Of all the policies of the Barack Obama administration – one of many which began under the Bush regime and has been continued, even expanded, by his successor – I think the use of predator drones sickens and angers me the most.  Especially with the revelation that the drones also target first responders, and even people attending funerals.  Imagine if a suicide bomber had attacked police and firefighters as they arrived at the World Trade Center on 9/11, or the funerals of the victims.  That is essentially what the CIA’s predator drones are doing.

But what’s really infuriating, though not surprising, is how quiet liberals are about this, given how loudly they spoke out against war during the Bush years.  Yet this is arguably worse  in terms of its sheer violence and callousness: worse than Abu Ghraib, worse than the Haditha massacre.  If any other country’s military engaged in such acts, they would be denounced by the U. S. government (and others) as war crimes, and rightly so.  And as the report cited by Glenn Greenwald makes clear, government officials have been lying about the civilian casualties from the attacks.  But from most Democrats, the response amounts to at best a shuffling of feet and an uncomfortable silence.  In fact, most of them support the use of drones, and even keeping the Guantanamo Bay prison camp open, according to a Washington Post poll.  This despite Obama’s campaign promise to close Gitmo.  I guess Democrats suffer from memory loss as much as Republicans do.

How anyone can vote for a man who gives orders to commit mass murder is simply incomprehensible to me.  And please spare me the counterpoint that the Republicans are just as bad.  Of course they are.  That just further proves the point that the major parties are virtually indistinguishable in their lust for mass murder, bigger government, and more control over people’s lives.  Voting Republican or Democrat is voting for the imperial warfare/welfare state, and all of the blood and treasure it demands.

Rothbard, in For A New Liberty:

The idea of a strictly limited constitutional State was a noble experiment that failed, even under the most favorable and propitious circumstances. If it failed then, why should a similar experiment fare any better now? No, it is the conservative laissez-fairist, the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, “Limit yourself”; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.

Rockwell, from The Calamity of Bush’s Conservatism:

 What does conservatism today stand for? It stands for war. It stands for power. It stands for spying, jailing without trial, torture, counterfeiting without limit, and lying from morning to night. There comes a time in the life of every believer in freedom when he must declare, without any hesitation, to have no attachment to the idea of conservatism.

Rockwell, from The Enemy Is Always the State:

Let me state this as plainly as possible. The enemy is the state. There are other enemies too, but none so fearsome, destructive, dangerous, or culturally and economically debilitating. No matter what other proximate enemy you can name – big business, unions, victim lobbies, foreign lobbies, medical cartels, religious groups, classes, city dwellers, farmers, left-wing professors, right-wing blue-collar workers, or even bankers and arms merchants – none are as horrible as the hydra known as the leviathan state. If you understand this point – and only this point – you can understand the core of libertarian strategy.

See also my post The Nature of the State and Why Libertarians Hate It.

Professor Hoppe was previously interviewed on Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio, on the topic “Anarcho-capitalist libertarianism: What is it?” (approx. 25 minutes). It was aired on Jan. 23, 2012; audio is available here. As described on the ABC site, “What is anarcho-capitalist libertarianism? Hans Herman Hoppe explains the idea behind it and why it’s a very different and quite radical way to think about government, society and the economy.”

Over at C4SIF, I’ve blogged quite a bit lately about SOPA and PIPA and the recent Internet blackouts and other protests against these bills, which threaten free speech and the open Internet (Mike Masnick et al. at Techdirt have also been great on exposing and analyzing SOPA). As Jeff Tucker noted recently, the protests against SOPA started not with conservatives or even “libertarians,” but with civil libertarians of the “left,” as well as Silicon Valley tech types. Of course, some libertarians have been opposed to SOPA (and copyright) from the beginning–the more radical and anti-state libertarians, in particular Austro-libertarians and left-libertarians (such as some of the people associated with C4SS ).

Aside from the anti-state libertarians, however, most of the protests against SOPA concede that copyright is good, intellectual property is important, and piracy is bad–but then they bemoan that SOPA “goes too far.” For example, as I noted in Where does IP Rank Among the Worst State Laws?, consider this article in PC Magazine, providing the response of 11 PCMag staffers asked for their take on SOPA. The response to SOPA was universally negative, but most of them first prefaced their opposition to SOPA by genuflecting to copyright and recognizing that IP piracy “is of course a real problem”. For example:

• “Yes, theft of intellectual property is wrong, but it shouldn’t be protected at the cost of free speech and an open Internet.”
• “SOPA is a perfect case of a disproportionate reaction to a real problem. Lawless Web sites full of pirated content are a real problem, but breaking the Internet isn’t the solution.”
• “This proposed legislation is akin to having libraries monitored or even shut down because there is a chance that a book may contain a piece of plagiarized work.”
• “IP is a precious thing. For example, every writer on PCMag has had their work pirated at one time or another. However, this legislation goes” too far.
• “There is definitely a need for content owners like movie studios and music labels to protect their content from piracy, but the proposed legislation isn’t the answer.”

This is the type of response that almost all the SOPA opponents have taken, such as Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, which said that

rogue foreign sites that pirate American intellectual property or sell counterfeit goods pose significant problems for our economy,” but PIPA and SOPA “are not the right solution to this problem, because of the collateral damage they would cause to the Internet.

This type of argument is extremely common. Depressingly common.

And not only do most opponents of SOPA accept the basic legitimacy of copyright, they also accept the RIAA/MPAA propaganda about “piracy” imposing billions of dollars of “cost” to the economy every year–even though there is no evidence of this. The problem is that copyright obviously infringes free speech and other individual rights. This is no surprise, given its origins as a tool of censorship. As the Supreme Court recognized in its most recent copyright decision, Golan v. Holder (the case authorizing Congress to re-copyright public domain works), “Concerning the First Amendment, we recognized that some restriction on expression is the inherent and intended effect of every grant of copyright.” It is widely recognized that copyright (and even patent) restricts freedom of speech and expression. By assuming that copyright is legitimate–as the courts do–and that the First Amendment protects freedom of expression, a balance must always be found between freedom and censorship. And this is the dilemma most people find themselves in when they start with the premise that we must protect intellectual property rights, “but” we can’t “go too far” because otherwise we would harm free speech (and the open Internet) “too much.”

Obviously there is a conflict between copyright and censorship and government control of ideas, on the one had, and freedom of expression and the open Internet, on the other. This is being increasingly recognized. Leo Laporte recognized this in a recent episode of This Week in Tech. You have to choose: the Internet, or copyright, he observed (opposed to technocrat Niley Patel). In the aftermath of the SOPA battle, we have people finally asking important questions. The Washington Times questions copyright abuse in its opposition to the Golan decision. The Daily Caller questions copyright’s legitimacy. Mark McKenna at Slate, in Don’t Stop at SOPA, asks: “SOPA and PIPA are (almost) dead. Now can we talk about the law that already exists?”. Glyn Moody at Techdirt asks the important question: OK, So SOPA And PIPA Are Both On Hold: Where Do We Go From Here?

And what is the answer? Some people are hinting at it, or directly suggesting it: abolish copyright. As Rick Falkvinge observes in It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly,

the copyright industry is actually rightthat these ridiculous laws are needed to sustain the copyright monopoly. General-purpose networked computers, free and anonymous speech, and sustained civil liberties make it impossible to maintain this distribution monopoly of digitizable information. As technical progress can’t be legislated against, basic civil liberties would have to go to maintain the crumbling monopoly. And these are the laws we’re seeing on the table.

There comes a tipping point when somebody says that this entire system of cultural monopolies is absurd. A tipping point where the part before the “but” is unceremoniously and collectively dropped, the part that didn’t count anyway. A tipping point where everybody just stops pretending to support it. I think it is time to create that point on the history line.

Falkvinge here recognizes that if you support copyright, you should support SOPA. And conversely–if you oppose SOPA, you should oppose copyright. Copyright is the problem, people.

We are at a moment in history where people who have absorbed the idea of copyright, but who are not ideologically committed to it, have seen that it conflicts with more deeply held values: freedom of expression, commerce, digital life, the Internet. They are seeking for a framework, a way to coherently express what they sense is wrong with escalated copyright enforcement. We need to let them know: the problem is copyright itself. If you have copyright of course you want to enforce it. All the problems we see are merely symptoms of the copyright mentality.

We must press our fleeting advantage to let our half-hearted allies know that their intuitions are right: censorship and SOPA and state control of private property and SOPA are wrong. And this means copyright, which is the engine behind all these things, is wrong, and must fall, or at least be radically scaled back, not strengthened.

The argument against patent and copyright is not a socialist or liberal one. It is in fact rooted in respect for private property rights, capitalism, the free market, and competition. A coherent understanding of private property and free markets reveals that copyright is an anti-competitive grant of state power for purpose of censorship of favoritism, that can only seek to undermine private property rights and empower the police state–as we are seeing now.

For those interested in understanding the free market case against intellectual property, or for informing our anti-SOPA brethren, I recommend the resources listed at the end of this post.

And remind them that the battle is far from over. They opposed SOPA and PIPA, but where were they when the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was enacted, which has led to so much persecution and harm to the Internet? Where were they when George Bush signed the PRO-IP Act in 2008, which was instrumental in the FBI raids in New Zealand on the Megauploads principals, a day after the alleged SOPA blackout protest victories? And what about the Golan decision, released the day of the SOPA blackouts, authorizing Congress to re-copyright works long in the public domain? What about the one year federal prison sentence handed down to a man for uploading a copy of the Wolverine movie? What about the British student faced with extradition to the US for having the wrong links on his website? Where were they when President Obama signed ACTA (unconstitutionally, without Senate ratification), a global internet treaty even worse in some ways than SOPA? Right now nations are negotiating in secret the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), an “agreement that the entertainment industry is betting on to get SOPA-like laws introduced around the globe.”

In other words, the dangers of SOPA are already here. This is because of copyright.

The problem is that all the people opposing SOPA undercut their opposition by acknowledging the importance of copyright and IP, by condemning piracy. It is admirable that they are taking the ride side of the chasm caused by their cognitive dissonance, but dissonance it is. If you support copyright, you oppose piracy, and you support the state’s existence and its attempts to enforce these “property rights.” You cannot have both copyright, and Internet freedom/freedom of speech. The threat here to property rights, to individual rights, to Internet freedom and freedom of speech and expression and the press comes from copyright itself. We must strike at the root. SOPA is just a symptom of the disease. The disease is copyright. Everyone is trying to treat the symptom–enforcement efforts like SOPA–with half-hearted treatments like labeling the response “disproportionate” or going “too far.” This is like trying to treat a brain tumor by taking Tylenol–sorry, acetaminophen–in response to the headaches caused by the tumor. All opponents of SOPA and censorship, all denizens of the web and proponents of freedom, must oppose copyright itself (and patent too).

Those libertarians and others who oppose SOPA and who are for copyright reform, but who are not for copyright abolition, should realize that a modest, fair, efficient, “reasonable” or “sensible” copyright system is completely impossible. Since the dawn of copyright its scope, length, penalties and enforcement have only increased, because of the relentless pressure by special interest factions like Disney, the RIAA, the MPAA, and other content providers and entrenched interests. As we can see with the pressure to adopt SOPA, PIPA, PRO-IP, DMCA, Berne, WIPO, TRIPS, COICA, Sonny Bono/Mickey Mouse Copyright Term Extension Act, ACTA, the TPP, and other measures (see The Mountain of IP Legislation), the Big Content interests are relentless and will not stop pressuring Congress and other legislatures to expand the war on information sharing and the Internet. Even if we had a less noxious copyright system–say, one with 10 year terms and less draconian penalties and enforcement–it would soon metastasize into what we have now, just as it has done (originally 14 years, not it is over 100). So a modest, “reasonable” copyright system is really off the table. The question that SOPA opponents have to ask themselves is: would you rather have today’s copyright system, with its draconian terms and penalties and continual pressure to expand and internationalize it, or no copyright at all? Only one of these choices is compatible with opposition to SOPA and to censorship. The only way to stop SOPA type provisions and to maintain Internet freedom, is to get rid of today’s copyright system.

Update: See Rick Falvinge’s proposals for copyright reform (most of which I agree with) in It’s Time To Go On The Offensive For Freedom Of Speech; my own proposals for copyright reform may be found in How to Improve Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Law.

Anti-copyright Resources

Shorter/introductory works:

• Kinsella, “The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide“
• Sheldon Richman, “Patent Nonsense“
• Jacob H. Huebert, “The Fight against Intellectual Property“
• Kinsella, “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism”

For more in-depth treatment, see these two books:

• Kinsella, Against Intellectual Property
• Boldrin & Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly

For video or audio speeches or presentations:

• “Why Intellectual Property is not Genuine Property,” 3^rd Adam Smith Forum, Moscow, Russia (Nov. 12, 2011)
• “How Intellectual Property Hampers Capitalism,” Mises Institute Supporters’ Summit 2010:
• “Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics,” Mises Academy (audio and slides)
• “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society,” Mises Academy  (audio and slides) (lecture 5)
• “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism,” speech presented at Mises University 2009 (audio; video)

Further material is available at the C4SIF Resources page and my site.

Update: A version of this was published at Whiskey and Gunpowder by Gary Gibson. And in a private email, which is posted here, Gibson adds prefatory remarks and an afterword, which I include below:

Gary Gibson, Minneapolis, Minnesota…

The Internet recently rallied against copyright monopolists and their paid-for lawmakers. The twin monstrosities of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT Intellectual Property Act) were forced back into their caves, thanks to the Internet blackout protest on Jan. 18, 2012 (Black Wednesday).

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But here there still be monsters. Before another day had passed, the FBI and DOJ made a show of intellectual property force under existing law (specifically the PRO-IP Act signed by Bush in 2008). They shut down the popular site Megaupload and jailed its principals, who happen to be non-U.S. persons not living in the U.S.

On Black Wednesday itself, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Golan v. Holder that authorized Congress to re-copyright works that had long been in the public domain.

Then, last week, Poland joined with seven other nations — including the U.S., Japan and Canada — by signing ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), the international trade agreement that criminalizes intellectual property theft across borders. The U.S. signed in 2010 when the negotiators termed ACTA an “executive agreement” instead of a “treaty”…because that allowed them to skip merrily around the Senate ratification that would have been required for a treaty.

As Timothy B. Lee explains on the Ars Technica site:

“If ACTA becomes a binding part of international law, it will create a precedent for future treaties that avoid basic principles of transparency and democratic accountability.

“More generally, the treaty continues the one-way ratchet toward ever-stronger copyright protections. ACTA establishes a new, higher minimum of copyright protections and enforcement that countries must provide, but it doesn’t require countries to preserve mechanisms like fair use and intermediary immunity that protect intellectual freedom.

“If Congress ever decides that IP rights have swung too far in one direction, it can always re-balance them by changing the law, right? Not exactly. International agreements like ACTA bind the hands of legislators unless the U.S. is willing to withdraw from them first.

“That’s why Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) last week called ACTA ‘more dangerous than SOPA.’ He added, ‘It’s not coming to me for a vote. It purports that it does not change existing laws. But once implemented, it creates a whole new enforcement system and will virtually tie the hands of Congress to undo it.’

“Unfortunately, these arguments are hard to explain to the general public. So too many ACTA opponents are, perhaps unknowingly, attacking ACTA for provisions that aren’t in the treaty. We’re not going to shed too many tears if this misinformation helps to kill a bad treaty, but we’d rather win the debate honestly — and prepare people for the upcoming ACTA sequel.”

Hmm. We agree that the poor treaty (or executive agreement for those U.S. presidents who can’t be bothered with Senate ratification) ought not be maligned for what it doesn’t contain. Especially when the wretched thing is detestable for what it really does contain…and for what it represents.

What the Internet has forced us all to confront is this: Free expression and the sharing of information that drives progress are not compatible with the notion — and state enforcement — of intellectual property. The cognitive dissonance is wide and growing between defense of intellectual property and the defense of liberty and acceleration of progress.

In today’s feature article, Stephan Kinsella explains more and, in doing so, throws down the gauntlet against the defenders of IP.

[Kinsella article.]

This is bound to generate some discussion and argument (Oh, our aching inbox! ggibsonagora@gmail.com). Heck, as quite a few of our Whiskey Shooters have noticed and emailed us about, there’s a little copyright warning at the bottom of these very missives and everything Agora Financial publishes.

This is still fairly new territory we’re exploring. A couple of years ago, we were far more in the Ayn Rand/Objectivist camp when it came to intellectual property (though not as far as the entertainingly pro-IP libertarian Andrew Joseph Galambos, who reportedly changed his name from Joseph Andrew Galambos so as not to infringe on his father’s claim to the specific name and who dropped a nickel in a box every time he used the word “liberty” to pay the estate of the reputed coiner of the word, Thomas Paine). It’s only recently that our friend Jeffrey Tucker got us thinking — and rethinking — the issue.

There are a couple of ways to approach it. We’ll undoubtedly have cause to explore them all in future issues (like Stephan points out, there are too many state-backed monopolists with too much money on the line for these kinds of legislation to go away), but here’s one way of thinking about it that we really like…

Property rights are the natural way to deal with scarcity in a world of scarce physical resources. Without property rights — based in first occupancy, not labor or use of material — ownership reverts to a temporary condition determined by might. Property rights aren’t natural in the sense that gravity is, and not as fundamental, but very nearly so, in the context of human existence. They are as natural, as essential to peaceful co-existence as your right not to be beaten, killed and possibly eaten by your stronger neighbor.

Ideas — even complex ones — are nonscarce, unlike physical property. They are literally infinitely reproducible without damaging the original in any way or depriving the owner of its use. Yes, potential income is damaged in the absence of intellectual property monopoly enforcement, but that could be said about a great many things that aren’t protected by this notion of intellectual property. It takes some serious mental contortion and far-reaching legislation to make ideas and thought patterns scarce. This is what SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and all the rest are making us all realize.

When you see how far the state has to go to enforce monopoly use on nonscarce things…when you see how this monopoly enforcement really hampers progress and restricts the way people use their own property, as it does with these threats to a free Internet (people are now actually afraid to send links to public websites in private emails)…you have to start to wonder at the soundness of the premise.

The arguments for intellectual property strike us as about as sound as arguments for a flexible state-run currency…or for military adventurism…or for gun control…or for prohibition. That is to say, they are fundamentally unsound in that they rely on the force of the state to interfere with the natural forces of the market…with all the distortions you’d expect, along with a continual growth in state power to wage effectively.

At least that’s how we see it here in the Whiskey editorial room. We suspect the world is waking up to this fact as this unsound, indefensible idea gums up the engine of the digital world.

The only way to defend intellectual property in this digital age is for the states of the world led by the U.S. to keep on pushing this invasive, punitive legislation.

We don’t think that’s such a good idea. The entire world that benefits from a free Internet seems to agree, even if most of that world holds onto a belief in intellectual property.

We’re curious to see how this will play out. We suspect strongly that progress will win. Eventually. In fact, we’re willing to put our money where our big mouth is on that one. Those who bet on progress tend to win. Those who bet early win the biggest.

To be an early better — and to be ready to multiply your wealth when the innovation curve goes vertical – just click here.

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Managing editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder
ggibsonagora@gmail.com

Update:    Romanian Translation of “SOPA is the Symptom, Copyright is the Disease: The SOPA wakeup call to ABOLISH COPYRIGHT”

Cory Doctorow has a great speech up, The coming war on general computation, delivered at the the 28C3, the recent Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin. (He’s also written an article based on the transcript.) Doctorow explains that how the copyright interests want general purpose computers to be regulated, or hobbled, so that people cannot evade copyright restrictions and copyright circumvention prohibitions. (Why Doctorow is not yet a complete copyright abolitionists is a mystery to me.) He has an interesting point at around 45:00 about how the Internet and technology only provides an incremental benefit to the state, since they are already organized enough to be in charge, but can provide a more qualitative change–a “phase shift”–for the subjects of the state, in helping them to better organize and fight the state.

His summary of the talk:

The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.

The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to “secure” anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society.

[C4SIF]

From my C4SIF post:

There is nothing wrong with incrementalism. Advocates of private property and free markets want patent, copyright, and other forms of IP to be abolished, but we are also in favor of measures short of abolition that move in the right direction–shortening terms and penalties, etc. Still, it’s frustrating when some commentators identify real problems with IP law but fail to make a more fundamental diagnosis. A case in point is free market economist Alex Tabarrok, who has good criticisms of the existing patent system but who nonetheless resists calls for patent abolition and advocates other statist measures to supplement or replace the statist patent system, like multi-billion dollar taxpayer-funded innovation prize systems.

In the field of copyright, we have Google attorney and copyright lawyer William Patry, whose recent book is How to Fix Copyright (see his recent Volokh post, How to Fix Copyright, Part I). Our mutual publisher, Oxford University Press, sent me a copy a while back. Unfortunately, although Patry makes some useful criticisms of the existing copyright system, his diagnosis and prescriptions are confused (though not as bad as those of Dean Baker, who, like Tabarrok in the field of inventions, recommends taxpayer funded multibillion-dollar “artistic freedom vouchers” to promote artistic creation).

Patry realizes the current copyright system is rife with problems. But he is not willing to support copyright abolition. It is not for failure to understand the law. He is a renowned copyright scholar, author of the seminal Patry on Copyright treatise. Legal credentials are not enough, however. One must have a firm grasp of economics, and one’s political views must be rooted in the propertarian principles that inform libertarian analysis. Given a grounding in Austro-libertarian analysis, it is easy to see that the only legitimate laws are those that enforce individual property rights, and that the purpose of property rights is to permit productive and conflict-free use of scarce resources. The function of law is to make peaceful, productive use of scarce resources possible, by assigning owners to these resources based on Lockean homesteading principles. Copyright law, like patent law, is a grant of monopoly privilege–the remnant of mercantilism and censorship regimes of the past and is antithetical to the free market, competition, and private property.

Read more>>

Last year I presented four Mises Academy Mises Academy courses:

• “Rethinking Intellectual Property” (a reprise of one taught previously in 2010);
• “Libertarian Legal Theory”;
• “Libertarian Controversies”; and
• “The Social Theory of Hoppe“.
• Plus: “Obama’s Patent Reform: Improvement or Continuing Calamity?,” a Mises Academy webinar.

The audio and slides for the first three courses listed can be found in those links; those for the Hoppe course are appended below. The Hoppe course is discussed in my article “Read Hoppe, Then Nothing Is the Same,” translated into Spanish as “Tras leer a Hoppe, nada es lo mismo“; see also Danny Sanchez’s post Online Hoppe Course Starts Tomorrow. I enjoyed all four courses but my favorite was the Hoppe course. Hoppe has been the biggest intellectual influence of my life, as I detail in “How I Became A Libertarian” (published as “Being a Libertarian” in I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians). I agree with Sanchez that “Hans-Hermann Hoppe is the most profound social theorist writing today.” This is one reason I worked with the brilliant Austro-libertarian theorist, and one of my best friends, Jörg Guido Hülsmann, and one of the greatest guys in the world, to produce the well-received and well-deserved festschrift, Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Mises Institute, 2009).

The experience of teaching the Mises Academy classes was amazing and gratifying, as I noted in my article  “Teaching an Online Mises Academy Course.” This and similar technology and Internet-enabled models are obviously the wave of the educational future. The students received an in-depth, specialized and personalized treatment of topics of interest to them, with tests and teacher and fellow student interaction, for a very reasonable price, and judging by their comments and evaluations, they were very satisfied with the courses and this online model. For example, for the Hoppe course, as noted in A Happy Hoppean Student, student Cam Rea wrote, about the first lecture of the course:

Move over Chuck Norris, Hans-Hermann Hoppe is in town! The introduction to “The Social Theory of Hoppe” was extremely thorough. I, a relative newcomer to the Hoppean idea, was impressed by Stephan Kinsella’s introduction to the theory. Mr. Kinsella hit upon all of those who came before Hoppe, and how each built upon another over the past two centuries. In other words, as Isaac Newton stated, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Hoppe is the result thus far of those who came before him in the ideals of Austrian Economics and libertarian principles. Nevertheless, Hoppe takes it much further as in the Misesian concept of human action and the science of “praxeology”, from which all actions branch in life.

Overall, the class was extremely enjoyable, the questions concrete, and the answer provided by Mr. Kinsella clear and precise. Like many others in the class, I look forward to more. So tune in next Monday at 7pm EDT. Same Hoppe-time, same Hoppe-channel!

“The class (everything) was perfect. Content wasn’t too deep (nor too shallow) – the reviewed material was just brilliant and the “tuning” was great for someone like myself (engineering background – no profound legal/lawyer experience). It provided all the material to really “understand” (instead of “just knowing”) all that was covered which I find always very important in a class.”

“Instruction was very comprehensive and thought provoking. The instructor was fantastic and very knowledgeable and answered every question asked.”

“Learned more then i expected, the professor seemed to really enjoy teaching the class, and the readings provided were excellent. Overall for the cost I was extremely satisfied.”

“Very interesting ideas I was not exposed to. Inexpensive, convenient, good quality.”

“It is a very fascinating topic and I was quite eager to learn about what I.P. is all about. I thought that Professor Kinsella was able to convey complicated issues to us clearly.”

“Professor Kinsella’s enthusiasm and extra links posted showed his true knowledge and interest in the subject. Great to see.”

And:

Thank you so very much for all the excellent work — very few classes have really changed my life dramatically, actually only 3 have, and all 3 were classes I took at the Mises Academy, starting with Rethinking Intellectual Property (PP350) (the other two were EH476 (Bubbles), and PP900 (Private Defense)). …

My purposes for taking the classes are: 1. just for the fun of it, 2. learning & self-education, and 3. to understand what is happening with some degree of clarity so I can eventually start being part of the solution where I live — or at least stop being part of the problem.

The IP class was a total blast — finally (finally) sound reasoning. All the (three) classes I took dramatically changed the way I see the world. I’m still digesting it all, to tell the truth. Very few events in my life have managed to make me feel like I wished I was 15 all over again. Thank you. …

[M]uch respect and admiration for all the great work done by all the members of the whole team.

Students would often give real-time feedback, in comments such as the following at the end of the lectures (these are from the actual IP-lecture chat transcripts):

• “Thank you, great lecture!”
• “Thanks, excellent lecture.”
• “Great job.”
• “Great lecture!”
• “Thank you, Sir. Great lecture!”
• “Thanks for an excellent talk.”

Student reaction to the first lecture of my Libertarian Legal Theory course can be found in Student Comments for First Lecture of Libertarian Legal Theory Course: Not Too Late to Sign Up!:

“The class (everything) was perfect. Content wasn’t too deep (nor too shallow) – the reviewed material was just brilliant and the “tuning” was great for someone like myself (engineering background – no profound legal/lawyer experience). It provided all the material to really “understand” (instead of “just knowing”) all that was covered which I find always very important in a class.”

“Instruction was very comprehensive and thought provoking. The instructor was fantastic and very knowledgeable and answered every question asked.”

“Learned more then i expected, the professor seemed to really enjoy teaching the class, and the readings provided were excellent. Overall for the cost I was extremely satisfied.”

“Very interesting ideas I was not exposed to. Inexpensive, convenient, good quality.”

“It is a very fascinating topic and I was quite eager to learn about what I.P. is all about. I thought that Professor Kinsella was able to convey complicated issues to us clearly.”

“Professor Kinsella’s enthusiasm and extra links posted showed his true knowledge and interest in the subject. Great to see.”

Now, that is very gratifying to a teacher. It’s immediate feedback. And it’s a good example of what I mentioned in “Teaching an Online Mises Academy Course”:

These heartfelt and spontaneous comments reminded me a bit of times past, when students would applaud at the end of a good lecture by a professor. In this sense, and contrary to what you might expect with the coarsening of manners and the increase of informality in typical Internet fora, for some reason the new, high-tech environment created by Mises Academy seems to foster a return to Old World manners and civility — which is very Misesian indeed! Perhaps it is because these students are all 100 percent voluntary, and they want to learn. They are much like students decades ago, who were grateful to get into college — before state subsidies of education and the entitlement mentality set in, turning universities into playgrounds for spoiled children who often skip the classes, paid for 10 percent by parents and 90 percent by the taxpayer.

The audio and slides for all six lectures of the Social Theory of Hoppe course are provided below. The “suggested readings” for each lecture are appended to the end of this post.

Update: the audio files may also be subscribed to in this podcast feed. (In iTunes (for Windows) you can subscribe to podcast by copying the feed address to iTunes>Advanced>Subscribe to podcast; on Macs, you can click on the link to have iTunes add it to podcasts.)

LECTURE 1: PROPERTY FOUNDATIONS

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 2: TYPES OF SOCIALISM AND THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 3: LIBERTARIAN RIGHTS AND ARGUMENTATION ETHICS

(mp3 download)

Lecture 4: EPISTEMOLOGY, METHODOLOGY AND DUALISM; KNOWLEDGE, CERTAINTY, LOGICAL POSITIVISM

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 5: ECONOMIC ISSUES AND APPLICATIONS

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 6: POLITICAL ISSUES AND APPLICATIONS; HOPPE Q&A

(mp3 download)

SUGGESTED READING MATERIAL

The “suggested readings” for each lecture are appended below. The links were internal Mises Academy links so would not work here, and I had no time to add individual links for all of them, but until I find time to code in the links, most of these materials can be found on stephankinsella.com/publications, c4sif.org/resources, mises.org, hanshoppe.com/publications, or on Wikipedia or by google search. (If there is a particular link you cannot find online, email me or add to the comments, and I’ll try to find it and update the post with that link.)

LECTURE 1: PROPERTY FOUNDATIONS

• Chapters 1 & 2, Theory of Socialism and Capitalism [TSC]

LECTURE 2: TYPES OF SOCIALISM AND THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE

• TSC Chs. 3-6 URL
• De-Socialization in a United Germany URL
• “Banking, Nation States and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order” (ch. 3 of EEPP)

LECTURE 3: LIBERTARIAN RIGHTS AND ARGUMENTATION ETHICS

• Kinsella, “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide” URL
• Hoppe: EEPP, chapter 11, “From the Economics of Laissez Faire to the Ethics of Libertarianism,” ch. 12. “The Justice of Economic Efficiency,” and “Appendix: Four Critical Replies” URL

• Kinsella, “New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory” URL
• “On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property,” by Hoppe URL
• # “Beyond Is and Ought,” by Murray N. Rothard URL
• “Hoppephobia,” by Rothbard URL
• “Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan,” by Stephan Kinsella URL
• “Argumentation Ethics and The Philosophy of Freedom,” by Frank Van Dun URL
• “Hülsmann on Argumentation Ethics,” by Kinsella

LECTURE 4: EPISTEMOLOGY, METHODOLOGY AND DUALISM; KNOWLEDGE, CERTAINTY, LOGICAL POSITIVISM

• A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, Pages 118-144 and 152-155 URL
• Economic Science and the Austrian Method URL
• Is Research Based on Causal Scientific Principles Possible in the Social Sciences? (ch. 10 of EEPP) URL
• In Defense of Extreme Rationalism: Thoughts on Donald McCloskey’s The Rhetoric of Economics URL

• Chapter 9. “On Praxeology and the Praxeological Foundation of Epistemology”; ch. 14. “Austrian Rationalism in the Age of the Decline of Positivism” (from EEPP) URL
• On Certainty and Uncertainty, Or: How Rational Can Our Expectations Be? URL
• The Science of Human Action (lecture)

LECTURE 5: ECONOMIC ISSUES AND APPLICATIONS

• Hoppe on Property Rights in Physical Integrity vs Value URL
• Hoppe on Liberal Economies and War URL
• Hoppe: Marx was “Essentially Correct” URL
• Capitalist Production and The Problem of Monopoly (TSC) URL
• Fallacies of the Public Goods Theory & the Production of Security URL
• Verstehen and the Role of Economics in Forecasting, or: If You’re so Rich, Why Aren’t You Smart?, URL
• “Chicago Diversions” in The Ethics and Economics of Private Property URL
• Kinsella, “Knowledge vs. Calculation” URL

• The Misesian Case against Keynes URL
• The Limits of Numerical Probability: Frank H. Knight and Ludwig von Mises and the Frequency of Interpretation URL
• A Note on Preference and Indifference in Economic Analysis URL
• Socialism: A Property or Knowledge Problem?

LECTURE 6: POLITICAL ISSUES AND APPLICATIONS; HOPPE Q&A

n/a

Papinian (Aemilius Papinianus), famous Roman jurist, who wrote, ""It is easier to commit murder than to justify it.” when he refused to come up with an argument justifying a murder, and was himself put to death.

Last year I presented a 6 week Mises Academy course, “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society,” discussed in my Mises Daily article “Introduction to Libertarian Legal Theory.” This course followed on the heels of my previous Mises Academy course, “Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics” (audio and slides), about which one student wrote me at the completion of the course,

Thank you so very much for all the excellent work — very few classes have really changed my life dramatically, actually only 3 have, and all 3 were classes I took at the Mises Academy, starting with Rethinking Intellectual Property (PP350) (the other two were EH476 (Bubbles), and PP900 (Private Defense)). …

My purposes for taking the classes are: 1. just for the fun of it, 2. learning & self-education, and 3. to understand what is happening with some degree of clarity so I can eventually start being part of the solution where I live — or at least stop being part of the problem.

The IP class was a total blast — finally (finally) sound reasoning. All the (three) classes I took dramatically changed the way I see the world. I’m still digesting it all, to tell the truth. Very few events in my life have managed to make me feel like I wished I was 15 all over again. Thank you. …

[M]uch respect and admiration for all the great work done by all the members of the whole team.

For more student feedback on Rethinking IP, see Kinsella’s Rethinking Intellectual Property course: Audio and Slides. The Libertarian Legal Theory course also received very positive comments and reviews.

(Student reaction to the first lecture of the Libertarian Legal Theory course can be found in Student Comments for First Lecture of Libertarian Legal Theory Course: Not Too Late to Sign Up!)

The students also evidently really enjoyed the lecture. Here are some of the comments from the chat session, near the end of the lecture (unedited except I have removed surnames):

[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:12:25 PM EST] Patrick : This is excellent, best Mises class yet
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:46:52 PM EST] Karl : ok, thanks, nice class
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:47:01 PM EST] Jock : very good
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:47:40 PM EST] Robert : thanks for the lecture, it was great! see you guys next time
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:05 PM EST] Kevin : awesome – thanks!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:17 PM EST] Amanda : Thanks for a wonderful class. Good night!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:38 PM EST] Daniel: Thank you!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:41 PM EST] Roger: Terrific class, thanks!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:42 PM EST] Patrick : thank you
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:42 PM EST] Steven: Great lecture. Thanks
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:43 PM EST] George: Great class ‘night
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:44 PM EST] Mark: Very good class. Thanks!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:45 PM EST] Cheryl: Thanks!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:46 PM EST] Danny Sanchez : Thanks for attending everyone!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:46 PM EST] safariman : Good class! Thanks
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:48 PM EST] Patti : thanks. bye
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:50 PM EST] Jonathan: Thanks!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:51 PM EST] Colin: Thanks.
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:52 PM EST] Thomas : Thank You!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:56 PM EST] Erika : Thank you!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:54:56 PM EST] Danny Sanchez : thanks for the great lecture Stephan!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:55:02 PM EST] Derrick : Thanks
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:55:14 PM EST] Robert: thx
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:55:29 PM EST] Noam: Thanks a lot!
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:55:29 PM EST] Robert: GREAT first lecture
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:55:33 PM EST] Matthew : Great lecture thanks
[Mon 31 Jan 2011 10:55:54 PM EST] Matt Gilliland : Thanks so much! Best Christmas present I’ve ever gotten, I think.

This echoed the type of comments students provided in real-time in the Rethinking IP course, in comments such as the following at the end of the lectures (these are from the actual IP-lecture chat transcripts):

• “Thank you, great lecture!”
• “Thanks, excellent lecture.”
• “Great job.”
• “Great lecture!”
• “Thank you, Sir. Great lecture!”
• “Thanks for an excellent talk.”

Now, that is very gratifying to a teacher. It’s immediate feedback. And it’s a good example of what I mentioned in “Teaching an Online Mises Academy Course”:

These heartfelt and spontaneous comments reminded me a bit of times past, when students would applaud at the end of a good lecture by a professor. In this sense, and contrary to what you might expect with the coarsening of manners and the increase of informality in typical Internet fora, for some reason the new, high-tech environment created by Mises Academy seems to foster a return to Old World manners and civility — which is very Misesian indeed! Perhaps it is because these students are all 100 percent voluntary, and they want to learn. They are much like students decades ago, who were grateful to get into college — before state subsidies of education and the entitlement mentality set in, turning universities into playgrounds for spoiled children who often skip the classes, paid for 10 percent by parents and 90 percent by the taxpayer.

The audio and slides for all six lectures of the Libertarian Legal Theory course are provided below. The “suggested readings” for each lecture are appended to the end of this post.

Update: the audio files may also be subscribed to in this podcast feed. (In iTunes (for Windows) you can subscribe to podcast by copying the feed address to iTunes>Advanced>Subscribe to podcast; on Macs, you can click on the link to have iTunes add it to podcasts.)

LECTURE 1: LIBERTARIAN BASICS: RIGHTS AND LAW

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 2: LIBERTARIAN BASICS: RIGHTS AND LAW (continued)

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 3: APPLICATIONS I: LEGAL SYSTEMS, CONTRACT, FRAUD

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 4: CAUSATION, AGGRESSION, RESPONSIBILITY

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 5: INTELLECTUAL ROPERTY AND RELATED

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 6: APPLICATIONS CONTINUED; COMMON LIBERTARIAN MISTAKES (FRAUD ETC.)

(mp3 download)

SUGGESTED READING MATERIAL

The “suggested readings” for each lecture are appended below.

LECTURE 1: LIBERTARIAN BASICS: RIGHTS AND LAW

SUGGESTED READINGS

• Rothbard, Ethics of Liberty, chs. 4-5, 15
• Kinsella, “Introduction to Libertarian Legal Theory” (all)
• Kinsella, “What Libertarianism Is” (all)
• “Chicago Diversions” section of Hoppe, “The Ethics and Economics of Private Property“
• Kinsella, “Utilitarianism” discussion, Against Intellectual Property, pp. 19-23
• Rothbard’s discussion of the “relevant technological unit” in “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution“
• Kinsella, “The Division of Labor as the Source of Grundnorms and Rights”
• Kinsella, “Empathy and the Source of Rights“
• Rand, “Man’s Rights“
• Tucker & Kinsella, “Goods, Scarce and Nonscarce“
• Kinsella, “What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist”

OPTIONAL READINGS

Libertarianism

• Jacob Huebert, Libertarianism Today (print; scribd; google books) (various topics) [for lecture 1: chapter 1]
• Dean Russell, “Who Is A Libertarian?“. The Freeman (1955)
• Rothbard, For A New Liberty, ch. 1 (“The Libertarian Heritage: The American Revolution and Classical Liberalism”)
• “Libertarianism,” Wikipedia

Austrian Economics

• “Austrian School” entry, Mises Wiki
• Rockwell, Why Austrian Economics Matters
• What Is Austrian Economics? (Mises Institute)

Rights, Ethics, Philosophy

• Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 7 [optional, but highly recommended]; also chs. 1 and 2
• James A. Sadowsky, S.J., “Private Property and Collective Ownership“
• discussion of Rothbard’s conception of “relevant technological unit” in B.K. Marcus, “The Spectrum Should Be Private Property: The Economics, History, and Future of Wireless Technology“
• “Is-ought problem,” Wikipedia

Argumentation Ethics

• Kinsella, “New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory“
• Kinsella, “Defending Argumentation Ethics“

Anarchy

• Hoppe, “The Idea of a Private Law Society“
• George H. Smith, “Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market“
• Tannehills, The Market for Liberty
• Alfred G. Cuzán, “Do We Ever Really Get Out of Anarchy?“
• Randy E. Barnett, ch. 14, “Imagining a Polycentric Constitutional Order: A Short Fable,” in The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law [not online; some available on google books]

Bibliographies

• Kinsella, “The Greatest Libertarian Books“
• LewRockwell.com Bibliographies: Hans-Hermann Hoppe on Anarcho-Capitalism, David Gordon on Liberty, and Lew Rockwell on Reading for Liberty

LECTURE 2: LIBERTARIAN BASICS: RIGHTS AND LAW (continued)

SUGGESTED READINGS

• Tucker & Kinsella, “Goods, Scarce and Nonscarce“
• Kinsella, “What Libertarianism Is” (all)
• Kinsella, “The Libertarian Approach to Negligence, Tort, and Strict Liability: Wergeld and Partial Wergeld“
• Kinsella, “Why Spam is Trespass“
• Kinsella, “Stalking as a Form of Aggression“
• Kinsella, “Stalking and Threats as Aggression“
• Kinsella, “Fraud, Restitution, and Retaliation: The Libertarian Approach“
• Kinsella, “The Problem with “Fraud”: Fraud, Threat, and Contract Breach as Types of Aggression“
• Kinsella, “The Limits of Armchair Theorizing: The case of Threats“
• Kinsella, “Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach,” pages 68-69 (re “threats”)
• Rothbard, “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution“
• Kinsella, “What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist“
• Hoppe, “The Idea of a Private Law Society“

OPTIONAL READINGS

Scarcity and Rights

• Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 7 [optional, but highly recommended]; p. 158 note 120; also chs. 1 and 2

Rights and the Structure of Action

• Kinsella, “Intellectual Freedom and Learning Versus Patent and Copyright“

Argumentation Ethics

• Rothbard, “Beyond Is and Ought“

• George H. Smith, “Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market“
• Tannehills, The Market for Liberty
• Alfred G. Cuzán, “Do We Ever Really Get Out of Anarchy?“
• Randy E. Barnett, ch. 14, “Imagining a Polycentric Constitutional Order: A Short Fable,” in The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law [not online; some available on google books]

Legal Positivism and Logical Positivism

• Kinsella, “Logical and Legal Positivism“
• Legal Positivism
• legal realism
• Holmes’s bad-man theory of law
• Logical Positivism
• Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p.5 [logical positivism]
• Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, pp. 127-36 (ch. 6) [logical positivism]

Other

• Geoffrey Allan Plauché, Aristotelian Liberalism: An Inquiry into the Foundations of a Free and Flourishing Society ch. 4, pp. 93-94 [on "assertoric hypotheticals"]
• Rothbard, Ethics of Liberty, ch. 15 [rights as property rights]
• Rothbard’s conception of the Relevant Technological Unit

LECTURE 3: APPLICATIONS I: LEGAL SYSTEMS, CONTRACT, FRAUD

LECTURE 4: CAUSATION, AGGRESSION, RESPONSIBILITY

LECTURE 5: INTELLECTUAL ROPERTY AND RELATED

Suggested Readings

• Kinsella, Against Intellectual Property
• —–, Innovations that Thrive without IP
• —–, The Patent, Copyright, Trademark, and Trade Secret Horror Files
• —–, Locke on IP; Mises, Rothbard, and Rand on Creation, Production, and “Rearranging”

LECTURE 6: APPLICATIONS CONTINUED; COMMON LIBERTARIAN MISTAKES (FRAUD ETC.)

• Kinsella, Rothbard on Corporations and Limited Liability for Tort
• —–, Legitimizing the Corporation and Other Posts
• —–, Corporations and Limited Liability for Torts
• —–, In Defense of the Corporation

Other

• Kinsella, How We Come To Own Ourselves

[PFS]

At the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society (May 27-29, 2011), I delivered a speech entitled “Correcting some Common Libertarian Misconceptions.” The video is here, and streamed below. It engendered a good deal of discussion and interest, and I could only touch on a small number of the topics I had assembled over the years, so later in the year, I conducted a 6 week Mises Academy course, “Libertarian Controversies” (Mondays, Sept. 19-Oct. 23, 2011), to cover these and related topics in greater depth. The course was planned for 5 weeks initially, but I added a sixth “bonus” lecture at student request. The course is discussed in my Mises Daily article “Libertarian  Controversies.”) The audio and slides for the 6 lectures of the course are provided below, following the PFS lecture, below. The “suggested readings” for each lecture are appended to the end of this post.

Earlier courses included “Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics” (discussed on the Mises Blog in Study with Kinsella Online; Lecture 1), in late 2010, which I reprised in Spring 2011: “Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics” (discussed in Rethinking IP; and on the Mises Blog in Study with Kinsella Online and in Rethinking Intellectual Property: Kinsella’s Mises Academy Online Course); “Libertarian Legal Theory“; and “The Social Theory of Hoppe.” The audio and slides for the Rethinking IP course are available here, and here for Libertarian Legal Theory (Hoppe course material coming soon).

In Teaching an Online Mises Academy Course, I offer my reflections on teaching the Rethinking IP class the first time. Here is some feedback provided by past students of the Rethinking IP course:

“The class (everything) was perfect. Content wasn’t too deep (nor too shallow) – the reviewed material was just brilliant and the “tuning” was great for someone like myself (engineering background – no profound legal/lawyer experience). It provided all the material to really “understand” (instead of “just knowing”) all that was covered which I find always very important in a class.”

“Instruction was very comprehensive and thought provoking. The instructor was fantastic and very knowledgeable and answered every question asked.”

“Learned more then i expected, the professor seemed to really enjoy teaching the class, and the readings provided were excellent. Overall for the cost I was extremely satisfied.”

“Very interesting ideas I was not exposed to. Inexpensive, convenient, good quality.”

“It is a very fascinating topic and I was quite eager to learn about what I.P. is all about. I thought that Professor Kinsella was able to convey complicated issues to us clearly.”

“Professor Kinsella’s enthusiasm and extra links posted showed his true knowledge and interest in the subject. Great to see.”

And:

Thank you so very much for all the excellent work — very few classes have really changed my life dramatically, actually only 3 have, and all 3 were classes I took at the Mises Academy, starting with Rethinking Intellectual Property (PP350) (the other two were EH476 (Bubbles), and PP900 (Private Defense)). …

My purposes for taking the classes are: 1. just for the fun of it, 2. learning & self-education, and 3. to understand what is happening with some degree of clarity so I can eventually start being part of the solution where I live — or at least stop being part of the problem.

The IP class was a total blast — finally (finally) sound reasoning. All the (three) classes I took dramatically changed the way I see the world. I’m still digesting it all, to tell the truth. Very few events in my life have managed to make me feel like I wished I was 15 all over again. Thank you. …

[M]uch respect and admiration for all the great work done by all the members of the whole team.

Students would often give real-time feedback, in comments such as the following at the end of the lectures (these are from the actual IP-lecture chat transcripts):

• “Thank you, great lecture!”
• “Thanks, excellent lecture.”
• “Great job.”
• “Great lecture!”
• “Thank you, Sir. Great lecture!”
• “Thanks for an excellent talk.”

Student reaction to the first lecture of my Libertarian Legal Theory course can be found in Student Comments for First Lecture of Libertarian Legal Theory Course: Not Too Late to Sign Up!

“The class (everything) was perfect. Content wasn’t too deep (nor too shallow) – the reviewed material was just brilliant and the “tuning” was great for someone like myself (engineering background – no profound legal/lawyer experience). It provided all the material to really “understand” (instead of “just knowing”) all that was covered which I find always very important in a class.”

“Instruction was very comprehensive and thought provoking. The instructor was fantastic and very knowledgeable and answered every question asked.”

“Learned more then i expected, the professor seemed to really enjoy teaching the class, and the readings provided were excellent. Overall for the cost I was extremely satisfied.”

“Very interesting ideas I was not exposed to. Inexpensive, convenient, good quality.”

“It is a very fascinating topic and I was quite eager to learn about what I.P. is all about. I thought that Professor Kinsella was able to convey complicated issues to us clearly.”

“Professor Kinsella’s enthusiasm and extra links posted showed his true knowledge and interest in the subject. Great to see.”

***

Update: the audio files may also be subscribed to in this podcast feed. (In iTunes (for Windows) you can subscribe to podcast by copying the feed address to iTunes>Advanced>Subscribe to podcast; on Macs, you can click on the link to have iTunes add it to podcasts.)

“Correcting some Common Libertarian Misconceptions,” 2011 Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society (May 27-29, 2011) (video)

pfs-2011 Stephan Kinsella, Correcting Some Common Libertarian Misconceptions from Sean Gabb on Vimeo.

“Libertarian Controversies”: Mises Academy (Mondays, Sept. 19-Oct. 23, 2011)

LECTURE 1:

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 2:

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 3:

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 4:

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 5:

(mp3 download)

LECTURE 6:

(mp3 download)

(lectures 5 and 6 use the same set of slides)

SUGGESTED READING MATERIAL

The “suggested readings” for each lecture are appended below. The links were internal Mises Academy links so would not work here, and I had no time to add individual links for all of them, but until I find time to code in the links, most of these materials can be found on stephankinsella.com/publications, c4sif.org/resources, mises.org, hanshoppe.com/publications, or on Wikipedia or by google search. (If there is a particular link you cannot find online, email me or add to the comments, and I’ll try to find it and update the post with that link.)

General background readings are below; other particular links are provided in the slides for each lecture:

• Kinsella, “What Libertarianism Is” URL
• “Libertarian Controversies” by Stephan Kinsella URL
• Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism [TSC], chapters 1-2 URL

• Rothbard, For A New Liberty and Ethics of Liberty (both strongly recommended) URL
• Huebert, Libertarianism Today (Scribd free version; Vance’s review; Kinsella review) URL
• Rockwell & Rothbard, eds., The Free Market Reader: Essays in the Economics of Liberty URL
• Walter Block, Defending the Undefendable URL
• Frederic Bastiat, The Law URL
• Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom URL
• Linda & Morris Tannehill, The Market for Liberty URL
• Lysander Spooner, No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority URL
• Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal URL

• What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist URL
• How We Come To Own Ourselves URL
• Causation and Aggression URL
• Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach URL
• Inalienability and Punishment: A Reply to George Smith URL
• Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide URL
• Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan URL
• New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory URL
• Against Intellectual Property URL
• The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide URL
• The Trouble with Libertarian Activism URL

• Hoppe, Anarcho-Capitalism: An annotated bibliography URL
• Kinsella, The Greatest Libertarian Books URL
• David Gordon on Liberty URL
• Lew Rockwell on Reading for Liberty URL
• Others at LRC Bibliographies

[PFS]

Interesting post from Libertarian News:

Rothbard vs. CATO’s Richard Epstein on the Benefits of Violent Looting

December 17, 2011

By michaelsuede

Adam Liptak and Richard Epstein discuss the most efficient way to rob people.

After listening to Epstein run his ivory tower mouth, my fury over his nonsensical bullshit hath runneth over.  A video reading of the following article can be found here for those of you that don’t have the patience to read long text articles.

Epstein admits that, “There is no coercive action by government which will have the same beneficent effects of voluntary transactions in competitive markets,” yet flushes his own statement down the toilet when he adds, ”but you can’t get competitive markets with respect to the provision of public goods and you can’t get competitive markets with respect to the operation of network industries.”

Epstein never bothers to explain why “public goods” are of such necessary importance that VIOLENCE against PEACEFUL PEOPLE should be advocated in order to pay for them.

Epstein lists off a few so-called libertarian economists that support the initiation of violence against the innocent to pay for public goods, including Locke and Hayek, but he never bothers to mention the rest of the libertarian economics field, the majority of which disagree with the legitimization of the initiation of violence.

Let’s start off with the parable of the robber by Rothbard to demonstrate why any violent theft can not lead to a more productive society.  The following citations all come from the essay The Myth of Neutral Taxation, by Murray Rothbard:

Read more>>