Kinsella in Italian

IP Law, Libertarian Theory
Share

An Italian translation of my Against Intellectual Property was recently published: Contro La Proprietà Intellettuale (edited, translated, and with a preface by Roberta Modugno; Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, Nov. 2010).

Also, the Italian translation of my “What Libertarianism Is” will be included in “Parte Terza: Diritto Naturale e Teoria Politica,” of the forthcoming L’Anarcocapitalismo: Epistemologia, Economia e Teoria Politica [Anarcho-Capitalism: Epistemology, Economics and Political Theory], part of the Nuova Civiltà delle Macchine monograph series edited by Dario Antiseri (one of the major living Italian philosophers). I was asked to prepare an abstract of this piece for the book, which is:

Concepts and ideas such as individual rights, property rights, the free market, capitalism, justice, and the nonaggression principle are not defining characteristics of libertarianism for various reasons–most of them are based on property rights. All political philosophies have some view of property rights; what is distinctive about libertarianism is its particular property assignment rules. This article describes libertarianism’s particular property assignment rules in two cases: for human bodies, the rule is “self-ownership”; in the case of external scarce resources, the property assignment rule is based on Lockean homesteading principles). The article explores how and why these libertarian property assignment rules arise from and are related to the purpose of property rights, which is to permit conflict-free use of scarce resources. The libertarian view is that self-ownership and Lockean homesteading of external resources are the only property assignment rules compatible with more basic grundorms (basic norms of civilized men) such as justice, peace, prosperity, cooperation, and conflict-avoidance, which are adopted in part because of empathy. The article agues that civilized man may be defined as he who seeks justification for the use of interpersonal violence. A consistent application of the basic civilized grundnorms shows that only the libertarian norms, and its non-aggression principle, can be justified. Thus, libertarianism may be said to be the political philosophy that consistently favors social rules aimed at promoting peace, prosperity, and cooperation. It holds that the only rules that satisfy the civilized grundnorms are the self-ownership principle and the Lockean homesteading principle, applied as consistently as possible.

(Other translations of my writings are collected here.)

Kinsella in Italian Read Post »

Hoppe: “Principles of Sovereignty and Modern Democracy”

(Austrian) Economics, Anti-Statism, Libertarian Theory
Share

Fantastic lecture series by Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Dr. Hoppe delivered the Keynote Address (lectio magistralis) entitled “Principles of Sovereignty and Modern Democracy,” at the conference “The decline of contemporary Europe: National Sovereignty, Localization and Globalization,” University of Padova–Faculty of Law (Dec. 9, 2010). Audio and pictures. Local files:

Hoppe: “Principles of Sovereignty and Modern Democracy” Read Post »

Purchase an Online Mises Academy Course as a Holiday Gift

(Austrian) Economics, Education, Libertarian Theory
Share

Gift Enrollment Certificate Sample - Anatomy of the FedAs the lecturer for an upcoming Mises Academy course (Study Libertarian Legal Theory Online with Stephan Kinsella), I have to say, I like the idea of Grayson Lilburnd in this Mises Blog post 🙂

Just in time for the holidays, now you can purchase a Mises Academy course as a gift, and actually have a physical “Gift Enrollment Certificate” to give to the recipient! This option may be especially helpful to parents who would like to purchase Principles of Economics, a course by Robert Murphy (based on his middle/high school textbook Lessons for the Young Economist) for their son or daughter.

The one non-intuitive thing about gifting a course, is that to do it, you need to create an account for the gift recipient, that you then pass to him or her.

Here’s how you would go about it.

  1. Go to academy.mises.org and set up an account with (A) the recipient’s name, (B) your own email address, and (C) a password that you can pass on to the recipient. Confirm the new account via the confirmation email that will be sent to you (check your spam folder, in case your filter catches the message).
  2. Use the new account to enroll in the course that you’d like to give as a gift. See here for available courses.
  3. After you enroll, you will be directed to the course’s “syllabus page”. Near the top of the syllabus page, you will see a “Gift Enrollment Certificate” link. Click on that to download the certificate as a printable PDF file. See the sample certificate below to see a smaller version of what it would look like.
  4. Give the Gift Enrollment Certificate to your loved one. Also be sure to give them the web address of the course, the username, and the password. Tell the recipient that the first thing they should do when they log in is to click on their name to access the user profile settings, and change the email address and password on the account.

We at the Mises Academy wish you an erudite Christmas and an edifying New Year!

Purchase an Online Mises Academy Course as a Holiday Gift Read Post »

Robert James Bidinotto and “The Contradiction in Anarchism”

Anti-Statism, Libertarian Theory, Statism
Share

Here’s an interesting piece on Objectivist Robert James Bidinotto’s criticisms of anarcho-libertarianism: Nicholas Dykes, Robert James Bidinotto and “The Contradiction in Anarchism”, Libertarian Alliance, Philosophical Notes No. 77, 2006 (pdf).

See also my post Objectivism, Bidinotto, and Anarchy; See also Roderick Long’s Bidinotto-Long debate on anarchism and Roderick Long’s blog discussion about this.

Robert James Bidinotto and “The Contradiction in Anarchism” Read Post »

Study Libertarian Legal Theory Online with Stephan Kinsella

Libertarian Theory
Share
Papinian
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.

From the Mises Blog:

Study Libertarian Legal Theory Online with Stephan Kinsella

December 6, 2010 by J. Grayson Lilburne

Murray Rothbard wrote in the preface of his The Ethics of Liberty:

“While the book establishes the general outlines of a system of libertarian law, however, it is only an outline, a prolegomenon to what I hope will be a fully developed libertarian law code of the future. Hopefully libertarian jurists and legal theorists will arise to hammer out the system of libertarian law in detail, for such a law code will be necessary to the truly successful functioning of what we may hope will be the libertarian society of the future.”

Throughout his career, Stephan Kinsella has been doing just that. And now, after years of researching and developing the subject, he’s offering a 6-week, online course on libertarian legal theory starting January 31 through the Mises Academy. Kinsella’s new course: “will provide detailed discussions of the foundations of libertarian theory and related topics such as individual rights; justice, punishment and restitution; anarchy and minarchy; contract theory; inalienability; property rights and homesteading; intellectual property; legislation versus common law; legal positivism; Austrian economics and libertarianism; and causation and responsibility.”

Click here for an outline of what will be covered each week, and to sign up!

Study Libertarian Legal Theory Online with Stephan Kinsella Read Post »

Scroll to Top