 BeingLibertarian.com is a website for monarchists, classic liberals, anarchists, independents, capitalists, and right-left-leaning libertarians. The goal of the website is to bunk discredit as much authoritarian and status propaganda as possible while spreading the message of freedom and liberty to the world. We welcome you to our website and ask you to provide thoughtful insight in the comments and share our world on social media. Thank you friends of liberty. Please visit BeingLibertarian.com. The way the Randians use the word capitalism as a synonym for libertarianism I think is a little bit of a stretch. I do think that in any advanced cosmopolitan society that has a free market you would tend to have capitalism arise but capitalism is just one one aspect of the economic aspect of a libertarian society. The Johnny Rocket Launchpad. And now, here's Johnny! Rocket here at the Johnny Rocket Launchpad. Always launching ideas in your direction. The Northwest only. Rock and Roll Libertarian Radio Show. I'm here at my co-host, Curt Nelsen. Haha, thank you sir. And my voice will reason the beautiful, sexy Heather Nixon. Thank you so much. And it was those Johnny Rocket launch and ideas and it's liberty ideas. This is what the show's about. We're here to try to spread that message of liberty. And you know what? We're spreading this message in a time where it needs it the most. Got some sad news. Heather's mom. Why don't you explain the story? This is your mom. Well, it's not sad anymore. She it was a little traumatic at first. Traumatic. That's a better word. But it's still sad though. We learned she had a tumor that was growing in her head. And it was a size of a plum. She had her surgery yesterday. They were able to remove all of it. It is completely benign. So now we just... Great news. She is not feeling so well. It's going to be tough work for the recovery. But she's going to do well. I know. Just like anything to do with the eyeball or the brain fucks me up. Come on. Technology though, man. I know. I know. Technology is great. The last three weeks have been sort of a roller coaster. And life has sort of been on hold. But now she's at her surgery. And now we can get her better and move on. And thank you to everyone who wished her well on Facebook. I very much appreciate the support. And she appreciated me reading her the comments. Thank you. We would still like messages for Heather's mom. Yes. Prayers, good juju, whatever you believe in. Yep. So let's keep them coming in. Thank you guys very much. And it was those Johnny Rocket guys. We got a cool fucking guest. We do. This is going to be like a killer guest. This guy knows shit. Like a lot of shit. That's awesome. He doesn't like. He knows shit. It's kind of two different things. You can be careful. Okay. So what I'm saying is he knows a lot of shit. A lot of shit. A lot of shit. It's good shit. Right. We all should know his libertarians. Some people know shit, but he knows a lot of shit. A lot of shit. He's really good. He's a smart guy. Good shit. Good shit. This is the episode about shit. This guest. You guys ready for this fucking badass guy? Let us have it. This individual is a founder and executive editor of the Libertarian Papers. Founder and director of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom. A senior fellow of the Mises Institute. A member of the editorial board of Reason Papers. A member of the editorial advisory board, Molinari Review. A member of the advisory board of the Lexington Books series Capitalist Thought, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. A member of the advisory council of the Government Waste and Overregulation Council of Our America Initiative. And legal advisor to the LBRY. This individual is a registered patent attorney and a former adjunct professor at South Texas College of Law. This individual has published numerous articles and books on IP law, international law and the application of Libertarian Principles to legal topics. This individual has received an LLM in International Business Law from King's College London. A JD from the Paul M. Herbert Law Center at LSU. A BSEE and an MSEE degrees from LSU. Welcome here on the Launch Pad, Stefan Kinsella. Man, thanks for being with us today, man. Thanks a lot, thanks a lot, guys. What a great intro. Isn't that cool? Like there's explosions? And you said his name right. I did say his name right. That's important. Yeah, but you said he-bear and said it's A-bear. It's Louisiana name, A-bear. I live in Louisiana for a while, but we're not going to talk about that. We're talking about you, Stefan. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I have a little pre-story before we start this interview, but I actually heard you on the Tom Woods show. And man, what you had to say was fantastic. I'm like, I got to get this guy on our show because this guy is just a fath of knowledge. What I really want to talk to you about is, you know, I'm going to kind of start with what kind of intrigued me with what you had to say on Tom Woods. But what are some of the fallacies in modern libertarian thought and what are your theories? Hmm. Oh, that's a good question. Yeah. So we're not going to talk about intellectual property theory right away, which is what I think it asks. And that's fine. I do think I've learned a few things over the years, even though I am from Louisiana. It's kind of hard to learn when you're from that state. You guys, you just got the internet. It's like a new thing there. Just kidding. I love my home state from Texas, you know. Kurt Wishy was from Texas. I do, I wish. He's from like Alaska. Yeah, I'm from Alaska. So if you think your internet connection is bad, go to Alaska. You're really fucked. Yeah, I think we should have tech sit here. Maybe a little bit of a lexit from Alaska. We should all have some kind of exit plan. Oh, man, there's a lot of fallacies. Of course, I have gradually become an anarchist libertarian. And so from that perspective, so I think that one like one of the fallacies. Oh, okay, so let's go with a basic one. The word property. Okay. Like I talk about intellectual property a lot. And so people trying to rephrase this argument, they'll say that ideas aren't property. But I don't think that's the right way to look at it. The question is not whether something is or is not property. So the word property really is just a description of a relationship between an owner and a thing. So we say that if you own a chair or a car or a house that you have a property right in that thing. So it's a resource. But to call it property is a little bit confusing because, you know, I have a property right in that thing. So the question is never is, is that thing property? The question is when there's a thing that people have a dispute over who is the owner? That's the only question. The question is who's the owner, not is it property? So that's one, I think mistake libertarians make it at least in the straight. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I think another could be over reliance on metaphors and sloppy thinking and sloppy language. So, for example, we're used to the idea from Locke that you own the fruit of your labors, but that's really just a metaphor that the fruit of your labor is not really a literal thing that you own. You don't really own the fruit of anything or of your labors. So you don't own your labor. You don't own your action. This is another big mistake I think people make and it leads to the intellectual property way of thinking. Because if you believe that you own not only your body, which is I think what self ownership properly is supposed to mean, you own your body, then you also own your actions or your labor, the things you do with your body. I think that's a mistake. I think it's like double counting and it leads to confusion because if you believe you own your labor, then you think there's this sort of substance called labor that kind of emanates from or flows from your body that you own. And when it mixes into other things, then you own those things that you mix with it. That's how Locke described it. And that leads to the idea of intellectual property. If you create something that you labored to create with your mental labor, then you have a property right in that thing. And that's a big mistake I think. What about owning your time? Yeah, I think that's another mistake. I don't think you own your time. I don't think time is technically speaking a scarce resource. Economists say this because they view it as a factor that goes into production, but it's not really a resource that you can own. Time is just the passing of events. So philosophically, I don't think that time is a resource that you can actually have a property right over. What is it when we have a job then? How would you describe it if we're not selling our labor or selling our time? Yeah, right. That's exactly the right next question I ask. And that's another mistake when people... So I adhere to what the Rothbardian and the Williamson Evers view of contract theory, which is really a revolutionary theory Rothbard came up with, which I think is underappreciated in how momentous it is. But basically, his view of contract is that contract is simply the exercise of an owner over resource that you own and to transfer it to someone else by the consent of the owner. So that's what a contract is. It's not really what we conceive of contract is normally is a binding promise. So a labor contract or a sale contract or an employment contract... Well, first of all, people misunderstand this. They usually assume that when you work for someone, you have a contract. You don't really usually have a contract. I mean, most of us have jobs and we don't really have an agreement at all, except an agreement upon the price that you're going to be paid. Yeah, you fill out an application, they say you're hired and that's it. Yeah, and they say we're going to pay you $12.75 an hour and that's it. And then they can fire you when they want to and you can quit when you want and that's all there is to it. And if you perform 13 hours of work, then they owe you 13 hours of pay. That's the only contract. Everyone acts like it's something more elaborate than that. It's usually not more elaborate than that unless you're the CEO of HP or something like that and you negotiate something more complicated. So most times the contract is just a payment of money to someone. You can say in exchange, which is an economic concept, in exchange for them performing some labor. But that doesn't really mean you literally sell the labor. We describe it that way in analogy to a normal transaction, right? A normal exchange would be, I give you an apple, you give me a pair. So we're exchanging two things. So I'm giving you one thing, you're giving me another and the title is transferring. But not every contract and not every exchange involves a mutual or a bilateral transfer of titles. Sometimes it's just one way. So for example, if I pay you a dollar to sing a song for me, then I'm giving you title to money in exchange for something that I value, but you're not giving me title to anything in exchange. I'm just hearing something that pleases me. So not every contract, not every exchange is a two way exchange of title. And the same is true in the employment context. If I perform a service review, then you're giving me money to get something that you want, which is for me to perform certain actions with my body. That doesn't mean I'm literally selling to you my labor as if I own the labor and I'm transferring the title to that labor to you. So then what is the economic thing of value that is transferring? I'll see values in Austrian terms and economic terms. Value is a subjective concept. So value is just what you value. So for example, every action that we engage in, according to Mises and Praxeology and the study of human action, every action is aimed at achieving some kind of end, some kind of result that you want to be the case in the future. It doesn't always have to be the ownership of an item. It could be something else. I could engage in libertarian activism to achieve a more peaceful world or I could engage in fundraising for cancer to try to cure cancer. But if I'm successful, the end of my action will not be something that I own. It would just be a change state of affairs that I prefer to happen. So what I value is what I was aiming at. So you don't always have to value something that you're going to own. Sometimes you can. If I buy a chocolate bar from the grocery store, the end of my action is to obtain the ownership of a chocolate bar. And the reason is, you know, so I can enjoy it or whatever. But the end of my action is not always to obtain ownership or title to something. It could be to see a smile on a girl's face or, you know, to, if I do a weather dance, it could be to make it stop raining. I've seen this. But for example, like, I think this is a great analogy. So let's just say I want to go to a movie theater, right? Hey, $20 for me and Heather and Kurt, or maybe more than that now. $30 for all three of us to go see the new X-Men movie or whatever, right? We go to the movie theater and we are not buying the movie. We're buying the viewing of the movie. We're buying, we're not getting anything out of it. The entertainment. Yeah, we're getting the entertainment value. We're not actually getting the movie. There's no hard copy in our hands when I bought, when we went to see the movie. You're not leaving with anything. No. Right. Is that a good analogy? It's a very good analogy. So I think that, so in that case, it's a unilateral transfer of, look, you're transferring title to your money to the movie studio or to the theater. So that is a transfer of title to some property that you own or some resource that you have a property right. Okay. Now look, if you give $20 to your nephew as a birthday gift, you're also transferring, it's a gift. Right. But in both cases, it's a unilateral transfer of title. In one case, you're doing it to receive something in return. In the other, you're not unless you want your nephew's gratitude. And in the case of seeing the movie, what you want in return is the experience of seeing the movie, but it's not that you own it. I would say that for the temporary duration of the movie as you're in the theater, you're physically renting the space basically. So you do have some kind of limited property right in the physical movie space. But I think the reason we say that, so if someone says, well, I spent $20, what did I buy with it? They're making an analogy to a regular exchange, right? In which case I give you $20 and you give me five apples or something like that. So that's what they're analogizing it to. So what they're really saying is I sold my labor services for my job or I bought the experience of watching a movie for $20. They're just explaining in sort of praxeological terms what the motivation was of why did you give up the $20? You gave it up to achieve a certain end and that was to watch a movie. And you can just say colloquially, I bought the movie, but you didn't really buy a movie because you don't have a title to anything afterwards. You just have a memory. Well, you could have bought the tickets. That's what I'm thinking. So you own those little pieces of paper. You pay $20 for those tickets, which those tickets mean something else. The value of those tickets. Yeah, whatever. We can go on forever on that. Hey, we're going to take a quick commercial break. Make sure you have your tampons and your aspirin and we'll be right back. Johnny Rocket from the Johnny Rocket Launchpad. You know what, guys, I am not one for seven hours and are any of this motivational training bullshit. But you know what, after taking the Libertarian Leadership course, well, I've changed my mind. This course was fantastic. It really engaged me and other members of the group in different ways of leading. You know, everyone is different and the Libertarian Leadership course is there to help you find your personal style of winning. You know, and influencing. That is really the perfect fit for you. Everybody is different. We all walk to a different drum. We all know this. And this course was designed to be flexible for any personality type. Not only does this course show you ways to motivate and inspire people. It also teaches you to train and coach future members and leaders of the Libertarian Party. Schedule a call today to find out how they can bring their revolutionary training to your city. Take your first step in challenging the status quo. Visit libertarianleadership.org But like you were talking on the Tom Wood Show and I really wanted you to kind of talk about this on this show. I think it's fantastic regarding suing and how we've come into a so happy society. Everyone wants to sue people. Hey, I don't like you. I'm going to sue you. You said that Libertarians also get this wrong about how they view litigation. One thing I noticed that people get wrong all the time. Libertarians and others. Someone will ask me, if I do the following, can someone sue me for it? Well, you know, the answer is yes. You can be sued at any time. What you're really asking is will you lose, right? Or will it be easy to win if you want to put up a defense? So being sued doesn't mean that you're going to lose. It just means someone has the right to bring you to trial. The problem with the current system, well, there's many problems with it. One problem is that the entire system we have now is almost entirely based upon legislation instead of principles of justice, which is really what the common law used to be geared at trying to find. Trying to find results in a case where there's a dispute between two or more people and the judge and the court would try to find a just result and over time those principles congealed in the common law. And there was another system in the Roman law which is similar. Now we have legislation. So in most cases, you just look at the legislation that is just words written down by a legislature and that's the answer to the case. So the dispute is no longer about justice. It's about what words mean. So the only question is, you know, did you do A, B, and C if that's what the statute prescribes? It's got nothing to do with justice anymore. So the job of judges is no longer to try to find a just result. The job of jurors is no longer to try to just result. They're just interpreting statutes. Okay. So that's one huge problem with the modern law is that it's no longer the attempt to find justice. It's an attempt to just interpret words that someone else just announced. Interesting. Some committee. And it corrupts the way everyone views law. So everyone now thinks of law as things that have to be written down and announced by the sovereign and that we call this legal positivism. It's just the view that law is what some sovereign decrees. And of course that gets everyone in thinking like having the mindset of serfs. We obey the rules of the person that decrees what the rules are. And the only question is what are the rules that the current ruler has laid down for us? Interesting. So this is very, very dangerous. So that's one problem. Now a lot of libertarians, they think that one solution, this reminds me a little bit of libertarians to think that one solution to our political problem would be term limits. You know, if you just limit the number of terms that a president or a governor or a congressman can serve, that will fix the problem, which is of course complete nonsense. It's a non-solution to the real problem. Right? Okay. And so likewise, a lot of libertarians think that you should adopt what's called a loser pays rule. Right? So in other words, if I sue you and I lose, then you have to pay me back for my attorney's fees. They think that's the solution to this litigation problem that we have now. I think they're completely wrong. The reason we have a litigation problem is because law is no longer natural law and people can sue based upon causes of action that are created by the legislature. Right. And the only kind of loser pays rule that I'm in favor of would be like in the field of patents or copyrights, what I call the losing plaintiff pays. So if I initiate a lawsuit against you, which is analogous to aggression, right, initiating the use of force. Okay. And then if I lose, then I have to compensate the defendant that I sued for his costs. That makes a lot of sense. I would be in favor of that, but I would not be in favor of a general loser pays rule because if someone sues me for patent and print, and I lose because the law is unjust, it would be adding insult to injury or actually I guess adding injury to injury to make me pay for the attorney's fees of the plaintiff after I have to pay him damages that I shouldn't have to pay in the first place. So the loser pays rule could actually double the damages done or magnify the damages done to an innocent person under our current system. So I would only be in favor of a losing plaintiff pays rule. That's very interesting. That's a great point. I think it's a great idea because that would get rid of a lot of people who are so happy. It really would. Yes. I mean, they have to go in there going, hey, I'm going to win and I'm going to kick some ass and then there's a chance. Maybe I should. I don't know if I have enough evidence against this person to actually go into this and win. Or if I'm aggressive. If I had to pay for it at the end of this, I'm not sure I could. Right. Another mistake I hear a lot of libertarians is on the issue of, well, on intellectual property, which is an extremely complicated issue, almost no one understands trademark, patent copyright and trade secret like a patent lawyer like me does. So they don't understand these things, I don't blame them for. I don't understand neurosurgery either. But they will start commenting that something like, well, I think I'm against copyright, but I'm for contractual patents or something like that. They don't know they're talking about. And then they'll say something like, well, I'm for trademark because I'm against fraud. Now, that little statement I hear all the time by people who don't know a thing about fraud law, contract law, property law, or trademark law because it just doesn't occur to them that, well, we already have a law against fraud. So why would you be for trademark because you're against fraud? Because if there's already a law against fraud, then trademark law is what is it, like an extra second law against fraud? Okay, I get what you're saying. Why do we need trademark to stop fraud if fraud is already illegal? Okay. So trademark has to do something else beyond fraud. And they don't really understand what that is, but they're kind of in favor of trademark law because they think it prevents fraud. Interesting. It's got literally nothing to do with fraud. Interesting. Trademark basically prevents you from selling something that is confusingly similar to something else. But it doesn't have to actually confuse anyone. It's just deemed to be confusingly similar. Well, I remember like there was this whole thing with the trademark thing where you went to a restaurant and you were like, can I get a Coke? And then the waitress was like, oh, we only have Pepsi. And I just wanted a cola. Right. Well, cola's not a Coke. But it was their name, they had to say their names or just like Kleenex. People started calling facial tissue Kleenex. So Kleenex got mad and said, no, you have to call this facial tissue. All right. Because you can't... Well, a better restaurant example would be the happy, well, this is more copyright, but you know, when you go to restaurants when they sing happy birthday to someone, they usually sing this kind of concocted happy, happy birthday song. All right. Right, right, right. And that's because the so-called owners of the copyright song were suing all these companies if they would do that. And so they had to get a license. And they recently lost their copyright in trial like six months ago or something. No. Yeah. So the happy birthday song copyright has been basically eviscerated. So now it's like public domain. Now it's legal to say regular happy birthday. Public domain. Yeah. I think it's legal to do that now. Interesting. Who wrote that fucking song? It's not that good either. Oh, my God. If you just search a happy birthday copyright case, you'll see there's a whole history there. Oh, wow. It's totally confusing. It was cribbed from another older song, some Boy Scouts thing or something like that. Wow. It's a long time ago. Was it like somebody came along one day and like, hey, nobody's really copyrighted happy birthday. I think I'm going to do that. Was it that kind of a thing? I think it was something like that. It was basically an adaptation of something that had been done before. It was never protected by copyright according to the standard of time. Wow. And you basically had Time Warner, Warnership Hell music or something like that, just asserting for decades that they had the copyright. A major record label, huh? That's crazy. They just paid. Everyone just paid up because it's extortion. And finally someone fought it and they won. That's fucked up. But it was like Paris Hilton. Didn't she copyright a phrase or a term or something stupid? Did she? Oh, that's so hot. That's so hot or something like that. It's like, come on. And that's trademarked. That's not copyrighted. Oh, it's trademarked. Okay. That's her logo. That's her shtick or her business. Her hit phrase. Right. And it was those Johnny Rockett always launching ideas in your direction. And I'm here. We're talking to Stefan Kinsella. And it was a check him out at StefanKinsella.com. We have more of him coming up next. And he was all here at my co-host, Mr. Kurt Nelson. Thank you, Johnny. Hey, people. Check us out on NWCZ Radio. Friday is 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. And Saturday is 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. NWCZE is an award-winning radio station that has been going strong for years and has become the Pacific Northwest's most popular internet station to date. Great independent music, interviews, and delivering radio to you 24-7. Get the fuck outta here, really? 24-7. Am I a beautiful co-host, Ms. Heather Nexon? Thank you. And the Johnny Rockett Launch Pad is brought to you by Evergreen Cannabis from the highs to the lows we've got you covered. And if you go to Evergreen Cannabis and beautiful Blaine, Washington, mention the Johnny Rockett Launch Pad for 15% off your next purchase, visit them at www.egcanabis.com. We have Rocket Fire coming up. It was those Johnny Rockett Launcher ideas. We'll be right back. Let me tell you something that really chops my ass. Hey, I'm Billy Burns. I'll tell you what really chops my ass. Let me tell you Billy's Rules for Libertarianism. So, here's society. Everybody wants power and money. And don't tell me you don't. Don't sit there on your eye every time and tell me, oh, yeah, I just want to be really poor so everybody else can have more. Bullshit. You don't. You would like to have a million bucks and live in Florida or live in SoCal or live in the really nice part of whatever city you live in and have a pissed ton of money and have a huge mansion and a Lamborghini. You would. And you'd like to be able to tell everybody what to do too because that's how human beings are. And I'm sorry, but this is the human condition. I'm like Charlie Chaplin telling it like it is. There's two ways there. You can take the legitimate route or the illegitimate route. And if you create a social system where there is no legitimate route to wealth and power people will devise an illegitimate route. They will find La Cosa Nostra or whatever. You know, the Mexican drug cartels. That's a good example. I mean, look at all the poor people in Mexico. I've been to Mexico City. I've been in the barrio. I've been to Mexico City back in the 80s when it was really rough. I went all over that town. A lot of poor people. A lot of criminals. A lot of gangs. A few rich guys living in gigantic houses financed by cocaine. And this is how it is. If you do not give people a legitimate, honest path through capitalism to wealth and power they will find an illegitimate way and people will get hurt. Secondly, rule number two. Institutions. People like to create institutions, societies, organizations, bromides, whatever you want to call them. Any institution that is not specifically tasked with fighting statism will become a tool of the statists. And in some cases, even then will become a tool of the statists. It will get compromised through demagoguery generally or bribery or corruption. So you take something like seemingly innocent thing. Oh, it's just a wonderful, wonderful charitable thing. You'll find it's just some shill for the status bullshit. Rule number three. There are no innocent bystanders. You might think you're just a neutral person standing in your kitchen, peeling your jicama and cutting up your vegetable plate. Well, you're not. You're not. That knife in your hand is regulated. That jicama is regulated. Import tariffs on that thing from Mexico or it was grown in California and it was regulated all to hell. And the water used to grow, it was regulated all to hell. You're not an innocent bystander. You're a consumer of statism or you're fighting statism. You're doing one or the other. If you're doing nothing, you're not going under. If you're not standing up and saying this is bullshit then you are happily accepting the menial little bribe. So you take something like, oh, the Susan Coleman run for breast cancer, the pink shirt. So I'm such a happy little yuppie from Kirkland running down the street raising money for something good, good, good. Well, first of all, breast cancer gets about 100 times as much funding as any other disease and it doesn't kill very many women. Heart disease kills 50 times as many women but we don't care about that because it doesn't got boobies in it. Well, what about the poor woman having a heart attack? Oh, nobody cares about her. It's not her boobs. And then the money for all this bullshit pink shirt running money gets handed over to some leftist institution who dumps it into political campaigns for a bunch more leftist bullshit and they just put out some more authoritarian crap and nobody gets cured of breast cancer. It doesn't save anybody. You see, you're not an innocent bystander. You're not just peeling your hiccup and running down the street with your pink shirt on being a nice little yuppie from Kirkland. You are a goddamn shill for the status. Wake the fuck up. And that's what chaps my ass. The Johnny Rocket Launchpad is brought to you in part by Lausse Faire Books. Lausse Faire is a French term meaning let them be. It has, for more than a century, referred to the belief that an individual is best equipped to solve their own problems and create a more prosperous society while bureaucratic mandates and top-down control tend to make problems worse. Visit Lausse Faire Books for incredible articles and, of course, books. Check them out at LFB.org. This episode of the Johnny Rocket Launchpad is brought to you by the Liberty Conservative. The Liberty Conservative is an online political magazine devoted to the vision of less government and more liberty in achieving true prosperity for all. They intend to accomplish this by informing and educating their readers on the core values of free markets, limited government, non-interventionalism, and personal freedom through their articles, videos, interviews, and endorsements, and other media. Please visit the Liberty Conservative at www.thelibertyconservative.com. Hi, this is Jason Stapleton, and you're listening to the libertarian rock star Johnny Rocket here on Johnny Rocket's Launchpad. In Congress, July 4th, 1776, the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Johnny Rocket Launchpad, and now, this is Johnny! Ha ha ha, oh yeah! Ha ha ha, oh yeah! Oh yeah, oh yeah! Hey, it's Johnny Rocket here at the Johnny Rocket Launchpad. I always launch on ideas in your direction. The Northwest only rock and roll libertarian radio show. I'm here on my co-host, Mr. Kurt Nelson. That is correct, my brother. The voice of reason, the beautiful Heather, the beautiful Heather Nixon. Did you break it for a minute? No, I was just brown cow, brown owl thing. I was thinking about it. You said the beautiful and then you were thinking, bro. Yeah, brown cow. So you were thinking about me, and then the word cow came in. Oh, come on. That's messed up. That's wrong, Heather. No milk for you. No milk for you. No milk for you. You can't even buy it or get it for you. Ouch! Ouch! Anyways, those Johnny Rocket were talking with the awesome Steppen Concella. Thank you very much, sir. You can check them out at Steppenconcella.com. He's an anarcho capitalist. This guy has written tons of intellectual journals and books and you can check them out at his website. And here's what we do. Steppen is on this segment. It's called Rocketfire. Rocketfire. What we do on Rocketfires, I'm going to ask you, sir, a series of 10 questions. These questions will be politically related. And if you can answer these questions between 30 to 60 seconds, that'd be awesome. Steppen, are you ready to play Rocketfire? Let's go. Question one. Should felons be able to vote and own firearms if they are released to the public? No one, yes. No one should be able to vote. No one should be able to vote. No one should be able to own firearms. Nice, nice. Right on. Touche, anything else you want to say on that? No, I actually think that felon, when they've done their time, they ought to be released back into society and shouldn't be punished anymore. Have another go at it. I think you're correct. Question two. What do you think the reason is that we have lower crime that we've ever had? I think it's because we're richer. I think that's basically the answer. We're richer so there's less need to steal and to be a criminal. We'll have more money available to give to charity. And maybe it's because the gun rights have gotten stronger in the US in the last 20, 30 years. Interesting. Question three. Do you think reputations keep people and businesses honest? Absolutely, although I think reputation is an extremely important part of civil society and normal business life and everyone has their own reputation that affects their fortunes when dealing with others, with having friends and joining clubs and getting jobs. But I think that you don't have a right to your reputation so I'm totally opposed to defamation law which includes libel and slander. Libel is the written form of defamation. Slander is the oral form of defamation. Those are basically intellectual property type rights which say that you have a right to your reputation similar to trademark law. And I think that defamation law as Rothbard showed in The Ethics of Liberty is completely 100% un-libertarian and unjustified and should be totally abolished. So reputation is important but you don't have a property right in your reputation. So what do you think people donate money to political campaigns? Well, I think that larger donors donate to receive favors down the road. So it's basically a quid pro quo. I think that smaller donors do it for the same reason that people vote. They're under the delusion that it's part of their civic obligation or civic duty and they think they're participating in the process. I think it's ridiculous. It'd be better to burn money than to give it to a politician. Why are price gougers natural monopolies a good thing? I don't like either term. I don't think there's such a thing as a natural monopoly and I don't believe that you're really gouging. All that means is that you're charging higher when there's higher demand. Just like Uber has this demand pricing for when, you know, this pricing that they charge a multiple higher when there's a surge when there's a lot of demand. So I think basically the benefit of a free market is that you can have pricing that reflects supply and demand and people adjust from time to time. Actually price discrimination would be the most efficient thing of all. If you could charge different buyers a different price, it's just difficult to engage in price discrimination because you don't really know who your buyers are. You have to kind of try to level price most of the time. Sometimes you can find creative ways to engage in price discrimination. So I think price gouging is one of the ways to engage in temporal discrimination that is to raise prices temporarily when there's an extraordinarily high demand. And I think there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. In fact, I think it's good because it helps clear the market and helps make for a more efficient set of transactions. It stops people from hoarding, too. Here's another question that kind of goes along the same line, but Question 6. Why are last-minute airline tickets so expensive? We've all been there. I could make up an answer, but I don't know exactly the answer. I think it's something that's quite a demand, I imagine. It's because last-minute airplane gasoline costs more. They're just desperate. They're like, I gotta go to Orlando. I gotta go to Orlando. Question 7. What kind of energy supply should be used instead of gas and coal? Well, I've been a long-time proponent of nuclear power and I think that in a free market it would be much more popular. I do agree there's some subsidization going on there about the state of our current system. On the other hand, it's heavily regulated and the cost is much higher than it would be. I also think that if the state or the legal system appropriately penalized the externalities from fossil fuels, the pollution that comes from it, then there would be a little bit more cost associated with fossil fuels. Nuclear would be relatively more affordable, but I'm a big proponent of fossil fuels as well. Having an energy-based society with some pollution is better than having no energy. In a way, I agree with Ayn Rand that when you see a smokestack of a fossil fuel plant, you should get on your knees and give a little prayer to the smokestack because it's saving us from living like animals. I'm a big proponent of nuclear. I think that solar and soft energy sources are fine, but I think they're a lot less energy efficient and a lot more polluting than we recognize and they can never replace the bigger sources of energy like nuclear and fossil fuels. Do you see the government eventually taking control or full control of the internet? No. I elected a distinguished government from the state. The state is what I oppose. The state to me is the agency of institutionalized aggression and as a libertarian, I oppose aggression. Government to me is a vague term. Some of us use it to mean the state. Sometimes it means just the governing institutions in society, but no, I don't think the state will or really can take total control of anything. I don't think it has unlimited power, which is one reason I'm against libertarians who say they're in favor of limited government because I don't think it... First of all, all governments or all states are limited because no state is completely totalitarian. There's always limits on what the state can do. So saying you're for a limited government is like saying you're for a state of a certain size. So states always have a certain size and a certain limit. So I think the state can never completely control all of life because they have to get by with the consent of the people they're basically exploiting. So to do that, they have to sell themselves as providing something of use. So that's why there's propaganda and public education and the government pretends like they're on your side and they're helping protect you from A, B, and C. So I don't think they're going to completely take over the internet. And I think that the internet and technology like this, the good thing about that is that technology can keep advancing and stay ahead of the government with encryption and with decentralized knowledge with a bit torrent type technology and also even blockchain type technology. So I think that the good thing about this kind of technology is that the state will find it harder and harder to attack it. Well, yeah, and you're going to have entrepreneurs who are going to be like, how can we fuck this system here? And they're going to constantly be a couple of steps ahead. Yeah, I think there's an expression I heard one of the internet pioneers said that the internet looks at the government as damage and just rouse around it basically. Question one. Is pirating movies a victimless crime? Absolutely. In fact, I think it actually helps the so-called victims of it. But if it doesn't, there's nothing wrong with copying information whatsoever. It's not just that it's not un-libertarian to copy things because copyright is wrong. There's no crime being committed. It's not even immoral. I think there's nothing whatsoever wrong with copying information that's in the public domain in the public, however you see fit. I think Benjamin Tucker who was one of the licender schooners lived around that time, another anarchist libertarian, he said it best. He said that if you want to keep your information to yourself, keep it to yourself. But if you start revealing information to the world then you can't really complain if people copy it, learn from it, talk about it, et cetera. So piracy is a good thing. It's not a bad thing. Question time. Does someone have free speech on someone else's property? Yeah, this is one of these. The short answer in a way is no but the question is framed this way quite often by libertarians and they think of land as a special thing, like your on land. This is why I asked you. Yeah, and the person who is on the land, the person who owns the land that you're on gets to set the rules, so to speak. I'm not so sure that's right, that if I enter someone's property to get a wayward frisbee or a softball or if I invite it to a dinner party that they have the right to blow my head off just because they own the property and they can set the rules. It just doesn't follow like that. We have to keep in mind the basic libertarian idea is that we're against aggression, which means basically invading the borders of someone's body without their permission. And just because I'm quote-unquote on your property doesn't mean that I'm committing aggression and you can blow my brains out if you feel like it. So we have to be careful saying that the owner of property can set the rules for what happens on that property. So that said, I would say that you don't have a right to frisbee in general anyway. There is no right to frisbee. There's only right to do whatever you want to do so long as you don't commit aggression against someone else. That is use someone else's resources without their permission, okay? So in general, speech doesn't do that, which is why we recognize that the speech is generally not going to be an act of aggression and can't be prohibited or treated like it's an act of aggression. But it can be in some cases. So for example, you know, if President Truman, if Hitler orders the killing of a bunch of Jewish people or gays, you know, just because he's using speech doesn't mean he's immune from liability in my view. Now, a lot of libertarians who have a kind of so-called purist view of frisbee actually say that, you know, Hitler's defense in the Nuremberg trials should have been something like, don't blame me, I just gave orders. Right. But there's authority behind those orders and it's a little different. Well, that's just another way of saying that sometimes speech can play a causal role in aggression. Just like if I say ready, aim, fire to a firing squad that I'm in command of, right? Or if I get on a jury on the witness stand in a trial and I lie and I say that, yeah, this guy raped my sister and I saw it. And the jury believes me and the system executes this guy or puts him in jail when he's innocent. I think my speech act play the causal role in the aggression done to him and I'm liable for that. So you can imagine cases where speech can result in aggression being done to someone and in those cases I think you shouldn't have the right to do that. But that's because it's a type of action. So, but in general, I think if you're on someone else's property, you don't have the right to use their property in a way that they don't consent to. So I would say if I'm invited someone's home or their business and the rule is announced that certain types of speech are not permitted there, if I do that, then I can be ejected. But I can be ejected anyway, anytime by the owner if they just change their mind because it's their property. So I don't really think that means free speech is limited. I just think it means people that own resources are entitled to use them as they see fit and they're entitled to invite people to use them temporarily and they're entitled to change their mind and to revoke that permission when they want. Anyways, so let's rock and fire with Stefan Kinsella. Well done, man. I am. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. Let's kick ass. I'm from Louisiana, that's right. Like, I'm from L.A. When I lived in Alabama. I'm from the other L.A., that's right, the other L.A. Right. When I lived in Alabama, I always say I'm from L.A., lower Alabama. And you could say that you're from Louisiana too, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. We write slowly, but we expect people to read us more quickly than we write. Got to take a quick commercial break and now a word from our sponsors. Do you know why you should take the trip to Blaine, Washington, Sun, beaches, glorious mountain views? Oh, and weed. Blaine is home to the premier recreational marijuana store Evergreen Cannabis. 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So, Stefan, as far as the free speech goes, what is the slander results in harming your reputation and let's say somebody says someone's a pedophile completely makes it up, but they lose their job, they can't get another one and it hurts them financially and, you know, they lose their house is, does that in a, does that count? Can someone go after them legally to sue them if they cause them financial harm? I don't think so because the harm that's done to the people in those cases is harm that they didn't have a right not to have happen to them. So, if someone doesn't give you a loan, for example, you didn't have a right to the loan in the first place. So, the lender has the right to not give you money for whatever reason they want. If they want to rely upon the advice of a slanderer, they have the right to do that. Okay, so that would be how I analyze that. But I would say that, you know, in a world where there was no defamation law, then people wouldn't put as much stock into what people said because they know there's no defamation law. Right now, if someone accuses someone else of being a child molester and the victim of that charge doesn't file a defamation lawsuit, everyone assumes that he's actually guilty of it because if he really was innocent he would have filed a defamation lawsuit. So, in a world where there's no defamation law at all, the failure of me to legally do something about it doesn't have any implications. So, people would be, I think, more skeptical of public claims and they would rely more upon the private reputation of the speaker. So, someone who has a reputation for making scandalous charges like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which calls everyone who doesn't think Israel should rule the world an anti-Semite, you know, they just would be laughed out of court all the time. And I mean the court of public opinion. So, their charges would carry very little weight. So, defamation law actually helps give more weight right now to charges that people are bigots or racists, etc. Because otherwise, they would counter sue for defamation. But it's not always worth it to do that now. So, what you're saying is, if you don't do anything, you're guilty. If you take no action, most the public court or the people would therefore assume, well, he ain't saying anything and he's quiet and he's kind of sitting in his house and he's kind of hiding from everyone. He must be guilty. Yeah, because he has the right to sue. Like, if he's really innocent, truth is a defense to a defamation case. So, if he's really innocent why isn't he suing these people for defamation, libel or slander? Why isn't he suing them? It's almost like when someone is accused of a horrible murder and they don't take the witness stand because they have the right to under the Fifth Amendment. And you're not supposed to infer anything from that. Normal people watching go, well, I don't know. I think if I was totally innocent and I was accused, I probably would take the stand that explain what the hell happened and why I'm innocent. And the fact that this guy doesn't makes me think maybe he's got something to hide. He's got the right to hide it, but it makes me suspect that he's hiding something. And something similar happens when someone doesn't defend themselves under today's legal system when they're charged or when they're accused of something heinous because they have a right to file a lawsuit against it now. In a free society, you wouldn't have a right to sue someone for defamation because people have the right to lie basically. And other people have the right to rely upon people's lies in doing business with you. I mean, like, if we read the National Inquirer, right, we know that's all bullshit. We know they lie. It's an entertainment. It's yellow journalism. It's funny. It's entertainment. But nobody believes that. It's just there for that. I think there are people that some people that do. Maybe they do. Maybe some people who are not George Norrie at night. Thoroughly all together. UFOs. Yeah, but again, I mean, same thing, though, I think we all know it's an incredible news source, so we wouldn't probably believe them. Yeah, but I think Heather's got, there's a good point there in that you could reach certain lines where the speech rises to a level where it is aggression. So, like, if you see an angry lynch mob out looking for the black guy who allegedly raped some white woman and, you know, you saw chicken George just run by and you don't like him for some reason, you tell the mob, I just saw him over there and I saw him do it. You know, you kind of like stoke up the fears of this mob and you get this guy killed. Right. I could see in a case like that, but the difference is in that case the lynch mob didn't have a right to hang this guy. So, his rights were violated when he was a lynched. In the cases we were discussing earlier, if someone doesn't do business with you they're not violating your rights because you don't have a right for them to do business with you. Right. If someone wants to stop going to Chick-fil-A because the owner is a Christian who doesn't open their stores on Sundays and doesn't support gay marriage, you know, they have the right to not patronize the business. That is true. What is your subjective view of anarcho-capitalism and how is that different from any other forms of anarchy? I personally used the word anarcho-libertarianism mostly now because I do think that, well, the left libertarians have somewhat succeeded in demonizing the word capitalism, which I don't agree with them on this. But they have a germ of a point in that the way the Randians used the word capitalism as a synonym for libertarianism I think is a little bit of a stretch. I do think that in any advanced cosmopolitan society that has a free market, you would tend to have capitalism arise, but capitalism is just one aspect of the economic aspect of a libertarian society. So to use it as a stand-in for the entire thing is like metonymy almost, you know, like saying someone's hitting the bottle, using the bottle to refer to drinking. It's a stand-in. And I don't have a big problem with it, but I think that free society is more than just about the way the economy is ordered. And it's more than about the particular way that capital is owned. Although I do think that any free market society would be heavily capitalist. So that's it. So I usually use anarcho-libertarian. I use it to distinguish people that say they're against the state, but they're not for a private property order in the free society that would emerge in the absence of the state. Because I don't think they're actually literally anarchist because if you don't have private property being respected on a system on a society-wide basis you're not going to have libertarian justice and you're really going to have not get rid of the state. You're perpetuating the state. And I think the other point is we have to recognize that libertarians I think all consistent libertarians should be anarchists, not only anarchists. In other words, we're anarchists because we're against aggression. But that means we're against both private aggression which is normal criminal actions and aggression that's committed by agencies or institutions which is basically the state. So we're against the state because we're against aggression but that means we're also against private aggression. So I believe if we got rid of the state then we would get rid of one huge source of aggression but you would still have to worry about private aggression being perpetrated on people. And if you don't have private property rights being respected, you still have widespread aggression being done just because people's property rights aren't being respected. So I think as libertarians as anarchist libertarians we have to oppose private crime and that means we support private property rights and we have to oppose state crime as well. Well what I find as funny is in here in Seattle we have a thing called May Day which is May 5th and we have all these riots and we have these so-called anarchists which are Ancoms. I've never once seen an anarcho capitalist or an anarcho libertarian out there throwing bottles and breaking windows. Why? I have never heard of any of that. Smashing and looting. It's just disgusting. This is bullshit. Obviously as an anarcho libertarian or anarcho capitalist we would obviously value those people's property and value their rights to own their property. Or respect it anyway. At least respect it. This is the big problem and I think that is the huge difference. I mean exactly it shows exactly where they stand. They break windows. They do all this shit. You're just an asshole. You're just a dick. You're a dick. A lot of left libertarians are against corporations because they have this belief that corporations are creatures of the state. I've written and talked on this too and you can Google it but I think that's another libertarian fallacy. The idea that without the government without the state, without state laws on this matter you wouldn't have corporations. I mean you would have firms organized in a way similar to what corporations, the way corporations are organized now. So I think you would have business agency entities that are basically corporations. Yeah but they wouldn't have the protection of the state. Well they wouldn't but I think that the fallacious view is that corporations have some kind of special privilege from the state that they wouldn't have in a free market and the fallacy there is the idea that every shareholder that's so-called an owner of the corporations assets would be have unlimited liability for every tort every wrongdoing done by an employee of that corporation absent the state and I think that's the fallacy that's actually wrong. I don't think that shareholders would or ought to have liability for the actions performed by other people unless you could show good reason for it. And just because they have a share in the corporation or because they gave money to the corporation or because they can vote for the board of directors in an annual meeting doesn't mean that they're any more liable for the actions of someone else than a creditor of that corporation or an employee of that corporation or a customer of that corporation. Right. I see where you're going. I 100% agree. So in other words, the state does give shareholders liability from unlimited liability from torts of employees of that corporation but they shouldn't have liability in the first place and so it's not really a special privilege the state has given it. Okay, I get it. And it was though this is Johnny Rocket. Do you have new websites or anything else you want to promote for us, sir? No, sir. Promote your own website. That's enough for me. And it was a check them out at stuffinconcella.com stuffinconcella k-i-n-s-e-l-l-a dot com. Check them out. Awesome stuff. He has some great videos on there, great articles that he's written. Thank you very much, Steppen, for being on the Johnny Rocket long time. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Yeah. Give it up for Steppen Kitzela. And it was those Johnny Rocket always launching ideas in your direction. Kurt, got a thing. Yeah, you know what I do and thanks for asking. I want to say libertarianleadership.org motivate, educate, activate. We are an organization founded by libertarian party members to specifically train and coach libertarians. Sign up for a free subscription to the libertarian leader newsletter and receive a free digital copy of libertarian leadership, the book exclamation point. You're reading that, right? No, I had that memorized. Okay. And the beautiful voice of reason, Heather Nixon. Thank you, Johnny. And you know what? Did you know that the Johnny Rocket Launchpad is liberty? No. And each week we strive to bring you the best guests and talk radio. Really? What? The Johnny Rocket Launchpad delivers weekly interviews of noteworthy politicians, experts, and activists. Steppen's noteworthy. That's right. The Johnny Rocket Launchpad is always bringing the party to the libertarian party. We are. Party no. And launching ideas in your direction. We are. The Johnny Rocket Launchpad. Thank you very much. This is episode 97. Three away from 100. Thank you guys very much. Always launching ideas. See you next time.