Stephan Kinsella is a patent attorney, Austrian economist and author of Against Intellectual Property. We talk about IP law’s monarchist origins and how it’s a tool for monopoly. Stephan also tells us about how information is not the same thing as physical property and how IP and Bitcoin both suffer from labor theories of value.
We have Stephan Kinsella on this week to hang out and joke around then we get into some more thought provoking topics and questions for him from the listener mailbag! He’s one of the most prominent Hoppeans around right now and frankly we found him to be a little under-educated for our prestigious intellectual podcast, but hopefully you can forgive him anyway. Follow him, read him, listen to his podcast, and definitely listen to his debates because they usually rock.
Before we bring Kinsella on though, we take about 30 minutes to talk about the state of Kenosha and the collapse in general and Davie tells us about how the doctor that cut his balls off might secretly be based.
Burning Question for this week: Can property be implicitly abandoned?
Outro song this week (chosen by Stephan) is The Eagle Has Landed by Saxon
Yes, yes, I know I normally talk only about libertarian legal theory, or, mostly, IP, and try to avoid discoursing about topics I don’t think I’m an expert on … like faith, concept formation, knowledge theory, free will, compatibilism, and the like, but, hey, what the hell. Caveat listener!
This was my appearance recently on a Brazilian podcast. I believe they are adding subtitles in Portuguese. For now, here is the audio, and the current version of the youtube video is below. Their shownotes (roughly translated):
“Visconde de Mauá Study Group
The Libertarian Study Group of Fortaleza, Visconde de Mauá, is pleased to present a lecture with another of the great names of Libertarianism in the world, the Author and lawyer Stephan Kinsella.
At this event, we discussed ideas about what it means to be a libertarian and its practical application in everyday life.
Kinsella is the author of an extensive work on libertarianism including the works: Estoppel: A New Justification for Individual Rights, New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Theories of Law and What is Libertarianism. which have become essential works for understanding libertarianism, especially in their application in law, these works are extremely relevant!”
This is my interview by (really: discussion with) my old friend and underappreciated stalwart libertarian thinker and writer Timo Virkkala. This is one of the early episodes of his new podcast, LocoFoco, and were were apparently going to talk about legal positivism and perhaps argumentation ethics, but we got detoured onto tangents for almost two hours, about a variety of issues–covid, riding dirt bikes, and so on. Good guy. Very smart. Underappreciated. Check out his new podcast, LocoFoco.
Update: the raw feed was a video skype, which Timo edited for his podcast. The raw video is posted below, in which you can briefly see my new poodle puppy Bella Kinsella:
Der Hoppeninator sent me this. I can’t read civilized languages, so I can only guess what this is about. From a magazine Wirtschafts Woche, apparently discussing the issue of whether state-granted patent rights are “necessary” for there to be innovation, in particular to produce a Covid-19 vaccine. It apparently references counterarguments by me and even somehow mentions Rothbard.
Update: A partial translation by my friend Aaron Kahland:
“The American patent attorney, Stephan Kinsella calls for an end to state protection for intellectual property. Intellectual goods are, in contrast to physical property, not scarce goods. For example, a countless number of companies could produce medicines using the same recipe without that formula being denied to the original inventor. Therefore, in the case of idea-goods (don’t think there is a term in English for this) there is no need for property laws to prevent consumption via rivalry (of that property): Patents and copyright law are (he quotes you here) ‘cannot be justified in being protected by the state via monopoly rights to generate artificial scarcities where none existed before.’
“Furthermore, these restrict the property rights of others. For example, pharmaceutical companies cannot produce medicines protected by patents, singers are unable to make commercial use of their voices by singing songs of other artists. In short, patents and copyright rights create (quotes you again) ‘controlling and joint-ownership of the physical property of others.'”
This my appearance on the Liberty412 podcast, with host Mike Cuneo. We discussed a variety of topics, from the philosophy of property rights and the problem with IP, to coronavirus, racism, the prospects of liberty and anarchy, activism, and the like. We also detour into other issues like the Fermi Paradox and theories about the Industrial Revolution.
This is my appearance on the Scottish Liberty Podcast, with hosts Antony Sammeroff and Tom Laird. We discussed IP and related matters, including Sammeroff’s recent debate on the topic of IP with pro-IP Randian law professor Adam Mossoff. See various links, embeds, notes below.
Youtube of the current discussion:
Antony’s previous debate with Mossoff:
In his remarks, Mossoff mentioned this paper by Stephen Haber as supporting the empirical case for patents (funny, I thought the Objectivists had principles): Stephen Haber, “Patents and the Wealth of Nations,” 23 Geo. Mason L.Rev. 811 (2016). I have read through it as much as I can stand and provide my critical commentary here: “The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright”–see in particular note 3 and accompanying text.
Bitcoin Fixes This #7: Intellectual Property
Subscribe via iTunes
Follow with RSS!
Recent Comments