Kinsella On Liberty

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 133. I appeared on Ernie Hancock's show for all 3 hours of the July 9, 2014 episode to discuss intellectual property and related issues in detail. We discussed the constitutionality of IP, cryptocurrency/bitcoin, and related matters. This was a followup to the June 18 episode which featured Reed Jessen who was speaking about a way to fight patent trolls, which I called into. My previous appearances on Ernie's show: KOL089 | Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock radio: Intellectual Property, L. Neil Smith and KOL060 | Guest on Ernest Hancock’s Declare Your Independence radio show: intellectual property and libertarianism (2010).

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 132. Michael Shanklin passed on to me a variety of questions on libertarian theory and applications for his Voluntary Virtues network. I'll be a regular guest monthly. Relevant links: Fraud, Restitution, and Retaliation: The Libertarian Approach.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 131. Jeff Tucker and I discuss the recent announcement by Tesla that it will cease enforcing its patents. Relevant links: All Our Patent Are Belong To You, By Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla Tucker, Tesla Shock: A Company Favors Competition Kinsella, The Patent Defense League and Defensive Patent Pooling

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 130. From the Bad Quaker podcast with host Ben Stone, Jeff Tucker and I discuss a variety of libertarian issues, including abortion and the like. https://youtu.be/QffkDMlH2iA Update:  Here is the (lightly edited) text of the email I sent Tucker and Stone a few hours before the podcast, that was alluded to at the end: There is something I've been chewing over in my mind lately that I've been thinking about discussing or putting on a podcast, and I'll briefly mention below, in case you two think this is worth talking about. It concerns the interrelationship between concepts of aggression, self-ownership, and homesteading of external resources. Basically libertarians sometimes treat aggression as a primary, and then struggle with including trespass to property as a case of it, ... so then some of them finally admit that aggression depends on property rights-you need to know who owns an apple before you can tell if someone's forceful taking of it (or keeping of it) is "ag

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 129. This is a lesson/lecture I presented to a group of "Upper Elementary" Montessori students today at my son's school, The Post Oak School (Upper El includes 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students, and there were also a few third graders visiting from lower el, who are moving up next year). The students (25 or 30 or so) sat in a group at my feet, and were polite and interested the whole time. They asked many very intelligent and fun questions. I tried not to get too complicated, but did speak in fairly frank and sophisticated terms, tried not to talk down to them or dumb the talk down too much, and almost all of them hung in there till the end. The original plan was to speak for 40 or so minutes then take questions for another 15 or so, but we ended up going about an hour and 7 minutes, and then during lunch I had throng of students throwing more questions at me for another half hour. What amazing students; what an amazing school and educational approach. (This is one reason

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 128. From Jan. 2012, an interview by Peter Mac from The Peter Mac Show about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 127. From December 2011, an interview by Stefan Molyneux for his Freedomain Radio program about the evil Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. We discussed the First Amendment violations of and other problems with SOPA. 

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 126. This is my Mises University 2011 lecture, Intellectual Property and Economic Development (July 27, 2011), perhaps one of my better talks on IP and liberty. The original PowerPoint slides are here. Streanming audio, video, and a googledocs version of the slides are below. An unedited, raw transcript is also appended below (it may be cleaned up in due course). Transcript Mark Thornton:  Our first speaker this morning is Stephan Kinsella.  He is a patent attorney from Houston and the editor of Libertarian Papers.  His lecture this morning is going to be on Intellectual Property and Economic Development. Stephan… Stephan Kinsella:  Thanks Mark.  I’m very glad to be here at the Mises University.  I was here a couple of years ago.  It is always a great thing.  So let me get started.  I have a lot to cover so I will try to go as quickly as possible without going too fast. Most of you should already be familiar with the basic idea of praxeology.  There is a reason I’m

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 125. Richard Heathen of Liberty Machine News interviews Stephan Kinsella about the evils intellectual property, why it it illegitimate and how it empowers crony capitalism through heavy handed state enforcement. (recorded April 10, 2014; uploaded May 12, 2014)  

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 124. This is my appearance from last Saturday (April 26, 2014) on the Patriot's Lament radio show in Alaska, with host Joshua Bennett. We discussed a variety of topics, including anarchy versus the state versus government, how anarchist societies would handle threats from states, the unique aspects of libertarianism and what sets it apart from all other political philosophies, and related topics. (Youtube)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 123. Daniel Rothschild arranged for and moderated a debate between me and Objectivist/classical liberal (or whatever he is) Jan Helfeld. I lost my temper with the guy because I refused to let him do what I've seen him do to others—take the moral highground (which, as someone defending the state against me, a real libertarian, I was not going to let him do) and use his boring/bludgeoning "socratic" debate technique to try to boringly wear people down. I refused to give in to either, which resulted in the funny mess that you can see here. Of course, Helfeld never seriously tried to justify aggression or the state. He read from a prepared script, like a parakeet. And one of his arguments hinted at the idea that the state does commit aggression but that it is worth it because it prevents more serious aggression that would occur under a condition of anarchy; though he never made this argument explicitly. The other one suggested by him is that if Stephan Kinsella might in some

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 122. I appeared recently on the Canadian libertarian podcast Ed and Ethan: The Voice of Liberty in Canada (April 26, 2014) (I was a guest in 2012 and 2013 as well). We discussed the Aereo copyright case, IP in the Eastern District of Texas (see reporting by Joe Mullen), net neutrality, and other matters. This is my segment only; for the full show, go to Ed and Ethan’s show page for Episode 107. For background: see Dropbox clarifies its policy on reviewing shared files for DMCA issues, and links above.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 121. I was interviewed by Redmond Weissenberger, of Mises Canada, for his Better Red than Dead podcast (iTunes). We discussed a variety of topics, including: store refuses to put boy's name on an Easter egg because of a copyright concern because he shares a name with a famous soccer player, positive versus negative rights, Alexis de Tocqueville on servitudes and liberty, and intellectual property (IP) as negative servitudes; Ayn Rand's confusion on property rights and IP; property as the least bad option; the impossibility of a post-scarcity world; the dispute over "privilege checking" and attempts to speak the language of progressives; Hoppe on immigration and monarchy. More information on some of the topics discussed can be found in the following articles and blog posts: Boy named after Wayne Rooney not allowed personalised Easter egg due to 'copyright law' DropBox Keeps Users From Sharing Copyrighted Material The Girl With the Xeroxed Tattoo Maori Angry About Mi

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 120. A computer science student at UT Austin, Adam Camac, asked me to do an interview with him on the referenced topic for purposes of one of his computer science classes. It was an interesting discussion. Youtube of the video version is below.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 119. This is Part 1 of a fairly in-depth discussion I had with Harrison Fischberg (who was on a previous podcast in episode 114) covering various libertarian issues, such as property, the state, strategy and tactics and personal style versus substance, the standard versus Austrian view of homo economicus, Alan Moore versus Alfred Cuzon's views on anarchy, IP, the importance of technology and the Internet, and so on. Youtube of the full video version below.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 118. I was a guest on the Tom Woods show on March 28, 2014, Episode 127—our discussion includes an overview of libertarian ideas and an attempt to clear up common confusions. For more along the same lines, see my Mises Academy course on "Libertarian Controversies" and “Correcting some Common Libertarian Misconceptions,” 2011 Annual Meeting, Property and Freedom Society (May 28, 2011) [podcast here]; also On the Danger of Metaphors in Scientific Discourse.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 117. This is the audio for episode 004 of Liberty Talk, an occasional Google hangout-based podcast with Jeffrey Tucker and me (Google Plus page; Youtube Channel).

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 116. This is my recent appearance on Michael Shanklin’s Triple-V: Voluntary Virtues Vodcast with Michael Shanklin (my segment starts about around 1:11:23 of the video below). We discussed a variety of topics fraud and contract theory, and so on. Apparently Christopher Cantwell was on before I joined, but as we had had some words previously, he ducked out before I joined and then rejoined after I came on. It seemed a bit like an ambush to me, but I tried to be patient and explain things to him he was confused about, regarding fraud, his facebook page being taken down due to a complaint, contract and property theory, and so on. Some background material for these topics can be found at: A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability; Fraud, Restitution, and Retaliation: The Libertarian Approach; What Libertarianism Is; The Libertarian Approach to Negligence, Tort, and Strict Liability: Wergeld and Partial Wergeld; Rand on IP, Ow

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 115. I was interviewed back in May 2012 by Redmond Weissenberger, Director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada. We had a long-ranging discussion of the issue of corporations and limited liability, and we touched on other issues as well including causation and responsibility and the praxeological structure of human action; intellectual property; gay marriage and language; human rights as property rights, and free speech; corporate size and international trade in a free society, vs. left-libertarian claims to the contrary; nuclear power, energy, and environmentalists; eminent domain and the Keystone pipeline; Peter Klein and Murray Rothbard on the calculation problem and the upper limit to the firm; state monopolies versus the market; and practical and moral aspects of tax evasion and tax avoidance. For background on some of the issues discussed, see my post Corporate Personhood, Limited Liability, and Double Taxation; also Causation and Aggression and California G

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 114. Stef and I talk about libertarian ethics, UPB, self-ownership, argumentation ethics, careers, schooling, and related matters—back from November 2013.