 Thanks everyone for coming tonight. Tonight. We're here with Stefan Kinsella. We're gonna talk about clarifying libertarian theory You know Libertarian theory is something we all have our own opinions about If you you know go into a room with a bunch of libertarians, you'll get more opinions than there are people But you know, what is the correct libertarianism and what are the limits of libertarianism? I think Stefan Kinsella has some ideas on this and he's going to share them with us If you don't know somehow Stefan Kinsella is a patent attorney a libertarian legal theorist He's the director of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom he's the founding and executive editor of Libertate libertarian papers and I mean he last week he in my opinion One of the bait here on Liberty me on IP versus Alex Baker, but Without further ado alternative or just that I Just sent you some links that I want to share with people here to look into this further and to find some slides People might know that I talk a lot about intellectual property Sometimes asked to speak on other topics which I enjoy because IP is not my only or main main even main issue On this talk a topic. I think I've spoken at least three times on the Tom Wood Show and in Turkey at Hans Hoppe's PFS and One other time as well. So the links to those shows are in my podcast feed and I can share them here or somewhere else And they the two of those have links to PowerPoint slides with links to some of the topics We're going to talk about and one of them goes into a lot of detail What I'd like to do is just kind of start from the beginning and Talk for a while, but I'd like to keep this interactive So anyone feel free to interrupt if I don't see your questions in the sidebar you can interrupt me or Matt can interrupt me Does everything sound okay Matt I see an err in the side want to make sure everything's fine can everyone hear me oh I see he's posting my links. Okay What I want to do is talk about some things I've noticed over the last 20 25 years of discussing Libertarian theory libertarian applications with a lot of people and Things I've learned about how you have to think yourself and how you have to approach other people that are either friendly Discussance or newbies or hostile and dishonest so Some of this is general and not really directly Specific to libertarianism itself, but I've noticed that we are the subject of a lot of these fallacies and flaws and pitfalls ourselves Okay, the first one is it's really important as you get deeper into libertarian theory and discussions and arguments and More you tangle with opponents and with people on the outside, which is happening more and more because libertarianism Is becoming more and more prominent and well known You have to be more and more careful with the terminology and the concepts that we use If nothing else libertarianism and anybody have thought to be Correct needs to be consistent So we have to strive for consistency and that requires a certain consistency in language uses definitions a lot of words have more than one meaning So that's one thing we have to do and I'm going to mention a few examples I've noticed over the years things. I've even had to change in my own usage to avoid Perennial confusion or giving an opening to the opponent to sort of dishonestly Use our own terminology against us And that that is the danger which I call equivocation if you're familiar with equivocation It's basically using a term in two different ways And there's a lot of instances of this that we libertarians face One would be something like, you know Well, if you're in favor of fairness or justice, how can you be in favor of letting a corporation fire someone for having a disability or Having the wrong race or whatever So they try to sneak in these concepts like this a more explicit example would be The example of government and I'm going to use this to explain why I've tried to change my own terminology with the word government Versus the word state Okay, so you libertarians often use the word government as a synonym for state So we if you're an anarchist at least you say you're against the government or you're against the state And if you're a menarchist you would say that you think we should have small government or a small state So we use them basically synonyms This usage is not really exactly how it's used overseas in Europe You'll notice the word they'll say after a parliament is elected or whatever they try to form a government They tend to use word government more like we in the US use the word Administration so we refer to the Obama administration is the current branch of appointed And or elected people in the current political cycle in the executive branch But the apparatus of the state stays in place whether the current administration is the one in power or not So when Obama leaves and the Hillary Clinton comes in or whoever the next one is The government as we Americans say it stays in place So we mean by government the state and libertarians mean by state Europeans by government usually mean the current administration The problem is you will get an opponent and they will say something like Aren't you in favor of law and order and we will say yes now because we're libertarians We believe there can be law and order and there would be more law and order and a Radically reduced state society or even in a stateless society So we don't we don't equate the state with law and order. Okay a lot of Pro-state advocates do so in their minds You can't have law and order without the state and that's perfectly acceptable as an opinion to hold But they pin it to the definition So they try to get you to admit that you're in favor of government and all you're admitting is that you believe in law and order And then they say aha. Well, you can't oppose the state because then you're in favor of anarchy or chaos So that's one example of equivocation. So that's one exam. That's one reason. I myself have tried not to use the word government as much anymore I used to say I'm again instead of saying I'm against public school Which is another example of a euphemism that masquerades as an argument It sort of hides the character of it So some libertarians say it's a government school Well now I say it's a state school because government to me is a loaded term It sometimes means law and order it sometimes means the state you have to be careful because this the statist We use that word against us in both ways There's a lot of other examples of In Uncareful or imprecise use of terminology Overuse of metaphors that can lead us astray We really can't do without analogies and metaphors and flowery language and that's fine, but we need to recognize when we're doing it Okay, so for example In the intellectual property area Or in property rights theory We will hear The kind of a variant of a standard Lockean argument that's the argument of John Locke which we Modern libertarians adopt a variant of John Locke argued that We have property rights because Ultimately, God gave us ownership of ourselves. So his argument is that God created the world God gave man dominion over themselves and the world animals and real estate and resources and Therefore every person owns themselves, which is a sort of the imprecise term which I'll get to in a second And because you own yourself because God gave it to you. He basically manumitted He's basically our overlord or our slave owner in a sense, but he lets us be free. That's sort of the argument It's not put put that way usually, but that's the argument If you own yourself you own your labor if you own your labor you own things you mix it with And if you own things you mix it with then you own the first You know an unowned resource that you that you homestead you make sure labor with that's the basic argument I think the argument is confused and imprecise and flawed It's basically right in its conclusion, but it has some necessary assumptions and steps to get there And the problem is those unnecessary assumptions and steps are used By quasi libertarians or non libertarians to argue against the consistent libertarian position, especially in the field of intellectual property So the argument for intellectual property just says well you believe that you own yourself and you own your labor And that's a thing of value. It's a thing of value because you can sell it right and By the same token you ideas or inventions or Novels or patterns of information are created by a person's labor They have value because you can sell them and therefore their property to Okay, so you see how this sloppy use of the Lockean argument and of terms like labor Self-ownership even the word property leads to a total confusion in the field of intellectual property Basically it leads to someone favoring intellectual property So let me explain what I think are the flaws here number one the flaw in Locke's argument First of all, we don't own ourselves because the word self is a disputed term. It's not very precisely defined What we mean is that you have a property right in your body your body is a coherent scarce physical resource Which is possibly the subject of conflict and dispute some people want to control your body if they want you to Adopt your religion or submit to sex with you or to Fight in a war that they want you to fight in They will threaten to invade the borders of your body with physical force like shooting it or hitting it or whatever If you don't obey their orders, that's what coercion is Okay, so all these things are examples of the Use of force against someone's body, which is the assertion of a property right over that person's body Which is basically a variant or a type of slavery and libertarians This shouldn't be news or opposed to slavery because we believe in Self-ownership, which means body ownership, which means each person is the owner of his own body or at least the presumptive owner Initially, you're presumed to be the owner of your body You might lose that right if you perform some action like committing an act of murder or you're trying to attack someone But the general presumption is everyone is the proper owner of their body So we should talk about body ownership not self ownership that'll keep us from getting into these vague metaphors and talking about This kind of stuff now labor is another term now This word labor is basically a description of what people do when they act in the world and they transform resources They do things they interfere with nature You perform action that's called labor Labor is just a type of action. It's the subset of action another type of action would be leisure That's an action you engage in For for pure pleasure or for consumption something you do for as the as the it for an end in itself If you watch a movie or you do something pleasurable That's still an action, but it's not considered to be labor labor is a type of action Just the type of action you would otherwise not do if you didn't have to change what's happening in the world So labor is just a type of action So when we say we own our labor what you're really saying is you own Actions you might as well say you own your pleasure or you own your leisure or You own your actions, which are really nonsensical terms the entire idea of ownership is basically the socially recognized legal right to control a given scarce resource Some resource that otherwise people could have conflict or clashing over that's the entire purpose in nature of property rights The only object of property rights can be a scarce resource Which gets to another confusion. I've seen in libertarian thinking this modern tendency to refer to the object of a property right as property So if I own a baseball bat or if I own a baseball or an automobile or a home People will say that baseball bat is your property Okay, so they start using the word property to refer to the thing itself This is okay as far as it goes But I found that that leads to confusion too because then people start asking the question Like about intellectual property They'll say well the way to settle the dispute about whether there ought to be property rights in ideas is We need to answer the question is an idea property or is it not property now? This is not the way to answer this question. That's a way of Stating the result as a way to figure out what the result should be Think about what property means think about the word proprietor the proprietor is the controller of something Proper means the way things should be the way you should act Property always just meant a characteristic of something. So the idea was this we are human actors We have our naked bodies were born into the world We have the ability to directly control our bodies to manipulate things in the world to act We'll mean it manipulate things we interfere with with with things in the world according to our understanding of the laws of causality To try to affect the outcome that would otherwise happen. This is the entire nature of the human experience of human existence every action you perform is an attempt To change what you think would be the future outcome if you hadn't acted It's always an attempt to interfere and to interfere means to successfully employ To take advantage of the nature of the causal world to interfere using the laws of physics for example Now the nature of human humanity is that we are isolated bodies, but we live in a physical world of other resources We directly control our bodies which are scarce resources But there are other resources too that we always necessarily employ when we act Number one. There's a physical world. That's a background condition according to Austrian economics These are sort of the general conditions of human action so called free goods like the air or like gravity or things like this things that people don't really own and Then there are resources which you need to directly Which you need to control to help to use is what means is called Means of action so your body is your direct means of action But your body with your body you employ other means of action. So for example if I want to Achieve some results some goal I will employ some resource to do that so I might pick up a stick to To use it as a lever for example I'm using the stick as a means and my body as a means now that stick is a scarce resource and I'm employing it as a means It's an extension of my ability to interfere with the causal laws of the world. So it's a property of me It's a characteristic of me. It's almost like my identity if there's some means I use regularly or successfully like clothing or a hut or a Watch or tools or whatever You think of those as an are your glasses, you know lots of things that are associated with a person's identity You use them all the time as a regular way to interfere with the world. So it's a property of you It's a way of extending your identity into the world Now this is a little bit metaphorical a little bit flowery and that's fine But it's it's a good explanation of why we would say That stick is a property of you because you're using it as part of your way of interfering with the world So over time we start calling the stick that's your property Okay, but we have to be careful a better way to put it if you're ever confused is just stop and think Let's identify the resource that's an issue and it's always a scarce resource Okay, and if I forget to mention this in a minute, someone remind me that's another area of confusion about What the object of a conflict is? For example, just to take a quick aside people say that people fight over religion Well, that's just false if you think about it precisely People never fight over religion. They can't fight over religion. The reason is religion is not a scarce resource that can be owned So there's no conflict possible over religion Okay, when people speak like this what they mean is They mean it's a compact way of referring to something else What they're saying is and they're mixing together two things what they're saying is there is a conflict Yes, there's a conflict between human actors and the conflict is always always a necessity and necessarily Over some scarce resource either people's bodies or the other resources that they control land houses animals Other possessions women and children and societies where those are considered to be Ownable resources of some head of household, etc. Okay. That's what the fight is always over But when they say they're fighting over religion, they're switching the subject to talk about the Cause or the motivation the reason people fight. So for example If I see Someone and I just pick up a gun and shoot them in the head. They haven't committed aggression against me I'm committing a pure act of murder So the description of the action is an action of murder because it's an intentional Use of a means the gun in my arms To invade the borders of a resource owned by someone else this other person's body. That's the description of the action Now if you ask the motivation for my action, it may be that I'm jealous of him I'm angry at him for Insulting my mother Whatever and you could say we're fighting over my girlfriend. We're fighting over my mother You could say that but what you really mean is that's the that's the motive That's the explanation of the reason why you committed the act of aggression But the act of aggression itself is not really over the girlfriend. It's over some scarce resource always always always This is one reason to go back to my original topic one reason I am Getting more and more leery about using the word property to refer to the resource. I Always try to refer to identify with the resource and question is that there's a conflict over and Then you could say it has an owner or someone has a property right in that resource But the question is who has the property right in that resource the question is not is the resource property That makes no sense The question can be is the resource a scarce resource that's ownable that can be a question But the advocates of intellectual property and other laws don't like to put it that way because it it makes their entire argument for property rights in Intangible things like songs and recipes and inventions. It makes it hollow and transparently false Which is why I think we need to keep the language clear consistent and objective So that's another example of This flaw in some of the talks I mentioned earlier. I go into a lot more detail about a lot more cases of this Before I pause for questions, although I'd be happy to take any questions that might arise before I'm done Let me give one more example as an illustration of what I think is the power of this kind of clear unadorned Consistent way of looking at these libertarian issues and by the way I would suggest people take a look at hot huntsman hoppa's introduction to Murray Rothbard's the ethics of liberty. He does a good Contrast between Robert Nozick and Rothbard. This is not exactly on the topic of what I'm talking about but Whatever you say about Rothbard, you can't say he wasn't clear. He was a very clear honest and direct and forthright writer Very systematic explain what he was saying You'll notice this is not always true of other people of other writers, especially socialists and mystics and people like that Now I don't know what the causation here. I don't know which way the causation runs here. I sometimes think that they're confused writers They're socialists and they're they're they're wrong because they're confused thinkers and that just manifests itself in confused writing and Sometimes I think they sort of know they're wrong and they try to hide it with confusing language They try to avoid being explicit and clear about what they're advocating So for example a typical conservative or liberal is really in favor of slavery They don't want to use that word. They don't want to admit that they're in favor of it They will even admit that they're in favor of aggression, but very begrudgingly and they will always say something like Well We believe in liberty. It's a value, but it's just one of many values unlike the libertarian It's not our highest or top value. So you see what they do They subtly change the subject and they try to make a straw man. They say that libertarians only believe in liberty now in a way that's true as Libertarians, but no one is just a libertarian every libertarian that has ever lived and will ever live Values liberty but values other things too in their capacity as a human being they value love and friendship and learning and honesty and Survival lots of things, but the point is the libertarian believes that aggression is simply unjustified and unjustifiable That's what they believe. It doesn't mean it's their top value or their only value It means what knows it called it's a side constraint It means it's something that we simply believe is not justifiable if you put it that way our opponents Position is really this They think sometimes aggression is permissible now Their reason for it is that they think that there are other values that are more important than that and if that's their argument They should just come out and say it they should say like a socialist or a communist would you have to break some eggs to make an omelette Right to have law and order, which the conservatives favor or to have equality, which liberals are the progressives favor You have to relegate you have to trample on private property rights You have to commit what it's otherwise seen as an injustice That's what they believe so they don't want to put it that way because it makes them look like a criminal because a criminal believes Something similar. He thinks it's okay to rape Excuse me or attack or kill someone Because you think something else is more important his personal desires for example the socialist of various forms which in which I include conservatives in that in that category They believe that aggression is sometimes justified. It's true. There are sometimes against aggression, but sometimes they're in favor of it and You can make an argument for that perhaps. I don't think it would be coherent but The argument for that mixed position that aggression is sometimes justified and sometimes not Cannot be that the libertarian is wrong because he only believes in liberty That's just not the case and that's not a reason that we oppose aggression. We oppose aggression because we believe it's unjustifiable It's incoherent To make an argument for aggression when you're engaged in the peaceful activity of Argumentation with someone who you're treating as a civilized neighbor in the first place This is basically a distillation of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's argumentation ethics Now before I pause for Q&A, let me return to the example I was going to give to my mind This is a very interesting example number one because I've never seen anyone address this issue And because it it's a two-sided issue that has led to confusion on many libertarian issues And this is this this idea I'm gonna I'm gonna assert it as a as a statement that a lot of libertarians believe sort of the knee-jerk belief and Both of which are false and both of which lead to confused Conclusions about other areas of libertarian Theory and application The first is the idea that if you own something You can sell it in other words the idea is that ownership of something is a relationship or a status That necessarily implies the ability to sell the thing. Okay. No, I think that's actually false And I think the only way to see that it's false is to have a clear understanding of the basic foundational fundamental principles of libertarianism and by the way one of the first places I would recommend people turn to to start getting a ground-up clear view of the Properitarian libertarian ethic would be chapters one and two Chapters one and two of Hans-Hurman Hoppe's a theory of socialism and capitalism very short chapters But just packed with amazingly clear Insights which are the foundation of my entire personal political libertarian theory Okay, and then the converse view which I think is also false is If you sell something You must own it in other words If there's a transaction in a market where someone sells can be characterized as having sold something That must mean that they had to own the thing in order to have sold it because you can't sell something unless you own it Now I think that's also completely false and terribly confused There are germs of truth in each one and there are cases in which they're both correct But they're not correct as general statements But the only way to see this is to have a clear understanding as I said earlier of property rights as rights in scarce resources Also an understanding of how they arise and what the libertarian principles are and that is the libertarian view is that Rights are acquired in scarce resources in two ways well three ways actually but There are two types of scarce resources that are ownable one is the human body and another is external resources which are scarce and Which at one point had no owner okay in Their case of a human body the presumptive owner is the person himself that controls directly directly controls that body like I own Me I own my body That's the presumptive answer because it's not always the answer for example It's sometimes okay to coerce someone or to treat them like a slave If they are committing aggression against you for example, or if they have committed aggression and you're trying to Restrain them or bring them to justice or eliminate them as a threat or incapacitate them or punish them in retaliation For example, so there are cases in which you can overturn the presumption, but you have to have a reason so normally each person is presumed to own their body on a less There's a reason why someone else has a better right and that only reason we write libertarians recognize is basically an act of aggression And that's inherent in the idea of aggression and the non-aggression principle Which says that you're entitled to use force only in response to force initiated force Okay, so that implies that you never have the right to initiate force but against someone else's body But you do have the right to respond with force if someone else did initiate force That's a very profound insight. It's clean. It's reciprocal. It's symmetrical. It's the heart of libertarian ethic Okay now in the case of scarce resources The the the the basic presumption is the person who has an earlier use claim Demonstrated public use of this resource that is they put up borders around it They mixed their labor with it to show that they've owned it. They have some kind of connection or link to this thing They have a better claim than anyone else Unless that second person has a reason to overcome that and the only two reasons to overcome the presumption would be number one If the second person who's a latecomer Claims the resource has a contract with the earlier guy Then he has a better claim because the earlier guy gave it to him by contract He basically abandoned the resource in favor of this second person or If the owner of the resource has committed some kind of Invasion of the property rights of the other person and owes him rectification or restitution He owes him something he has to make it up to him in that case the second person may have a claim over the resources owned by the The bad guy the malfeasor. Okay, so that's basically it self ownership except for aggression in terms of the body and First ownership first external resources unless there's a contract or a tort By these very simple principles we can always answer the question in principle at least When we when there's a dispute with two or more people over the control of the other resource whether it's someone's body or Some other resource We can always answer the question who has the better claim to it Who should be recognized as the owner who has the property right in it? We simply ask Was there a tort or is there a contract? Is it his body? Who was the first user? By answering these by asking these questions and getting the evidence about the situation We can always in principle have an answer to the question and that is what libertarianism is So you see it's always about what a resource is a resource that's disputed by Two or more people and remember only a scarce resource can be disputed You can't dispute an idea. You can't dispute Information you can't dispute a religion. You can only dispute things that can be disputed over that is scarce means of action Okay, only in those cases do we identify what the thing is that's being fought over And then we can formulate the libertarian answer by applying our basic principles to the case at hand, okay, so to return quickly to the example and Of if you if you if you if you own something you can sell it Well, that's not true ownership doesn't mean the right to sell something ownership means the exclusive the legally the socially recognized exclusive legal right to control a resource So it doesn't automatically imply the right to sell something for example your body So this this comes up in the case of in the debate over involuntary slavery. I'm sorry voluntary slavery Which I've had with walter block and others for example walter thinks that He thinks that ownership necessarily implies the right to sell because he's used to thinking of ownership in terms of These external resources And it is true then in the case of an external resource you can sell it But the reason you can sell it is because of the way you acquired it All external resources are acquired By an actor Always this is an essential feature of the active acquisition An actor is a human being with the body that he already has the body It's impossible to think of homesteading of your body So homesteading applies only to external resources And what it means is having the legal right to control a resource that you were the first user of that You acquired From its unknown state and that you asserted an ownership right over That didn't previously have an ownership right and where your ownership right is maintained only because Um of your manifested expressed intent to the world I claim this is mine. It's your intent to own that makes it your property If you didn't want to own it, you just temporarily possessed the stick and dropped it and left it it would be Abandoned and subject to re homesteading or reused by someone else So in other words the the nature of the way that we come to own external resources Is by acquisition and that nature means that we can End the acquisition by ceasing our intent or our use of the thing That means it's possible to abandon Just like it's possible to acquire a resource by sending a signal to the community Say by putting a fence up around it declaring to the world this thing which was previously unowned I now claim is mine. You're sending a signal to the world Okay, when you stop sending the signal by taking the fence down or putting up a sign saying I give this thing up or telling people I don't want this anymore Then you don't own it anymore So because it's possible to acquire these things which were previously unowned which is a key fact It's possible for them to be unacquired or abandoned and if it's possible to abandon it You can use that power To transfer the ownership to someone else. So for example, if I own a stick I could abandon it leave it on the ground for re homesteading or I could hand it over to you And I could say I'm going to give you this stick and then I'm going to abandon it and then you're you're possessing it And you can instantly re homestead it. It's a way of transfer so the entire idea of transfer or sale or donation or gift Of a resource is a consequence or an implication or use Of the ability to abandon Which flows from the nature of the right and the resource in the first place which was by acquisition If you can acquire something you can let it go Okay So in the case of externally acquired resources Resources that were externally external resources that were previously unowned Ownership of these things does imply the power to sell it. So it is true That if you own a thing an external thing that you acquired you can sell it But that's only because you acquired it and you can just stop maintaining it as yours But this doesn't apply to ownership in general because ownership also covers your property right and your body And that was not acquired by homesteading The idea that you acquired your body by homesteading is completely nonsensical because To acquire something by homesteading requires an actor To be an actor means you have to have a body because that's how you interact with the world But it makes no sense to say you homestead your body because if you don't have your body yet You don't have a body to use to acquire it The nature of ownership of bodies is Hanserman Hoppe explains that as I go into my article how we come to own ourselves Is a different kind of basis. It's a different kind of link. It's not first use It's our intimate connection with and our direct control over the actions of our human physical bodies That is what gives us a better connection A better claim to our bodies than anyone else And that is an intimate part of our entire nature. And that is why ownership of our bodies Can't be undone by mere Voluntary statement like I don't own my body anymore or I hereby sell myself to you I go into this in detail in my articles on inalienability, which are on my website and in my podcast with walter block from about a year or two ago The second statement which I mentioned earlier is If you sell something you can own it I mean if you sell something you must own it in other words If there's a sale recognized in the law some transaction we classify legally as a sale That implies that the thing sold was owned by the seller. Otherwise, you couldn't have sold it Okay, so this is another case of sloppy thinking Which is used to justify intellectual property because for example people will say well Um, you value getting knowledge. Otherwise, why would you pay a professor to teach you something? Or in other cases you might pay someone to teach you or to tell you an idea And if you paid for it, that means the guy that revealed the information to you sold the information to you And how could he sell it to you if he didn't own it? So you see there's a kind of if you think about it you can tell there's a subtle mistake here There's something nagging about this kind of argument um, and the argument is just basically um A lack of sophistication. It's based upon a lack of sophistication about the nature of property rights and the nature of contracts And look everyone doesn't have to be a legal theorist or a legal scholar Uh, and in fact, I don't think most legal scholars get this right either because they're not Rothbardians Rothbard Anchored his entire property theory his entire libertarian theory His entire theory of rights in property rights. He recognized that all rights are property rights And it's implicit in this theory. He didn't go into it into a lot of detail But it's implicit especially because of his adherence to Mises and his praxeology, right? Which recognizes that all means of action are scarce means of action um basically Rothbard's theory amounts to the the following that um, all property rights are rights in scarce means of action scarce resources and this is made more explicit in hampa who basically builds upon Mises and Rothbard's insights to come up with his uh, really really modern systematic anarcho-libertarian View of political theory um So if you understand that that's what property rights are Then you stop thinking of contract the way that the legal theorists and the lawyers and legal system and the courts and the judges And sloppy thinkers who don't really know a lot about law for that matter Tell us which is that a contract is sort of a binding thing if you promise something It should be an enforceable obligation blah blah blah That is not a coherent theories. Rothbard explains in his uh contract title transfer theory contract Contracts should not be seen as binding promises You shouldn't think that just because you say something means that you're bound by it legally Promises may be a moral binding, but they're not a they shouldn't be a legal legally obligatory binding the only rights are property rights So that means contract is just an implication or a consequence Of property rights and scarce resources a contract is simply the exercise of an owner Of the power to use a resource That is to permit someone to use the resource temporarily or for a limited time Or permanently like if you abandon it or you sell the resource to them It's the exercise of ownership of the of the uh Of the resource by the owner That's all contracts are So contracts really should just be seen as detailed statements by the owner about what kind of Permission or use of the resource is permissible by others whether it's permanent temporary limited open-ended whatever You know if avis leases you a car for a day They're giving you the right to use the car For a limited period of time and for limited purposes You're not allowed to destroy or resell the car for example or to vandalize the car Okay, so that's a limited transfer if a car is sold That's a different type of transfer if the car is given as a gift. That's another type of transfer Um, you know if the car is jointly owned by two or more people That's another type of arrangement of who can control the resource Okay If you understand this you'll see that there's lots of arrangements that people can do contractually And there's different varieties and lawyers can and should sometimes classify these things differently According to convenience and to categorize different cases and precedents But it doesn't mean we should get confused by the language Okay, most contracts are bilateral. That is an exchange of two things that are owned if I give you a gold coin in exchange for your um For your um horse Then we're exchanging title. Our contract is a bilateral mutual exchange But if I just give you a gold coin out of charity, that's another transfer. It's a unilateral one-way transfer Okay, there's no sale at all. There's just a one-way transfer If I offer to pay you a gold coin if you will paint my barn Then we might call that a sale of your services or your labor by analogy to the first type of contract But it's really not literally a sale. It's really a one-way transfer The only thing that's being sold is the title to the gold because the labor by the painter is not owned The fact is he has the ability to control his body because he is a self owner or a body owner And he can use that ability to withhold his actions To get the gold owner to agree to a conditional unilateral one-way transfer Of the gold to him So we might analogize it To a bilateral exchange and we might call it a sale of labor in economics terms to sort of understand The motivations of the parties, but the labor is not really being sold because it's not owned It's not like the title to the labor is being transferred So these kinds of metaphors can confuse people So it's just simply not true that just because you can sell something means that you had to own it Okay, so that's another example of imprecise sloppy thinking leading to fallacious results and leading to a very pernicious dangerous result, which is ip which is one of the top five or six most harmful and pernicious doctrines In practice is the government the state sorry foist upon us There's lots of other cases of things that are misuses of words, but those are some of the cool ones. I like to focus on and at this point I'd be happy to Open the floor up for any kind of q&a Thanks. Sorry. We've got our first question from jack faker Um, will you explain I guess in more detail a lot of person cannot sell or contract the complete and exclusive use of their body and mind Well, I think I I just tried to um in a in a brief fashion, but my answer is that It's not that they cannot sell it um I would I would put it this way Um Let's imagine a sale where we both agree is a sale. Uh, let's say that um, I agree to give you my gold coin In exchange for you're giving me title to your horse Okay, now If I give you the coin And you refuse to give me the horse We would both agree. I think that now i'm the owner of the horse because you Already set in motion the transfer of title to the horse Based upon a condition, which was me giving you the title to my coin, which I've done So now I own the horse you're maybe in possession of it So now you're basically stealing my horse if you refuse to let me take it Okay And I could use force to get the horse And if I do use force to take the horse I'm not being a horse thief. I'm being a property owner asserting his property rights in a resource that he owns Okay, so the consequence of of recognizing something as a sale is that we're seeing that title has transferred And that now force may be used to enforce it Okay, so the question is If I promise to Be your slave Okay The only dispute really arises when I change my mind and I try to run away So let's say I say I'm going to be your slave and let's say I do it for a month and I I want to try it. I want to try being your slave, but I promise to be your slave for two months So that I hear by promise I will be your slave for two months Okay Now a month into it. I decide to run away So the only question is if you don't try to stop me. There's no conflict. There's no dispute There's no question to to solve If you try to stop me, you want to use force against me to stop me You want to shoot me or capture me or put me in manacles or whatever? Then the question is Now we have a dispute I claim the right to use my body. You're claiming the right to use my body So the the only libertarian question is Who has the right to use my body? And more precisely, do you have the right to use force against me? Now what is the basic libertarian principle? You only have the right to use force in response to force That's it. So You're using force against me to stop me from running away Now that's presumptively aggression initiated force unless you can show that I initiated force against you first But I didn't all I did was utter words at you. I said I promise to be your slave now Uttering words at someone is not an initiation of force any more that's why we believe in free speech because usually Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me right usually words are not aggressive And a promise is not an aggression or a threat either Okay, so to my mind you don't first come up with contract theory and use it to justify the use of force I think it's the other way around I think we first look at the nature of the situation the nature of the interaction And we ask is force justified in this case? And if it's not then contract theory follows from that now it seems to be clear that someone promising to be a slave is not committing an act of aggression So therefore the the would-be slave has not committed an act of aggression He's never done anything that justifies force being used against him if that's simple so the consequence of that is that the promise to Sell yourself into slavery doesn't give rise to the right of someone else to use force Which means that there's no way to sell yourself because that's the only way you could do that So that's the answer I give. I know some libertarians disagree with that But that's that's my position on that issue All right, and if you'd like to ask a question you can ask in text on the questions tab to the right Or if you'd like to ask on webcam You can click video chatting about the chat window on the right and then click start your webcam And I'll be able to ring you on screen our next question as stefan moves Is What concept justifies sustaining a property right in a thing when it is no longer an immediate use? Yeah, that's that's a that's a harder question and that's one where it may be say mutualists or some mutualists and Libertarians would disagree Um my view is My view is this um When we talk about property rights, okay when we have a normative political disagreement like we're I won't say having not having now, but we're talking about that kind of disagree We're talking about when people whenever there's a dispute. There's always a dispute over who gets to control that resource Okay So what the disputants are always asking if they're having some kind of civilized forum or discussion about the resource They're trying to ask who should be the owner of the resource Okay, they're not asking who should possess the resource There's always a distinction between possession and ownership. The law makes that distinction too. So for example um if I build a log cabin on virgin territory and I have a farm and a house And I leave town for the weekend to go get supplies And I come back and there's someone in my home Um And they won't leave now. We have a dispute over who Has the right to use it the law would say that um, the law has a complicated way of dealing with they say The the first question is who has the right to possess which is sort of like quasi property rights And then who has the right to own and if you don't have the right to possess you have to let the current possessor stay in the house And you have to go to court to get them ousted Okay, but if they don't have the right to possess you can actually physically force them out of the house So they have these kind of graded ways of dealing with it. Um, I think the law is approximating what libertarians Believe which is that we distinguish ownership from possession Um, think of crusoe on a desert island He has possession but not ownership because ownership is only possible in a social setting he Controls various means to achieve his ends. So he has Possession of or dominion over Or actual physical control over, you know nets and his hut and whatever to get things done C shells weapons, whatever But he has no ownership when there's a social context now we say there's a possibility of another person interfering my use of this thing Now we want stability of possession. We want to be able to possess things and Once it's possessed the you want the connection to maintain as long as you intend to own it As the owner Um, so I would say basically if you don't recognize that ownership rights can persist over some time period Even when there's not immediate physical control Then you simply don't believe in ownership You only believe in possession and you now you're talking about a non normative mites makes right type world In which case there are no normative questions. There's really no question to answer There's no you can't ask who should possess this thing This is only the question of who is owning it who who has physically more strength to take it. You never have a dispute Resolution process anytime you have a dispute resolution process You're trying to ask a normative question. That is Not who does control this thing Who should be recognized as having the right to control the thing? And that question is always a question about property rights and property rights or ownership rights And they are simply distinct from possession So I guess I would say if you don't believe that if you believe that you you lose ownership of a thing as soon as you quit using it You simply don't believe in property rights at all. You're basically believe in living in a mites makes right Society or a war of all against all where there just simply are no norms So you have to kind of choose I think are you asking about how do we come up with a set of procedures and Norms that we can all follow. They're fair to everyone That settle these questions when disputes arise How do we come up with an answer? Other than interpersonal violence and physical bullying and force All right, our next question is from weathers How does argumentation ethics justify all external scarce resources being owned by the first user As opposed to what status believe Um, that's a good question. I think that um, um, there there are two answers and probably one of them applies to status more. So There are sort of two sides to this and I just sort of indicated half of half of one of those Um first of all If you are asking a question about property right who should own something if you have any normative discussion at all about who should own a resource Then you're presupposing we have to come up with some Reasonable way of determining who should be recognized as the owner so that disputes can be avoided Okay, so there's always a presupposed norm there. We're assuming that someone should be recognized as the owner even in status legal systems um Now you can never say that the first user Can't have some initial right because if so nothing could ever be rightfully used in the first place Like we would all just be naked huddled starving creatures sitting on the ground not able to do anything Where we wouldn't be able to do anything because the world will be a virgin Unowned world and no one would be able to use anything Okay, so the very idea of that we're searching for a norm That is for a right answer as to who should be able to use a thing implies that it It someone has the right to use it and for someone to have the right to use it. It had to first be used And if you recognize the validity of that you have to say that if there's an unowned resource the first user of it Is not violating in those rights and has to be able and free to do that Right and in fact if you say that there's an unowned resource Which someone should not be free to exploit and appropriate Then it's a contradiction because you're saying that you can stop them from using the resource But if you can stop someone from using a resource You were asserting ownership over the resource. Okay Because that's what the power of ownership is is the right to exclude people. So the question is Not whether it has an owner, but who should be the owner even the person denying that it can be appropriated by someone the first user Is asserting ownership on behalf of the government or his society or himself or something So he can't say there's no owner. So then we come to the question Well, who's the best owner of it? And again, if the first user doesn't have some kind of better connection Nothing could ever be used Okay So the only way to avoid that answer is You could you have to admit that resources have to be first used by someone Although they otherwise they would never be resources in the first place Right because there's a subjective element to a resource austrians recognizes to a good The the the character of a good Let's say as a as a public good or as a private good or whatever is determined based upon the subjective preference of the user of the resource As determined as demonstrated by their actions And not only that the character of it as a good at all is determined by whether someone regards it as a good As demonstrated by their actions Okay, so you wouldn't have resources. They they basically wouldn't exist Uh, people didn't have the ability and the recognized right to first use them So the only way to deny the first use of the right to own it is to say They have the right to use it, but then someone else can take it from them by force Okay, so basically it's to deny what we call what hans hopper calls the um The uh, the prior later distinction, okay He says that basically if you say that Of a second comer a late comer someone who didn't find the resource who didn't acquire it by contract from an earlier owner If he has a better claim to it, well, then you've opened the door to Again a war of all against all in a non an illegal situation Right in other words if the first user doesn't have a property right in the resource if it can just be taken from him by a second user Then we just don't have a property right system at all because the second user doesn't have a better claim to it than the first user He's taking it because of he's more powerful Or because of verbal decree. He's just asserting that he has a better claim to it But if you recognize that as a as a touchstone for identifying who owns things Then we don't have a property right system because anyone can verbally Declare ownership of something a million people could declare ownership of a given thing at the same time And there'd be no way to decide among them which case there's no conflict avoidance mechanism being satisfied This is not a property right and again if we allow the stronger to just take it Then we're not asking about the right way to resolve the dispute We're just simply recognizing reality the stronger beats the weaker. We don't care about right and wrong We don't care about norms We don't care about whether actions are just justified or not and all that is contrary to the entire endeavor of making a normative peaceful cooperative Inquiry among civilized people our neighbors our fellow men we sit down and we say listen Who has the better claim to this resource? I care you care. We're trying to find a fair objective answer It just simply turns out that the only answer that can satisfy everyone and as consistent is the libertarian which is why we're libertarians All right. Alan has a question. Uh, would you think that ethics and morality also fall under equivocated terms? I actually I don't see that problem that much. I do see that the terms are used in different ways But I don't see that's too much of a problem Sometimes ethics is used as a specialized Subdiscipline a specialized normative aspect of a given discipline like league legal ethics or medical ethics Sort of like an artificial thing that only applies to some people that's not universal Whereas morality tends to mean some kind of objective universal norms that um or morally or Somehow binding on people That's just because they're people The equivocation I do see actually I wouldn't call it equivocation the confusion. I see Is in the idea That libertarians will often point out that just because something is immoral Doesn't mean it should be illegal and they're properly They're completely correct about that and that is a mistake that most conservatives and liberals Don't get right. They they think that racism is wrong Which I think it is And therefore we should outlaw it right Uh conservatives think pornography is wrong Smoking marijuana is wrong. Therefore we can outlaw it. So they really don't have a distinction between morals And legal rules. They think that anything that's immoral is fair game to be outlawed. So they they sort of see law as just A stronger version of morality Libertarians point out that not everything that's immoral should be a rights violation But they often will go one step further and say or they will imply when they say that that Everything that's a rights violation is immoral So they view rights violations as a as a proper subset of of morality So in other words every possible action you can think of that is a rights violation like murder Is necessarily immoral but not everything that's immoral is necessarily a rights violation like being rude to your grandmother is immoral But it's not a rights violation um I Don't know that much hinges upon this distinction, but I my personal view is that is probably wrong Um, I think that just because something is a rights violation It's not necessarily the case that it's immoral I think it tends to be and it probably is so I would view morality and rights violations as overlapping sets intersecting sets not As non-aggression or aggression being a subset of rights violation of the morality, sorry um And the reason is and Rothbard sort of hints at this in some of his statements where He said look all we're saying is that rights um Certain certain laws social practices cannot be justified That doesn't necessarily mean like if you if you can prove that it's a rights violation to commit murder or to steal It doesn't necessarily mean that from your point of view. It's immoral To commit to commit that action in some cases um, and you don't have to be a relative this to believe this by the way, I believe in Some objective aspect of morals as a human not as a libertarian I don't believe in the thick kind of way of looking at this stuff. I'm careful about that Um, so I'm perfectly happy to say some things are definitely objectively clearly obviously immoral Um, but even given that concession It's not clear that every act of aggression is immoral um But it still means that you can't justify a law That is based upon classifying Something it's not an act of aggression as as basically illegal We uh, we're talking about this exact thing the other day uh, saturday with walter block He was in here. Uh, and he gave the example of you know, scratching someone in order to save the world You know, obviously it's still a rights violation to scratch them But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. You should do it and you'd be a hero for doing it Yeah, I didn't hear that particular example, but um Yeah, I think that's correct. And this this gets it another bad argument that's used against us I think walter's had it used against him. I think by jan helfield I have two in my anarchist debate with him and he asked the question like Uh, if you had to break into a cabin to save your starving baby in the woods Uh, would you do it now? The question is strictly irrelevant as walter pointed out because it what I would do or what you would do First of all, what you would do is irrelevant It doesn't show that it's moral if you would do it a lot of people would do immoral things if they were pushed to it it's just It's totally a non sequitur has nothing to do with with the legitimacy or arguments about what actions should be considered legal or not But even if you argued that yes, I would do it and I would do it because I think it's moral it doesn't It doesn't necessarily show anything about the coherence of the idea that it is an act of aggression And the only way to really hold that view I think is to view Um to view these intersecting sets as I just said instead of viewing one as a subset of the other All right. Our next question is from norman horn He said usually we also include the threat of force as an act of aggression Just to be clear. Do you think that there are zero utterances of words that can be considered aggression? Now that's why earlier I said generally we we believe in free speech and generally words or non acts of aggression um And this is It will probably take us too far afield. I did deal with this in my article with pat tensley It's on my site. It was in the qj a e a few years ago. It's on causation and aggression um I I believe that we have to Following mesas in his of his praxeological view of human action, which is that humans Had physical bodies where they interfere with the world they act they employ scarce means to do this We have to understand action is always an attempt to cause some outcome Um by the use of efficacious means when I say efficacious it means it actually works That is that is you have a correct more or less correct understanding Of the way causal laws work and your employing means that are calculated to help you achieve The results you want you're interfering the right way, you know, if you want to blow up a bridge you use dynamite you don't use um You know wet cardboard um so The question is can words ever be aggression? I don't think words themselves are aggression, but a speech act can be Part of or an act of aggression itself in the right context. I mean you can think of lots of examples um You know The leader of a lynch mob saying Go catch that that black guy and hang him He may never touch the black guy and he may not have any direct authority Over the mob who has been whipped up into a frenzy um He may not be coercing them And he may not have a contract with them um But he may be playing a causal role in causing it to happen or you can imagine the leader of a firing squad saying ready aim Fire or another example Uh imagine you falsely accuse someone of rape And you go on the witness stand in the state's criminal justice system and you lie And you persuade the jury that this guy raped you and he didn't And he gets convicted to 15 years in prison now You can argue whether the jury is complicit Whether the jailer and the guards are complicit and whether the judge is complicit Whether the prosecutor is complicit you can argue about these things Maybe they all are But the person who got on the stand and lied I think is the primary causal factor of aggression being used against this guy So they are an aggressor And all they did was utter words. They told a lie But they knew it would have an effect in that system. So I think of depending upon the context Words can serve as causes of the invasions of others body or property. Yes um, and I I just uh linked to the paper with tinsley in the chat If uh, you like more information on that now our last question here is from jack fega He asks if you own a horse and it won't work. Does that give you the right to use force? Why not if it's slavery? well The thing is there's there's no there's not much dispute among libertarians about the status of the horse as an ownable resource So that's not really a that's not controversial We all agree that the horse is an Unowned scarce resource that someone comes to own by a certain act of appropriation and dominion um So then the question is uh, or who's the owner and then what's the owner entitled to do the owner's entitled to use his resource As he sees fit As long as he doesn't violate anyone's rights. He can use force against the horse Because the horse doesn't have rights Okay, so that's not in dispute But to show that a human being can be have force used against him When we all agree as a presumptive matter That every person presumptively owns their body and that it forces used against them. It is aggression unless They have used aggression first Right, so that's why The the reason is you the person is presumptively a self-owner unlike the horse And we cannot find an act of aggression that the would-be slave has Committed that would justify force being used against him in retaliation He simply hasn't committed an act of aggression The horse hasn't either but the horse doesn't need to commit aggression to have force justified to be used against him Because the horse is not a self-owner. It's it's an owned resource instead All right. Uh, thank you very much steven. This has been a pleasure as always and thank you everyone for coming tonight We've got a great lineup for the rest of the week here at liberty me you tomorrow night Justice from the a it's going to be talking about open transactions the future of accounting It's a one of the bitcoin 2.0 protocols that's making waves and very interesting stuff Wednesday night. We've got terry more the author of the secular homeschooler. She's in for a an author's forum Thursday night. We've got jeffrey tucker. He's going to give an introduction to Liberty me and everything liberty me has to offer for those of you who are new around here and then uh friday and saturday We have two more big bitcoin related Seminars, so definitely check those out if you're interested. Hope to see you back. Thanks everyone for coming tonight and have a great night