KOL187 | Anarchast with Jeff Berwick Discussing IP, Anarcho-libertarianism, and Legislation vs. Private Law (2012)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 187. I appeared on Jeff Berwick's show in 2012: Kinsella on Anarchast Discussing IP, Anarcho-libertarianism, and Legislation vs. Private Law (Dec. 29, 2012): I was a guest on Jeff Berwick's Anarchast (ep. 51, 36 min), released today. We discussed anarchy and how such a society might be reached; the basis and origin of law and property rights and its relationship to libertarian principles, and implications for legislation versus law and the legitimacy of intellectual property; also, utilitarianism, legal positivism, scientism, and logical positivism. Description from the Anarchist site below. For more background on IP, see the C4SIF Resources page; on legislation vs. private law, see The (State’s) Corruption of (Private) Law. Youtube below as well as the auto-transcript generated by Youtube: https://youtu.be/FtfP4KxBYcM Update: See also Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society.   Anarchast Ep. 51 with Stephan Kinsella   Jeff Berwick in Acapulco, Mexico, talks with Stephan Kinsella in Houston, Texas Topics include: - Stephan explains how he became an anarchist and some of the books that pointed him in the right direction including - The Fountainhead (http://amzn.to/VnZwSL) - Stephan is a practicing attorney that applies his legal knowledge with his libertarian philosophy - He believes a free law society will only come about if a majority of people agree in libertarian principles - Law is defined as a concrete body of rules that permits a group of people that want to be able to cooperate to be able to do so - Jeff asks if it is necessary for everyone to agree with libertarian philosophy in order to have a free society - Stephan thinks that a majority of people already have libertarian principles but have not been educated correctly in constancy - He is more optimistic that most because he sees more people not accepting central planning than in the past - Jeff thinks that there could be a backlash against free market ideas during a financial collapse where the people believe capitalism is to blame - Stephan hopes that people will slowly find the state to be irrelevant and this will bring about a free society - Jeff thinks that there will be a financial collapse that will make this transition unpredictable - Stephan is an expert in libertarian Intellectual Property theory - He explains the principles of property law - What most people think is law today is not what law would be based on in a libertarian society - Stephan explains the problem with legal and economic positivism - The proper libertarian view is to be opposed to making law through legislation - The problem with intellectual property is that you are able to use the force of the government against someone who has not aggressed against you - Stephan explains the problems with the utilitarian Intellectual property justification - The intellectual property system forces everyone to participate even if they don’t agree with it Stephan is doing astounding work in libertarian legal theory you can find more in formation on his sites https://stephankinsella.com/ http://c4sif.org/ For more information on The Dollar Vigilante, go to http://dollarvigilante.com. For more information on Jeff Berwick’s anarchist enclave, Galt’s Gulch Chile, go to http://galtsgulchchile.com. And, for more on the anarchist enclave in Acapulco go to http://dollarvigilante.com/acacondos. Come on down and be a guest on Anarchast and live relatively free amongst other anarchists. Source: http://financialsurvivalnetwork.com/2012/12/anarchast-ep-51-with-stephan-kinsella/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=anarchast-ep-51-with-stephan-kinsella Youtube transcript: 0:05 is in our nest 0:15 hi everybody welcome to another edition of Anna Castro for anarchy on the Internet I'm sitting in my living room 0:22 of a house that I live in in Acapulco Mexico right now and we're really excited excited to finally have on 0:27 stephan kinsella who's in houston at the moment and and took the time out today to speak with us and that's a real 0:33 pleasure to talk to these two fine thanks Jeff glad to be here and the first question I always ask everybody is 0:39 how did you become an anarchist you know I don't remember I remember the time and 0:47 roughly but you kind of forget you're your influences right I'd say in like 0:53 11th grade of high school I was kind of a political and a librarian recommended The Fountainhead to me and that list 0:59 shrugged and so I became quickly a Randian type of libertarian but hostile 1:05 to libertarianism and anarchism for a couple years until I realized that she was wrong that I shouldn't read people 1:12 like Rothbard etc so I read you know the law and then I started reading Rothbard and the Tana Hills and Nozick 1:18 and something between David Friedman and Robert Nozick and the Tana hills and 1:27 rothbard probably rothbard made me finally give up the ghost around let's say 88 or so and just realized I was an 1:34 anarchist which was a liberating moment so to my mind it's just the end result 1:40 of a consistent principled libertarianism yeah I agree with that 1:46 and so yeah you've been on the bandwagon for a while no that's great and I know you spend a lot of time on areas of 1:51 contract law and intellectual property stuff and I believe you're a lawyer is 1:57 that correct yeah I'm a practicing attorney intellectual property patent attorney but corporate law and contract 2:02 law oil and gas law that kind of law for around 20 years now so I have a deep 2:08 interest in you know legal theory and in mixing it with Austrian theory and with 2:13 libertarian theory as well that's great and one of the questions that a lot of 2:19 people always ask when they when you get into the topic of Anarchy is how would law work I wonder if you could give them 2:25 sort a few minutes on generally how it would work in a free market yeah that's a 2:31 that's a long topic I actually give a speech on that in Turkey at haunt our monopolist property in freedom society a 2:37 few months ago which will be online shortly at my website and I've written 2:44 about legislation and law and things like this so it's a long topic but kind 2:51 of the long and short of it is I believe that in any free society you're going to get there only by some kind of natural 2:58 process by which most people have some sort of libertarian ethos or ethics I 3:05 mean you're not going to have a libertarian Society unless most people become libertarian how that happens is a different question whether it's 3:11 educational or just experiencial or evolutionary or AG rest' is a different 3:17 question but if we assume that we've somehow reached some roughly libertarian society it's only because most people 3:22 have become or have moved to a more libertarian point of view and these people are all going to prefer a 3:29 peaceful society to one that's full of violence and strife and fighting they're 3:35 going to be the type of people who will prefer to have rules about who can use 3:41 what among scarce resources that people otherwise would have to fight over this is why property rules arise in society 3:48 that we have now and in a libertarian society they would arise the same way except I believe that the people that 3:54 focused on what the rule should be would be more consistent about what they are and they would be more sincere about 4:00 looking at you know what's really the just solution here so basically law I view law as a body of 4:07 rules that are a practical body of rules designed to allocate the right the legal 4:12 right to use or the ownership of contestable or rivalry scarce resources 4:18 that otherwise people would have to fight over so law is just a concrete 4:23 body of rules that permits human beings that want to cooperate to be able to 4:29 cooperate to get along in society to produce peacefully and you know productively in society so I guess what 4:36 your one question I'd like to pose based on what you just said is that so 4:43 in order to have a free society people really need to understand these concepts of of libertarianism is that correct and 4:49 if so so it really won't be able to happen unless you have the majority of people in that society really understand 4:56 these concepts is that is that correct I don't know if it has to be explicitly understood it has to be you know 5:03 ingrained in some kind of way I think it already is to be honest I think the vast bulk of humans are already kind of quasi 5:10 libertarian because most people if you ask them if they believe in if they 5:17 value human prosperity if they valued cooperation and productivity and peace 5:24 that's just as a general matter they would agree with that the problem is they're economically illiterate and they 5:30 don't understand that if you have these basic values the only way to achieve them is to have basically a free-market 5:37 order of peaceful reasonable rational property rules allocated and applied 5:42 consistently so the main problem people have is they're not consistent and that's primarily because they have jobs 5:48 and they're they're farmers or they're that educated or they're just not scholars or they're not spending their 5:53 entire lives thinking about consistency but one thing that gives me a little bit of hope although I'm kind of a pessimist 6:00