From Jayel Aheram’s photostream: a rat named…. Mises Kinsella I named her after Ludwig von Mises and Stephan Kinsella.

I’ve often commented that the state is good at nothing except destruction–stealing, killing, breaking things. But it occurs to me that this may be wrong: that the state may also be good at one other thing. The reason it’s good at destruction–far better than a private criminal, say–is because it is institutionalized (see Rummel; Liberals […]

From LRC 2007: Swinkels and Hoppe on the Tacit Support of the State Posted by Stephan Kinsella on September 20, 2007 02:05 PM Koen Swinkels has a great article on LRC today, Ron Paul and the Role of Ideas in Class Conflict. In the article he explains that “The state depends for its continued existence […]

Oldie from LRC, about Bill Bradford (R.I.P.) on rights: Bradford of Liberty on Rights Posted by Stephan Kinsella on February 15, 2004 10:36 AM Some may recall that a few years back R.W. Bradford, editor of Liberty, argued that the age of “moralistic” or “rights-based” libertarianism a la Rothbard and Rand, had passed, and had […]

From my comment to my post New Book: Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Economic Growth (archived comments): Stephan Kinsella Peter, good point. Here’s another way to think about the incoherence of IP (and of pro-IP “arguments”): I’ve pointed out many times the hypocrisy of IP advocates, who denigrate the need for scarcity as a criteria for […]

Wow, this is some story. HT to philosopher Quee Nelson, one of Duston’s descendants. The Badass of the Week Hannah Duston Despite what Riverdale Elementary School’s annual First-Grade Thanksgiving Day Class Play might have you believe, early Colonial America wasn’t all one giant super happy mecha fun time made out of maize, delicious roasted turkey […]

Lew and Heroic Burgers Posted by Stephan Kinsella on June 19, 2005 11:17 AM Some things tend to stick in your memory. For some reason, I can never forget Lew’s brilliant tribute to the hamburger. These stirring words always make me want to drive down to the Whataburger and chow down: And what a glorious […]

As noted here, “Ayn Rand’s newsletters used to end with a “Horror File” of monstrous but true quotations.” Along those lines, it’s time to collect some choice trademark horror stories in one place. The main post will be here, on the Mises Blog, but I’ll cross-post the initial post here too. But look there for […]

The new book Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Economic Growth, by Christine Greenhalgh & Mark Rogers, looks interesting: What drives innovation? How does it contribute to the growth of firms, industries, and economies? And do intellectual property rights help or hurt innovation and growth? Uniquely combining microeconomics, macroeconomics, and theory with empirical analysis drawn from the […]

Tim Sandefur goes on the attack on Howard Zinn in “One of America’s greatest liars is dead,” writing “I must say, I ain’t sorry to see Howard Zinn go.  … Good riddance to the worst of garbage. The world is a better place without Howard Zinn.” The regime libertarians, who crave “acceptability,” are always attacking […]

An audiobook of my monograph Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008; Mises Store; PDF; Scribd; HTML) has been prepared. The narrator is Jock Coats, who produced a very impressive, professional-quality product. The audiobook, about 1 hour, 54 minutes in length, is available in .mp3 format and in .m4b iTunes book format (each about 57M). The […]

Critical Thinking Question:
How compelling could a mythology be if it didn't have any gods?

Topic:
Honestly, Abe...aggression doesn't solve problems.
The truth about the greatest American (government school) hero.

Gardner Goldsmith of Liberty Conspiracy Podcast joins me for this discussion.

Please visit schoolsucksproject.com for full show notes, references and links.

Critical Thinking Question:
How compelling could a mythology be if it didn't have any gods?

Topic:
Honestly, Abe...aggression doesn't solve problems.
The truth about the greatest American (government school) hero.

Gardner Goldsmith of Liberty Conspiracy Podcast joins me for this discussion.

Please visit schoolsucksproject.com for full show notes, references and links.

Critical Thinking Question: How compelling could a mythology be if it didn't have any gods?Topic: Honestly, Abe...aggression doesn't solve problems.The truth about the greatest American (government school) hero.Gardner Goldsmith of Liberty Conspiracy Podcast joins me for this discussion.Please visit schoolsucksproject.com for full show notes, references and links.

Words I have yet to hear from the Slate Culture Gabfest and Slate Political Gabfest, but which I expect to hear any day now. Some taken from my list of Annoying & Pretentious Terms. I’ll keep an updated list on the main page. alarum antinomy apparatchik atavistic august (as in old) ballyhooed; much-ballyhooed; long-ballyhooed beyond […]

Libertarianism Today, by legal scholar J.H. Huebert, will be published in July by Praeger. I’ve seen draft copies of the manuscript, and believe me, this will be a terrific book. It’s the only concise guide to modern libertarianism that is soundly grounded in Austrian economic, anti-state, anti-war, and decentralist principles. The $44.95 price may be […]

In Authors: Beware of Copyright, Jeff Tucker warns authors to be careful with their publication agreements not to alienate their books and other works. A good illustration of this peril is found in the case of Buddy Holly and his recording contract with Decca. As reported in Buddy Holly’s secretly recorded contract negotiation with Decca, […]

Free-market economist Professor William F. Shughart II attempts to defend the need for IP in “Ideas Need Protection,” The Baltimore Sun (Dec. 21, 2009) (previously published in the Christian Science Monitor). Subtitled “Abolishing Intellectual-property, Patents Would Hurt Innovation: A Middle Ground Is Needed,” the piece suffers from flaws found in others defenses of intellectual monopoly […]

Critical Thinking Question: How does the supposed mistreatment of a piece of cloth by the owner of said piece of cloth become a more serious offense than the violation of the property rights of the owner of this cloth?Topic: The Pledge of allegiance. Enough said.IDOL1. An image used as an object of worship. A false god.2. One that is adored, often blindly or excessively.3.

Critical Thinking Question:
How does the supposed mistreatment of a piece of cloth by the owner of said piece of cloth become a more serious offense than the violation of the property rights of the owner of this cloth?

Topic:
The Pledge of allegiance. Enough said.

Critical Thinking Question:
How does the supposed mistreatment of a piece of cloth by the owner of said piece of cloth become a more serious offense than the violation of the property rights of the owner of this cloth?

Topic:
The Pledge of allegiance. Enough said.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’m the king: Stephan Kinsella is the King of Technology (KOT) Filed under: Uncategorized — Robert Wicks @ 2:23 pm Libertarian activist and patent lawyer Stephan Kinsella and I had a bit of a gentleman’s bet. I was a skeptic in the whole Apple tablet (now known as the iPad) thing. He […]

John Pilger describes the "swift and crude" appropriation of earthquake-ravaged Haiti by the militarised Obama administration. With George W. Bush attending to the "relief effort" and Bill Clinton the UN's man, The Comedians - Graham Green's dark novel about exploted Haiti - comes to mind.

Latest notable terms from this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest and Slate Political Gabfest (feel free to email me suggestions or leave them in the comments to the main page). efficacity [DS, CG01-27-10] recherche [DS, CG01-27-10]

From Mises blog; archived comments below. Patent lawyer Gene Quinn has been sued by Invention Submission Corporation (dba Invent Help) in the United States Federal District Court for the Northern District of New York.  The complaint … alleges that I have engaged in false and misleading advertising that has cost Invent Help business.  They apparently […]

As Huebert notes in his post Fighting IP Absurdity: The South Butt Strikes Back, the saga of The North Face Apparel corp. vs. The South Butt continues. As noted on his attorneys’ website, The South Butt is the local case of a Missouri teeanager, Jimmy Winkelmann, frustrated with his classmates’ sheep-like following of a popular […]

In response to my Reducing the Cost of IP Law, my friend and ex-colleague (and mentor) Steve Mendelsohn, a patent lawyer in Philadelphia, wrote me the following. N.B.: Steve is not a libertarian but is honest and smart, unlike patent shills (he’s also an excellent patent attorney, if you need one). Here’s an edited version of […]

Tom Palmer notes on his blog: The outstanding lawyer Alan Gura, who won the case before the Supreme Court that struck down the ban on ownership of firearms in the District of Columbia today argued our case for the right, not only to “keep,” but to “bear” arms, i.e., to carry them in public. Alan’s […]

Quote attributed (by Joe Salerno) to the late, great Austrian economist Sudha Shenoy (1943-2008), as her closing comment to a session at the 1974 South Royalton Conference (“the first conference on Austrian economics held in North America,” according to Salerno). Update: to clarify, for anyone who might misconstrue the quote: I do not think Shenoy […]

From Mises blog; archived comments below. No, not me. Michael F. Martin, a patent attorney with Drinker Biddle. The March 2010 issue of Liberty (which also features a letters exchange regarding my December 2009 Liberty article, Intellectual Property and Libertarianism) features the following guest reflection by Mr. Martin: Sane and sound — “The hallmark of […]

My article “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism” was published in the December, 2009 issue of Liberty; the March 2010 issue features the following exchange in the “Letters” section. [Update: See Roderick Long’s excellent response to the type of argument Yeager makes below, in his post This Self Is Mine. See also my post “Libertarians” Who Object […]

From the comments to Reducing the Cost of IP Law [archived Mises blog comments] (see also my related post The Non-Aggression Principle as a Limit on Action, Not on Property Rights): Russ: “…You are (in effect) assuming that only scarce (and hence physical) entities can be “property” in order to “prove” that ideas and patterns […]

[See also IP and Aggression as Limits on Property Rights: How They Differ] [Update: see also Tom G. Palmer, “Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 13, no. 3 (Summer 1990), available at tomgpalmer.com, pp. 830–31: To those who might argue […]

Latest notable terms from this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest and Slate Political Gabfest (feel free to email me suggestions or leave them in the comments to the main page). Dana was the host for Culture Gabfest this week, filling in for Steve Metcalf; she did a great job. It’s become my favorite podcast, overtaking the […]

It’s widely believed–even by Nolan Chart libertarians–that the left and liberals in America are better on civil liberties than are conservatives. I’ve long believed that this is false: that both are terrible, and that if anything, the left is as bad as, or even worse than, modern American conservatives on civil liberties. (See my posts […]

A few related older LRC posts: Re: Left Socialists vs. Right Socialists Posted by Stephan Kinsella on November 12, 2004 02:06 PM Anthony–by saying the liberals are worse than the conservatives on tolerance, personal freedoms, I don’t mean to deny that the conservatives might be worse overall for liberty given, e.g., war etc. (although, most […]

Conservative Erick Erickson argues that, ironically, it’s Ted Kennedy’s fault that Obamacare may be dead: Erick Erickson, the founder of the influential conservative blog RedState, is tying Republican Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts special Senate election directly to the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, who held the seat. Soon after Brown’s upset win over […]

From LRC, 2005: Re: Everything you need to know about Judge Alito — Or, Good and Bad Judicial Activism Posted by Stephan Kinsella on November 3, 2005 02:45 PM Peter–the Barnett quote in your post is apt. If “judicial restraint” means a Rooseveltian judicial deference to unconstitutional New Deal legislation, then judicial restraint is not […]

I worked with patent lawyer Steve Mendelsohn when I practiced law in the mid-1990s at Schnader Harrison in Philadelphia. He was a witty writer; one of his funnier pieces is this one, “Confessions of a Law School Asshole,” published when he was a law student at U. Penn in The Penn Law Forum (Sept. 26, […]

I was interviewed yesterday by Mark Edge, as part of his “Edgington Post Interview Series,” for his Free Talk Live radio show, about my Mises Daily article, “Reducing the Cost of IP Law.” The interview is lasts about 35 minutes, and starts at 2:02:36 in the Jan. 20, 2010 show (MP3). Edge conducted an excellent […]

From LRC 2005 The Iraqi Bill of Rights is Here!! Posted by Stephan Kinsella on July 8, 2005 12:39 AM Thank God! The draft of the Iraqi Bill of Rights just shows America is helping to spawn liberty in the mid-east. For example, the neo-con pro-Israeli hawks will no doubt love these provision: “Any individual […]

From LRC 2008: The “deeply dishonest” opponents of the President… Posted by Stephan Kinsella on July 9, 2008 03:13 PM According to Lincoln idolizing, Bush-voting, Iraq war armchair general, and soi-disant libertarian Tim Sandefur: Christopher Hitchens has a review here of Douglas Feith’s book War And Decision, which I’m currently reading. It is an outstanding […]

From LRC 2007 Update: See KOL250 | International Law Through a Libertarian Lens (PFS 2018) International Law, Libertarian Principles, and the Russia-Ukraine War On the UN, the Birchers, and International Law The UN, International Law, and Nuclear Weapons Nukes and International Law Neocons Hate International Law Posted by Stephan Kinsella on September 6, 2007 02:58 […]

As I note in my article “Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way,” Mises Daily (Oct. 1, 2009), there is a growing clamor for reform of patent (and copyright) law, due to the increasingly obvious injustices resulting from these intellectual property (IP) laws. However, the various recent proposals for reform merely tinker with details […]

From twitter.com/shitmydadsays: No, I’m not a pessimist. At some point the world shits on everybody. Pretending it ain’t shit makes you an idiot, not an optimist. This guy’s hilarious, and wise. He’s better on this issue than rah-rah libertarian “optimists” who crawl into a hole when they hear a peep of realism.

FOREGROUND: The State BACKGROUND: The Future(American History F-ed #2) The second installment in a series of shows about government school's history curriculum. We'll explore the lies, myths, omissions and distortions used to indoctrinate blind patriotism (aka nationalism aka mysticism).Critical Thinking Question: In school we are led to believe that we are all living in someone's ideal vision of what society should be...But who's vision is it?And what were their ideals?And all things considered, does this even matter?Topic: Truth, justice, and the American way...What is this way?

FOREGROUND: The State
BACKGROUND: The Future

(American History F-ed #2) The second installment in a series of shows about government school's history curriculum. We'll explore the lies, myths, omissions and distortions used to indoctrinate blind patriotism (aka nationalism aka mysticism).

Critical Thinking Question:
In school we are led to believe that we are all living in someone's ideal vision of what society should be...
But who's vision is it?
And what were their ideals?
And all things considered, does this even matter?

FOREGROUND: The State
BACKGROUND: The Future

(American History F-ed #2) The second installment in a series of shows about government school's history curriculum. We'll explore the lies, myths, omissions and distortions used to indoctrinate blind patriotism (aka nationalism aka mysticism).

Critical Thinking Question:
In school we are led to believe that we are all living in someone's ideal vision of what society should be...
But who's vision is it?
And what were their ideals?
And all things considered, does this even matter?

The upcoming documentary, Copyright Criminals, shows how copyright has outrageously criminalized the use of sampling, which has been disproportionately popular in hip hop music. In this, it calls to mind the racially disproportionate impact of drug laws on minorities… Copyright Criminals – Trailer from IndiePix on Vimeo. [Mises; AM]

From various Mises and LRC posts: US Court Sides with spammer September 19, 2006 9:14 AM by Stephan Kinsella (Archive) Yet another ridiculous result of the US legal system: Spamhaus fined $11.7 million; won’t pay a dime reports the case of the heroic UK spam-fighting blacklist site Spamhaus, which was sued in the US by […]