Kinsella On Liberty

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 494. This is my interview by Alex Buxeda of at Schweizer Monat [Swiss Monthly; linktree]; recorded June 22, 2026. Youtube shownotes: Stephan Kinsella, patent attorney, legal theorist, and one of the leading critics of intellectual property sits with Alex Buxeda to explore whether ideas can be owned. Starting from first principles, they discuss why Kinsella argues that patents and copyrights are incompatible with property rights, the role of scarcity in economics, innovation without intellectual property, pharmaceutical patents, entrepreneurship, pricing, and the philosophical foundations of ownership. Grok summary: We discussed why intellectual property is fundamentally incompatible with genuine property rights. Stephan Kinsella argued that patents and copyrights are not legitimate property but state-granted monopolies that violate real ownership of scarce, physical resources. He explained that ideas and knowledge are non-scarce and non-rivalrous — one person’s use does n