back to the old ages and You know, especially libertarians like I'm not going to have a monarch. No one owns me. It's like yeah, but The democracy doesn't own you either, but we're putting up with that too, right? Um, I think it's partly a case of mistaken. Um, you know causation versus correlation It's almost like the intellectual property system, right? So we had the industrial revolution start around 1800 right around the time america Came onto the scene and right around the time we instituted a patent system and the wealth just went up geometrically for the last 200-something years And so when you say we should get rid of patents, they say are you crazy? It was the cause of american um success and innovation Which I think it's just cause it's correlation not causation, right? And maybe the same thing is true with You know democracy became well, I guess democracy didn't really hit the scene until after world war one really so much But yeah, people correlate the modern western systems, right? Um And you know, I don't know what to believe about uh, this this notion that Like rj rummel. I think the guy from the the democide guy, you know the guy from hawaii the professor who's collected all these statistics about Um, which type of regimes kill which people and how many they killed in the 20th century and these things Which is just staggering murders clearly mostly by state systems communism and You know fascism But so he concludes, you know democracies are usually less prone to go to war against each other I'm not sure if that's right. It could be that democracies Tended to be the ones that are more western and british and therefore capitalist and richer and therefore they could just exert their will And dominate the world as the u.s. Has done for the last 70 something years, right? So it's hard to sort these things out, but um I suppose democracy if every country in the world was a democracy, maybe they could get along but They would still be taxing the hell out of their citizens, right? So they still wouldn't be totally fair Right. Yeah, absolutely. So anyway, you touched you touched on patents again there And I do I want to talk about uh intellectual property with you because you you were really the guy who kind of Helps me understand this stuff and I this was something that I used to struggle with when I first became a libertarian Um, because there's kind of there's this thing about intellectual property that didn't quite make sense to me And didn't fit into this kind of the worldview of the non-aggression principle Like I could clearly see the example I used to use is just that kind of like uh I was like if you you know if you're living in some kind of primitive society somewhere I would say say there is no government. There's no cops. There's no laws or anything like that But if somebody like uh, you know like collected some some woman goes out and collects some seashells And makes like a necklace out of it and then someone comes over and bashes her over the head and takes that It's pretty easy to see that she was the rightful owner And that something immoral has kind of been committed against her However, if if someone goes out and collect some seashells and makes a necklace out of it And now says i'm the owner of seashell necklaces I have the right to bash anyone else over the head who goes out and makes a necklace out of seashells Now it kind of seems like she's being the aggressor and this isn't really consistent with libertarianism And the other thing that always you know, i'm a stand-up comedian and Intellectual property is something comedians kind of know about because we all feel a sense of ownership over our jokes Um, but it always kind of seemed pretty obvious to me that it was like I mean two people can come up with the same joke independently So who really stole something from someone there and we have nonviolent ways of dealing with it Like if people know that you're ripping off another comedian people won't have you work at their club and things like that but I I always had an had a um Like an instinct that intellectual property was not consistent with libertarianism But it wasn't till I read your stuff that I felt like I actually understand it So I also I I love the connection you made at the beginning to to praxeology and intellectual property So why don't you just you know talk about that a little bit? What's your stance on intellectual property? Yeah, um And and also comedians learn things from earlier comedians and other people in the culture So they're everyone's always boring to some degree right scientists engineers inventors Uh artists they always are in the middle of some phase of human development. They're using information before and It just something wrong about being able to learn to use this whole body of human knowledge that you've Just lucked onto because you were born in the 21st century instead of You know 200 ad And then you you want to take the ladder out and not let anyone else use your stuff. Um um Yeah, so I do agree it could be confusing and it took me a while to sort out the right way to explain it That's why I've written about it over the years and I've adapted modified and learned new arguments And I I think um one is the human action paradigm just understanding that in human action There's two things you need you need knowledge and you need scarce resources and then I've already explained why Property rules make sense for one not for the other right, um But the other one I think is maybe a fundamental mistake and I talk about this in a lecture about lock john lock whose idea was that and a lot of libertarians hark back to john lock because he's sort of like a A natural off-theorist everyone kind of points at but the way he argued was number was religious So he's you know, he's taking god owning the world and giving it to add them and God granted us the right to own ourselves. So he's taking that for granted Um, but then he said if you own yourself then you own your labor And therefore you own things you mix with it that are unknown. So this whole thing He was trying to justify property rights against arbitrary interference by others, but his argument Basically introduced this labor theory of value or labor theory of property to the world Which I think spun off and eventually resulted in and basically communism the idea of the labor theory value, right? The idea that The reason Things have a value is because people put time and effort into it. You're sort of infusing it with your labor these things are like cousin ideas like It's a metaphor that went wrong You don't own your labor labor is just another word for a type of action and action is just what you do with your body You own your body, but you don't own what you do with it and I think that that Led to the so the notion you had about look. I'm a creator Someone got stolen from That's why it's wrong and so You tend to you tend to identify economic productivity With property because they often go together And so you think well the reason this woman is successful and Prosperous is because she labored hard and she created something worth value and therefore it's wrong for someone to steal it from her and those things are As far as we they're mostly correct But they they they make some things together that are not correct and and the the mistake made from that sort of first-level analysis is the assumption that we own What we create Right, it's the idea that one source of ownership is creation And I think that's a fundamental mistake that people make in political theory and just in common sense reasoning What they're not it's one reason I brought up the mise is distinction between Practical ownership or control of something which we would call possession and legal right, which is a normative thing It's it's a there's a dualism in understanding Property and wealth Wealth is just the increase of value to us in a subjective sense Whereas property usually refers to resources that we can control in a possession sense, right? And so If I If I take a natural resource that I own Like just a simple example would be like an iron ore or maybe a big slab of marble And then I carve it into a statue or I make the the iron ore into a horseshoe for a horse I have increased the sum total of wealth in the world because I've made this thing more valuable So people Naturally want to have property rights to protect that But if you think closely about it, you haven't created any new property You've just rearranged things that you already had to own you had to own the marble to Carb it into a statue you had to own the iron ore in order to reshape it into Sword or to a horseshoe So there's already property rights there and the reason you own the resulting product Is because you already own the input ingredients And in fact that's the reason why marxism is wrong when they say that the capitalist employer exploits the labor of the worker Because they say well, he produces all the horseshoes on the assembly line So he's he doesn't get the full value of that because he's only getting paid a salary That's a fraction of what it's being sold for that he's being stolen from because the assumption is that well if he created the horseshoes He should own them. You see that's that's wrong He didn't use his own resources to create the horseshoes. He was paid for his labor by the employer To use the material supplied to him by the employer to make the horseshoes or whatever he's making Right, so you can see that creation is never a source of ownership It's only a source of wealth and that is important But creation just means production or it means transformation or in a simple way it means rearrangement It means even onrand and mesas and rothbard explicitly say this but they never quite connect to the dots But you own some resource which you got either by contract from a previous owner or you found it yourself That's called a homesteading. So there's really only two Sources of ownership and that is homesteading That means you find something unowned or or Or by contract from a previous owner they give it to you they sell it to you But production is a way of transforming these things that you already own And creating wealth for yourself or for the world which is true But it doesn't give rise to property rights And if you don't make this mistake, then you never make the mistake of thinking well If I create something like I make a new horseshoe it's wrong for someone to steal it from me That must mean you own whatever you create and hey, I just created a novel or a joke or an invention And that has value So it's wrong for someone to steal that from me too. So you get confused by this original mistake I believe or by this mistake that's been woven into the The the the dawning understanding we've worked out the last three four hundred years and you know human Political philosophy Well, that's that's a really interesting connection and yeah, okay, so I get that completely so in other words So in a libertarian society or just the correct libertarian position to have is essentially that if you If you own a material and you improve it then you own it if you don't it's whatever the agreement was when you when you work to To improve it. So in other words if you like, uh, um, well, let's say it this way like Here's like the challenge. So if you uh, you write a book Let's just say for the sake of argument that you own the book, right? Uh, and you it's blank and then you write a book within that Uh, what if somebody else comes along and writes the exact same book as you it was property that they own there now Would you say and I know I already agree with you, but I just want to set you up to explain this Would you say that you have no legal recourse to that person who's now selling a book that was your thoughts that you put on this paper Well, okay. Yes, but the one problem with the example is As copyright advocates rightly point out, um copyright usually covers things that So patents cover invention, right? They cover things that in almost every case are inevitable In fact, there's usually most of the inventors chasing the same idea because the the technology is right for the next thing to come about, right? So the airplane or the electric the light bulb things like that Um, almost every it's hard to think of an invention that you would say would never have been invented If not for this guy if he had been hit by a bus someone else would have come up with it Um, so it's hard to think of independent invention. Maybe come up come up with it earlier, but it's going to come anyway Uh, it's easier to argue for copyright that like no one would have written. Um, uh, you know great expectations by dickens No one would have written atlas shrug. It's just too unlikely So it's hard to or the writer draw or painted the same exact painting No, for jokes it might be different because some of them are tropes and they're shorter and they can be boarded in different ways with the journal idea, but um But I think the fundamental idea is that um There's even if you copy exactly what someone else did like you copy their novel and even if you put your own name on it There's really nothing inherently wrong with that It might be a little seedy and shady and it could be deceptive in some cases And libertarians are way too quick to say what's fraud like if you lie about something is fraud And but even if it was it would just be a fraud claim against whoever was deceived against the fraudulent seller or something like that It wouldn't be a general right of property to get good against the world Like I could copy the latest harry potterd novel And truthfully say jk rolling wrote it. I'm just gonna sell copies. I'm not committing fraud. I'm not even lying I'm not even saying I have permission. I'm just doing it There's no fraud and I think fraud is a very specific libertarian offense that you have to understand contract theory And property theory and libertarian consistent principles to even know what fraud is And I think fraud is a very narrow thing in most Times when libertarians even say well, that's just fraudulent. What they really mean is it was dishonest And you know what they may be right to criticize someone for being dishonest Like if you plagiarize a paper at your school, well, you're not following the rules of your school You know, like let's say I copy a chapter from uh from from Shakespeare and I just put it as my own That's plagiarism And I don't know if it's exactly fraudulent. Your teacher's not paying you for it So there's really no fraud claim there and in the in the strict sense So you just have to say it's sort of like the comic thing you mentioned like there's norms And you know, you don't want to hear a comic that's Borrowing and stuff from other people you want to hear fresh material you want to hear their voice, right, right? They're gonna get a bad reputation Right because like I was I was laying out with the the idea of jokes I mean there are things where there's parallel thinking like there are great comedians who have done like basically the same joke Uh brian reagan and jerry seinfeld had a joke that they both did like about the man on the moon But it's a great joke by both of them But it's just something that they came up with that it wasn't the most complicated thing in the way And they're both really funny. So they went to the funny place with that. However, there are other examples Um where people are clearly ripping other people off and they're taking like Their nuance and their timing and the exact words and this and that And I think the point that what what it comes down to when you're saying intellectual property Basically isn't a property right It's that you know when we're talking about property rights, we're saying as you laid out earlier It's not that we're against violence. We're against initiating violence So the question is really are you allowed to to act violently against somebody? Like if they break into your home, you can shoot that person So the question isn't so much like is this seedy or is this wrong? It's should we be throwing someone in a cage for this? And I think again like like we were saying with the comedian thing It's like yeah, you can have libertarian solutions to this Which is that if you do blatantly rip somebody off the clubs kind of stop working you people out you as being this person So if someone was doing that like stealing somebody else's is book or something like that I think the appropriate response is for publishers to not want to work with this guy people to kind of out them But it wouldn't be a legal claim where you can actually go steal You know like where you can say oh this guy owes you money or this guy needs to be locked up or something like that um well and people People need to realize that You know, we have a large public domain right now like everything published before a certain date Is public domain, you know Shakespeare the bible There's no barrier no legal barrier To you republishing Shakespeare's works or played over Aristotle or Francis Bacon, you know all this stuff you could publish it right now on amazon Or or anywhere on the web and put your name on it if you want to and there's just no claim And yet people don't do this so everyone's freaking out about a problem. They just like never happens I mean why aren't there a million people claiming they wrote the bible? Or Shakespeare It's just not going to happen because everyone knows you wrote it and you're just gonna look like an idiot and you're we We talked earlier about the symmetry that libertarians obsess about in the non-aggression principle And the consistency and the idea that you can only use force in response to force Initiated force in particular well We libertarians recognize that All law is ultimately the use of physical real force And it's always a gate some real thing in the world. And if you if you just say why why can't you have a law? like There's this notion among ip advocates even libertarians That it's just another right. It's in addition to our other rights But what they don't understand is that all rights? Or legal rights Which are enforced by physical force and they have to be directed at some physical resource That's just what force is used against so Actually my argument is it's not that an ultra property is unjustified. It said it's impossible There it is it's legally impossible for there to be a right in a in a pattern of information What what that is is it's just a disguised way of transferring existing ownership of existing things So for example, if I have a copyright I can stop you from Or I can sue you for damages for you know copying my novel I'm just going to get physical force of a government court to take your Your money away from you So it's really the contest is about the monthly right or if I have a patent and I'm gonna I'm apple and I'm going to keep you from making um A rectangular ish touchscreen phone with rounded corners because of my design patent I'm just trying to get physical force from the government against your factory Which means they're claiming partial ownership of this competitor's factory, which is another physical thing So all these things are always about who controls physical resources And if you already have two rules that specify who owns these things, which is Who got it first who got it by contract from a previous owner Then you have to have a third rule, which is undercutting the first two It's very similar to what I pointed out before The same reason that libertarians oppose Monetary inflation by the government and we oppose what's called positive rights like liberals mainstream people think well, we believe in the rights to security and et cetera We also believe in the right to welfare and education and housing It's like We libertarians say no, it's a positive right It's got to be provided by someone and it's got to come at the expense of negative rights that we have We know that and if you have money and the government just prints more Hey, what's wrong with the government just giving free money to people because it dilutes the purchasing power of the existing money And makes us all poor it's stealing our purchasing power And exactly in the same way is when the government creates other rights like intellectual property It's taking away and eating at the existing allocation of property rights in physical things You can never have physical Property rights and intellectual property the intellectual property is just the way of shifting these other ownership rights And it's basically stealing it under the Under the guise of calling it property which is just obscene right you call it intellectual property So that the the act of theft there is masked or distorted Right. No, that's actually I think the the best way to think about it because it really is just another positive Right, which almost in in theory if you didn't have to violate all of the negative rights in order to provide it It'd be like, yeah, sure I mean, I guess that sounds great Like if you if printing money did create wealth that you could just spread it around It sounds like a nice idea the problem is you have to rob from from the prior in order to provide the ladder So I'd say yeah, wait, let me go ahead another way to think about it is if you, you know, all these Property rights like your right to your house or your car um Like no one in What state do you live in? I mean, I mean, it doesn't matter, but Where in new york city Okay, so new york law prohibits theft of your car and your and trespass against your house But even someone in texas or russia can't they can't actually violate your house or your car, right? They have to travel there and do it But I patent and copyright law are inherently territorial So I might have a cop. I might have a patent on my invention in america but Not in china if I didn't apply for it and if you even think broader like let's say there was a colony on the moon Or on another let's say there's another planet out there and there's an identical copy of one of rand's novels Or someone's doing the same invention. It's not even conceivable that they're infringing my property rights here But you can't conceive of someone like infringing my property rights in my car or my house on another planet without me noticing It just makes no sense the entire paradigm makes no sense Uh to try to analogize and and what what I see libertarian some pro-ip guys do some libertarians like richard eppstein and others They'll say something like well an adam moth off the objective this guy Who's like all about trying to finally put ip on a sound footing after rand Failed to and he's never going to either because I tried already and I know patent law. I was obama patent lawyer like anyway, um Um, I forgot where I was going with this but Oh, we'll use it. Oh, oh no. So so what they like richard upside what they say is well We admit that intangible property rights like Which is what ip is called, right? Um, it's not the same as property But here's how you could view it as the same like for example You can sell it and it's got an economic value and you can license it just like you can I'm like, yeah Well, you know slave owners in the 18 in the 1700s could sell freaking slaves too The legal system can treat things as property that they shouldn't and that doesn't mean that you should Just because you could make an analogy and say oh you can treat humans as property too. So I I guess that's okay That's the kind of argument. They're making a defensive idea. It drives me bonkers Yeah, that's you know the one that that I think I hear as the most common argument And I used to kind of I'm almost embarrassed to say but I used to kind of think maybe there was something to this Until I read you just destroy it But I I think the the most common argument I hear is something about either rnd Or something about the idea that patents Like incentivize people to to invent things But again, I I know so I'll just give you a chance to to knock that one down because it's kind of a similar thing What's interesting about that argument is Well, here's what I've noticed over the years of thinking about these issues and talking to people I mean as a basic point which sounds condescending But you have to realize that a question is not a freaking argument Like if it if I give you a I explain for 30 minutes to you Here's why the patent system is wrong and then someone says But how would I make profit doing this? It's like well, okay, but that's not really an counter argument It's just a question right right and some questions are wrong headed. I mean I could say why slavery is illegal and someone could say Okay, I hear all your points, but who's going to pick the cotton? It's like well I mean dude, I don't know and I don't care And I don't have to prove to you what the world's going to look like in 50 years after slavery is abolished and we don't have African slaves to pick the cotton anymore. It really doesn't matter. I mean I can guess But my argument doesn't depend upon that Right. So and the other thing is that there's this assumption when people ask these questions and when they make some of their arguments That the purpose of law is to fine-tune basically market Market failures, I guess and in and in slightly Increased market efficiency by remedying defects if they they imagine what happened without the government coming in and doing this So like there's an assumption that we don't have enough innovation We have this much innovation, but we need this much and if the government will come in and fix these Free rider and holdout problems with the system of patent and copyright law We'll have slightly more innovation but Besides that being totally false The purpose of law is not to increase innovation The purpose of law is to do justice and protect people's rights Which means property rights, which means we have to identify what our property rights are and have the law respect and defend them But it's not to increase innovation So to me that's the biggest problem and then the idea that the government could even get this right ever Is crazy. I mean no one even knows what the right term should be in fact The funny thing is so copyrights last over 100 years now roughly 120. Let's say patents last about 17 years If you ask an advocate a patent or copyright, why should patents last 17? Why not 12? Why not 11? Why not 100? Why not zero? They have no answer In fact, I ran was asked this question That was in her one of her most embarrassing mistakes in her book capitalism the unknown ideal that article on patent and copyright And she said well, we don't know exactly what the right term should be But it doesn't matter as long as we have some finite term that's you know better than zero. I guess is her argument you know The libertarian argument to patent and copyright and the optimal term because I've heard I've I've said that the optimum term is zero And I'll hear libertarian say well, you said that 17 is an arbitrary number But zero is an arbitrary number two Why no that's because I know it's evil. That's like saying the average the optimum prison sentence for drug Use It's not 10 years or 15 or five. It's freaking zero because the drug war is immoral and wrong I know zero's the right answer. Yes, I do know and you can't tell me what the right sentence for someone Smoking marijuana is it's not five or ten or two or three months probation or whatever All those things are too much Like taxes every tax is too much It is almost like and I've never been like a big randian Like I you know, I got brought into the movement by ron paul You know, like I came along later and so I was brought in by ron paul And then I found like the mises guys and roth bard and all those guys So by the time I started reading I'm randid like I like I like her novels and stuff But it just didn't like I never felt like this like a legions to her or anything like that But it's still even kind of hurts like it hurts when those people who I do look at as heroes Even if they're flawed heroes, it's like it's so when they whenever they try to argue Against like a voluntary society or something. It just it's almost like painful because it's like you've been so on the mark for 95% of your work and then in this other five percent. I remember I saw this thing It's like a video. This is like less than a year ago I forget exactly where it was but uh Walter williams was was giving a speech and then he took questions afterward and now we live in this post ron paul Internet world where there's there's you know at any event like that There's going to be a bunch of and caps out there who are like asking these questions and Walter williams who I do look at it's like a hero You know and he's like he's like making all these great arguments and and he doesn't even say like uh taxation is theft His argument is that taxation is slavery and I've heard him break this down a lot of different times and he's like Well, what is slavery other than right one person forcibly taking the labor of another person and this whole beautiful argument Wait, you see that labor, but you see that's a good metaphor But you see it's not quite precise because you see he's making a little bit of the labor The locky labor theory ownership, but anyway, I kind of agree with him here in the application Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right about that But anyway, so this is his argument and he gives this whole speech and then uh This guy it's like the first question and this young kid is like a bright kid And he gets up there and he asks and he goes well You know if taxation is is a violation and it's theft or it's slavery or whatever Like what justification is there to tax for a military or for courts or for any of this other stuff? And Walter Williams goes uh Well, it's in the constitution Yeah Like it hurts inside. I don't know Yeah, or the randians will say it's necessary. So You know, they just can't imagine how you could have these competing defense agencies So they think it's necessary. It's not a very good argument I respect their anarchists their anti anarchist argument A little bit more than I respect their anti or their pro-ip argument. I can see how you couldn't wrap your head around Um having no final legal authority, right? I could understand and especially for the earlier thinkers I kind of give them a break on that a little bit. Uh, they're wrong, but but this ip thing man Honestly, there is I have never come across a good argument for it at all and I've heard I think I must have heard everyone um I was gonna ask you what about this joke the man in the moon you leave your your listeners hanging They're gonna be all wondering what was this man of the moon joke? I'm gonna tell it the man on the moon is uh The joke it's really funny joke. I'm probably gonna butcher it This is why I try not to tell other comedians jokes But it's like more or less He's just like uh that he goes um we put uh, you know when they say we put a man on the moon Is always used to like oh, well, I'm sure we can do this I mean we put a man on the moon or it's like, you know that they go like uh They put a man on the moon, but they can't get my phone service, right? You know it's always that And he's like well, I wonder if we had never put a man on the moon people would just never be upset about things We couldn't do it's like the idea. I'm just kind of like oh man. My phone service is terrible He says well, they never even put a man on the moon But it's really funny the way they do it and it's but they have it's like identical the two jokes They have hey, so we're running uh close to to the end of time here But I did want to just ask you to expand a little bit on the point You made there because I I would be remiss if I if I had you and didn't you know talk a little bit about Uh law in an anarcho libertarian volunteerist world because as you said that is the thing that people can't wrap their head around And you gave them a little bit of a pass but did say that they were wrong This is something that I get a lot when people are first, you know hear about the idea of of anarcho capitalism They think well like so you're against laws because the state and law are completely associated with each other That is not actually true where we are in favor of laws not most of the ones that we have currently But how would you say just you know in a quick few minute kind of sum up? Which I know this could be a whole podcast on its own But how would law work how would law be enforced and courts and stuff like that in a volunteerist world? I mean this is actually a topic. I haven't actually I haven't written a lot about this because so much has been done on it already um, I sort of you um A lot of libertarian thinking is arguing and thinking about what laws Makes sense and would justify and that's kind of what I do The system that would rise up and implement it um Is also interesting. It's a different question. Um And I basically share the views of the main writers on this topic right and there's a lot of impressive ones. There's um There's Rothbard. There's the tana hills, you know the market for liberty in 74. I think Bob Murphy's written something recently about it and also his chaos theory. Gerard Casey is a brilliant Irish philosopher of liberty anarcho-capitalist Rothbardian has this great book out discussing the stuff of uh, even randy bartonette and, um, Bruce Benson So the stuff by these David Friedman, too These guys stuff is what I basically agree with so There's no way we can summarize it, but yeah, I think you would If if we all agree what law makes sense because we can have justifications for it And that's what we libertarians do then the assumption is that that's what would be accepted in society, too If you're about basically libertarian society Right, so it even hop has written on this stuff, too. So what I think is more along hop as lines that um, um, you're not going to have a free society unless people for some reason Have adopted these basic norms, right? And the ones that make sense are the ones that we believe in That's why we believe in them. They make sense. So they would have to emerge. They would emerge by custom By contract they would be enforced ultimately, I think by by people doing self-help, but also institutionally By the arms of insurance companies, right? So people would have and they would tend to have insurance to be able to Make their way into given regions and areas and to join polite society And the insurance companies have all these incentives to work with each other establish meta rules and arbitration rules um My personal guess is even though I've written a lot on The theoretical right of a victim of aggression to use Proportional retaliatory force, right? Like, you know in theory if someone commits murder they could be Killed or even tortured to death depending, you know, theoretically you could justify this I think in a practical real-world sitting um, I am personally drawn towards arguments that Say we would have a mostly voluntary system um, and it wouldn't be enforced with Uh with lethal force after the fact most of the time it would be a restitution based system And volunteer in the sense that if you don't want to show up in court We can't make you but then your your reputation you're going to be an outlaw basically your life's going to be Hell and we can easily ostracize you and you know force you out of society So people have strong incentives as long as they're part of a growing free society um To comply with these rules and to be a reasonable civilized person and if they're hauled into court for some proceeding they would they would show up and they would make their case and usually the remedy would be Restitution or some kind of something that if it was a violent crime or something really bad Would give them a way to integrate themselves back into society right something um I think that's how it would work and randy barnett and others have written a lot on this I've written a little bit in blog posts why I think that would happen So I think that even though technically there's a right Uh for i for an i type punishment or retaliation. I don't see that being um Done institutionally that is by the private agencies that would arise because it's just too expensive It doesn't accomplish much and it's too risky because you could make a mistake right if you execute an innocent guy Then what do you do? Uh, um, and who does it really help? Who's going to pay for that? So I think restitution would be way more Accepted in a free society and plus I think crime would be lower anyway So it wouldn't be as much of a problem and when we all have super nanobot robot swarms around us that protect us from any possible Harm we won't Maybe no one can hurt each other in the far future You know we'll all have invincible little robot be armies around us. Yeah, okay To be a little techno optimistic, you know, yeah, no, I like that. I let's end with some optimism I I do I I really agree with everything you said there and I think um, you know, it's interesting And I get it I get it because I think there's this natural tendency for people to accept whatever system They're in as the norm and and be worried about changing it But it's like, you know, it's amazing to me how much people get caught up on this thing and it's like Oh my god, I mean we wouldn't have a state and then we can't force people to show up for court We have to just make them outlaws or outcasts and it's like, yeah, you know, I know it's a little bit scary But you know when you have a state, you know, you end up having like world wars a military draft Robbing from your entire population throwing people in a cage for pot So maybe it's better to go with the with the risk of of too much freedom or whatever Anyway, listen man, we got a wrap because we're over time and we have other people coming into the studio after us But uh, dude, this was great. Thanks so much for coming on Stefan cancella Please let people know where they can find more of your work and what your your next projects are I'd say the clearing house is just Stefan cancella with an a not a knee that's even and I just want to tell you I was debating with my family whether you're The smartest funny guy or the funniest smart guy and I think we have to go with Probably the smartest funny guy because otherwise bob murphy would be upset Well, thank you. I I appreciate that very much and I really enjoyed this episode. We'll have to do it again soon All right, everybody Thanks so much for listening. I will be uh, like I said, I'm going to los angeles So uh, my next episode will be on the road, but it'll be at normal time friday at 6 p.m. All right. Thanks guys. Peace