Kinsella’s “Libertarian Legal Theory” Course: Audio and Slides

(Austrian) Economics, Anti-Statism, Education, Libertarian Theory, Statism
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Libertarian Legal Theory with Stephan Kinsella
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.”1 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.

LECTURE 1: LIBERTARIAN BASICS: RIGHTS AND LAW

(mp3 download)

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

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  1. See also Danny Sanchez’s post Study Libertarian Legal Theory Online with Stephan Kinsella. ↩

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Kinsella’s “Libertarian Controversies” Course: Audio and Slides

Anti-Statism, Education, Libertarian Theory, Statism
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Libertarian ControversiesAt 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: …

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In Defense of Bourgeois Civilization

History, Pop Culture
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I’m really happy with this way this article turned out. It is published at Crisis. The editor John Zmirak had initially sent me a piece by the legendary historian Christopher Dawson and asked me to respond. I generally avoid this sort of debate so I didn’t bother to look at the piece for probably ten days or so. In fact, I didn’t really accept the challenge.

Then I read the piece. It was quite incredible. Dawson sweeps his scholarly hand over vast continents and epochs and makes wild claims entirely abstracted from the real experience of humanity. Nowhere does he show the slightest interest in the plight of the common man and his quality of life. He is happy to declare the middle ages to be this wonderful time of faith and order and then proceeds to blast away all of the last several hundred years as hopelessly corrupted by materialism. His target is what he calls the bourgeoisie, and here he admits that his thinking is in line with Karl Marx. But there is a difference. Whereas the Marxists posited a hopeless conflict between capital and labor, his model posits a conflict between real faith and material provision. The two are irreconcilable.

The real danger of the Dawson piece is its erudition in big things and its deep disengagement with the small things that make life good, like clean clothes, medical care, running water, job opportunities, access to food to feed the children, and the like. He cares nothing for these things. He is content to simply praise the past for its Michelangos and Berninis and condemn the present for its Lady Gagas and Justin Beibers. It’s really a cheap trick and an obvious one: pick the best of the past and the worst of the present and you can paint a picture of relentless decline.

My response points to the dramatic change that took hold of the world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a change that created what we call the middle class today. It gave life to hundreds of millions of people. Without the bourgeoisie and the capitalist marketplace they sustain, the world could not support seven billion. Surely a high-minded cultural historian like Dawson should care about things like this? Surely!

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Who Should Control the World?

Anti-Statism, Business
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In the days following the gift-giving holidays, many millions of people stand in judgement over the quality of the gifts they gave and the gifts they receive. Did they arrive on time? Did the quality hold up? Did the reality match the advertising hype? The Internet ads an extra wrinkle. Anyone dissatisfied can post blistering attacks on any merchant and the product in questions. Anyone can vote up or vote down.

The down votes are what make the news. The Wall Street Journal tells the story of Scott Mitchell of Connecticut, who purchased from Best Buy and Playstation 3 for his two sons ages 10 and 14.The company let him know via an email that the goods didn’t arrive. He was furious and wouldn’t stop posting diatribes against the company. Eventually, the suits got involved and sent him his full bundle of goods at a low price plus a $200 gift certificate.

“While I can’t say I’m happy, I wound up being satisfied,” Mr. Mitchell told the Journal.

The case was cited as one of many such cases. Consumer demand was so intense that Best Buy got behind. The company didn’t have the inventory it needed to fill all requests. Cyber Monday overloaded the staff and they couldn’t respond fast enough. Any business that hears the story thinks: nice problem to have. Inventory decisions like this require daily clairvoyance.

What’s more important here is what this anecdote indicates about the social order. In this setting above, who is in control? Mr. Mitchell is just one lone guy with one problem with a company that serves untold millions. But he had a voice and his voice was heard. The company scrambled to please him.

…

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