Thank you, Patrick for having me.
Thank you. Mr. Kinsella for joining us.
So I just want to start off with definitions in 2003 Stephan.
Kinsella, in the Journal of libertarian, studies defined a
contract. As a relation between two or
more parties which includes legally enforceable obligations
between them, breach of contract.
I have defined as an unjustifiable failure to perform
under the terms of a contract when performance is do and the
Merriam-Webster dictionary of a meeting of the minds, which is
an understanding or agreement between two people or groups.
So imagine if you have a landscaper coming to your house
and you say, hey, how much do you charge?
He says, 50 bucks. You say that works.
The guy does it. And you say, all right.
Well, I now have you in my will for $50.
So when I die in, you know, 2060 hundred years, then you will get
the $50. Technically, you did not specify
an exact time in which you would give it to him.
Maybe you said after the work is done.
Well in 50 years from now, it will still be after the work is
done. But this gets us into this
trivial technicality child's game of.
Well, you didn't technically say that this is what I generally
believe, Tech Giants such as well.
That's sort of like the robber barons trying to belittle them.
Let's just say Twitter Facebook and YouTube social media
organizations are engaged in when they try and get you on
some little technicality. Another way we could have this
is, let's say, you go to Red Robin and order something off
the menu, but in the fine print on the menu, it says, anyone who
orders something we get to charge a thousand extra dollars
to their credit card, for a well-being fee, for the
well-being of the nation and everyone around them.
This again is a breach of Even if there is technically a way
out for them to justify their behavior.
You also have explicit expressions from people like
Jack Dorsey who October 5th, 2015 saying, Twitter stands for
freedom of expression. We stand for speaking, truth to
power, we stand for empowering dialogue.
Another words in order to incentivize people to come onto
the platform, put effort into putting their content on here.
He's saying, well will allow you to do this so long as you don't,
you know, Violate things like advocating violence, you know,
totally giving out someone's information to the point where
they're in danger cuz you know, there's some antifa person
following anyone. This I would also I wouldn't say
it's an explicit breach, but this is a general meeting of the
minds. So if you order something from a
restaurant and then they hand you the bill and you say I never
said I would pay. Well, there's a general
understanding. I think this General
understanding or meeting of the minds should apply between users
of the Forms as well as the platform owners.
So all you would really have to do.
If you wanted to say something like, we can ban anyone, or we
can exclude people who are, you know, leftists or rightists, or
anything else, you would just have to, you would have an
obligation to make that very clear and upfront.
We see this in the market all over for example At Last Chance
in Arizona. There's a big sign that says no
refunds, no exchanges all sales final.
You sometimes get warnings on. Google Drive warning, the trash
is changing in the next 30 days. The trash mechanism will be
different. You have don't touch signs.
You have no picture signs there. So instead of, you know them
trying to get you on a technicality, waiting for you to
do something. They're explicitly telling you,
here's the idea. So if they had explicitly come
out and said, yet, we only platform right winger.
We only platform left-wingers. And anyone who questions the
election anyone in the future, we're going to ban you.
If they said that before you created an Count.
I would think that it's more morally Justified.
So the existence of these Bad actors, I of course, don't think
justifies the existence of a state or some people having the
right to initiate aggression anymore than bad marriages
Justified the state arranging marriages.
So the last thing we want to do is Advocate social media
regulation, you have examples of even the government in America
that has to follow the First Amendment.
Well, you have examples of L Paul Bremer ordering the US.
Military to Outlaw in Iraqi newspaper.
You have the Kent State murderers where the Ohio
National Guard killed four people for speaking out against
Vietnam. You have the Obama
Administration, using the Espionage Act to go after
whistleblowers Snowden Assange, Manning Thomas, Drake James
Rosen. Geoff Sterling, you have
operation Mockingbird where they're planting fake stories in
the media. So, I am, I'm saying, one.
We need to recognize this as illegitimate and to the last
thing we need to do is Advocate and Sort of Regulation.
Colonel Anthony Schaefer's. Book operation.
Dark heart was silenced by the Pentagon.
Also you have regulatory capture the Federal Reserve famously
written by some of the most famous Bankers on JP Morgan's
property in Jekyll Island. I don't think we need to call
them monopolies that we should fear Myspace, Blockbuster, see
our Starbucks. Those were all terrible
monopolies. We need to regulate but you
know, Alternatives, end up coming up only. 60 companies in
the Fortune 500, we're also in the Fortune 500 in the Years
1955 and 2016. So there is a market mechanism.
Another reason we should reject regulation is a study, the
impact of regulatory costs on small firms by Nicole, Crane and
Mark crane. This is from a 2010 study from
the US small business administration, a big
Corporation defined as 500 employees or more pays about
seventy seven hundred dollars per employee per regulation.
Firms. 20 employees are less spend about ten thousand five
hundred dollars per employee per regulation.
The last thing I want people to hear, when I say these companies
are engaging in immoral activity, is therefore we need
to regulate them. We can bash private companies
all day long like Raytheon Boeing Northrop, Grumman, the
military industrial complex without advocating government
intervention. Just as we can criticize movies
or relationships without saying therefore the state should
Violently dominate marriages, the solution I think, is for us
to go to Alternatives such as archive.org.
Odyssey.com. Minds.com locals.com is a good
replacement for patreon. Start page is a good replacement
for Google along with DuckDuckGo, and me, we.com is a
good option for people leaving Twitter and I'd say Odysseys,
probably my favorite for people getting silence on YouTube.
So generally you see the pattern since the days of Socrates, you
know. Slavery.
Advocates have tried to silence free thinkers or Freedom
Advocates. Just, as we see with Alex Jones.
Molyneux, the conscious resistance World art alternative
media. I think it's a breach of
contract because it does not respect the general
understanding between two parties involved in the action.
Although not explicit and sometimes can be called off with
a technicality in the terms of agreement.
I think it's on libertarian because it doesn't recognize
this voluntary. Aunt as legitimate.
Therefore, it should be seen as on libertarian and the solution
is to get on Alternatives And subscribe to our favorite
content creators. All right.
So there's a lot of there's three really big brained Cooks
in this kitchen or at least to the and so I I don't want to let
me lay out my little two minute position, then I'll give it to
kinsella. So basically, the meeting of the
minds thing is what a contract was, you know, is for its to
clarify, the gray areas around what people would have in their
heads, subjectively coming away from From an agreement, you you
walk up. You make an agreement with
somebody you shake hands. You walk away and instantly you
have potential conflicts because, you know, how can we be
sure. What was in the other guy's
head. How can we be sure what their
version of the meeting of the minds was?
Well, well, we write it down. That's how we do it.
And so when you have something written down that becomes the
best explanation, for what the meeting of the minds was, and if
I can't write something down, explicitly that says I can kick
you off. My servers, anytime I want for
any reason I want and oh, I can change the reasons by which I
will kick you off my servers anytime I want and that's
written in black and white. Well, I don't see how you can
sort of wash away the words that I took the time to write out
explicitly for you by saying. Oh, well, that's not what was in
my head when I started using your servers.
And then finally, I'll say It's their servers.
And so at any time, they can change the terms that that they
want to continue allowing. You use you to use their
property, especially if it said so in The Upfront contract, so
like if you are renting my house and I we had a lease agreement
that says, you know, I I can end this lease with a 30 day, notice
any time I want. And even though you've spent
maybe five years living here and fixing up your room and painting
the walls and arranging your tough really nice and you're
used to using it. Well, it was in our agreement
that said I could have picked you within 30 days for any
reason. I wanted to to continue forcing
me to let you use my property would be to sort of enslave me
at least in that way. Okay, so that's my piece.
I will, let's toss it to mr. Kinsella here.
What do you have to say? Sir?
All right. I think we're going to have to
go through libertarian theory of property and contract to sort
this out. But a couple of preliminary
comments, it guys, feel free to interrupt me because this might
be a long sort of mini lecture and I don't want to dominate too
much. Those are the best kinds.
First of all, we're talking about a Libertarian issues.
And so, I would say, first of all, even in the conventional,
understanding of contracts and breach of contract.
It's Not unlimber tarian to breach a contract.
I'm not even sure it's a Libertarian to commit
aggression. It just means that there are
certain consequences under the law, which is justified by
libertarian principles, but it's certainly not live upon
libertarian to breach a contract breach of contract.
Just means if you breach, it, then there's certain
consequences. Usually damage payment of
monetary damages for breach. So it's not a Libertarian to
breach a contract at all. So the question is Is this
breach of contract? So I think some of your so,
Keith in my 2003 article, which is on my website.
It was basically an elaboration and extension of Roth bards and
Evers view of contract. The part you quoted was not my
view or rothbard's do you. I was just stating what the
conventional view of contracts are.
So the conventional view contrary X, you prevalent in the
law today, and the view that most laymen hold, would you guys
sort of seem to hold two? That we view contracts as
obligations or binding promises, right?
So you promise to do something and if you do it in a certain
way with certain formalities, like consideration or
detrimental Reliance or other formalities in the civil law,
then that obligation or that promise is enforceable.
It's a binding obligation and then that gives rise to the guy
if you have, which means if you don't perform the obligation
that you promise to perform, then that's a breach.
And then Images have to be paid according to the the
consequences of that breach, to the to the party that was owed
the obligation. The problem with that view of
contract. There's many problems with it.
One problem is that leads to voluntary slavery contracts?
Because if I promise to be your slave, then I have to be your
slave. And if I don't, I'm a breach of
contract, and theoretically force can be used against me to
make me comply. That's called a specific
performance in contract law, rothbard came along.
And had a wrote one of his revolutionary ideas.
I think was his reformulation of contract law.
It's usually attributed to evers-williams Endeavors which
rothbart expanded upon. But I wrote, I've got some
quote, some blog posts and, and I've actually got an interview,
Bill Evers on my, on my website, under my podcast page, where I
talked to him about that. Basically, we're off board in
late, 1974 stall, the glimmers of a way to reformulate contract
law. He discussed it with Evers &
Evers wrote his Pioneering article, which is in the first
issue of the Journal of libertarian studies.
And then So basically Evers in Rockport together came up with a
different view of contracts, which is not binding promises.
And the reason for that is that prom promises are just free
speech. They're just things, you say,
Okay, strictly speaking. The libertarian view of wind
force can be used is only us to initiate it for us or
aggression. Right?
And if I just make a promise to you, I'm not committing force.
And if I don't do what I promised, I would do, I'm not
committing forests. So no force is used as Justified
against me. So the entire promise based
theory of contract, makes no sense from a Libertarian point
of view. So, some people rely as the law
does, on a backup Theory, the Equitable doctrine of estoppel,
which is that if you say something and someone else
relies upon that statement to their detriment then then it's
like an enforceable promise because then you've harmed them,
if you don't perform what you said, you were because the other
person put themselves in a position to rely upon it.
Now they're going to be harmed if you don't do it, but that of
course is circular too. As rare and legal scholar points
out in his long, his own theory of contract, which I don't
completely agree with. But it also deviates from the
conventional view. He points out that the
detrimental Reliance view of making promises enforceable is
circular because the law always says that the Reliance
reasonable, okay, but Reliance is not reasonable.
If the law doesn't enforce binding problems or promises if
it doesn't make them binding. So it's a circular thing.
Like if the You know, the laws going to make a promise someone
else said enforceable, then it's reasonable to rely upon it.
Okay, but then it's already enforceable.
So we don't need the question and if it's not legally
enforceable, if promises are not legally enforceable, if they
don't give rise to binding obligations, then it's not
reasonable to rely upon it and then that's no basis to make
them binding in the first place. So what rothbart says look we
have to step back and think what's the essence of
libertarianism. It's basically all rights.
All human rights are all right. It's our human rights and all
human rights are property rights because every dispute between
people is always a clash of scarce means which are always
physical things of the world. And they always get solved with
either. Some kind of voluntary
cooperation Nation, dilution mechanism or with physical
violence and force, right? Physical Force used against
other people's body or against their things to take it.
Like, if someone steals my watch, I might use Force to get
it back or if they if they They physically attacked my body.
I might use physical Force to punish them, or to, to drive
them away. So it's always about physical
force, and all property rights are always property rights that
human beings used to control scarce resources in the world.
So the fundamental concept of all libertarianism is rights and
All rights are property rights. So the fundamental concept is
property not contract. Now, what is contract?
Owning a resource simply means that you have the right to you
have the exclusive, right? Right to decide who gets to use
it. Okay, so I own my body.
So that's called a self owner. So I own my body for various
reasons and libertarian Theory, and I also own physical scarce
resources that I come to acquire either by homesteading them from
the state of nature because they're previously unowned like
an apple or a piece of land or milk from a cow or water from a
pond, something like that. Or iron I take from the ground
or a limb of from a tree that I take and make into a A spear
things like that. So, or that, I acquired previous
owner by what by contract or in other words by voluntary
transfer of ownership. Okay.
So contract is just the exercise of ownership by the owner is the
decision of the owner about whether and how much to allow
other people to use your resource.
You can even think of that as applying to invitations.
So, for example, if I invite a girl to kiss me when she kisses,
Is me, it's not assault and battery or sexual assault.
It's consented to by me. Okay, because I'm the owner, I
get to, but on the other hand, if I don't consent to it, it is
a type of assault and battery likewise, if I invite someone
into my house, it's consent. Oh, it's called a license in the
law. License is granted its
permission. Okay, so the owner gets to deny
or Grant permission and also you can make that permanent in the
case of alienable owned resources.
Is like a car or a home. You can you can State words that
indicate your intention to Grant consent for someone to have it
forever. In other words, you effectively
abandoned your ownership of that thing in favor of someone else.
And now they become the new owner.
That's why the only 2 ways to acquire ownership of things is
either by finding it. In the wilderness, that's
unowned or by contract actually creation, is not a source of
ownership. You can't own something because
you created, because you can only create something by
Arranging materials into a new form, but you either had to own
those materials before or you didn't.
If you do, then you own the thing that you rearrange it
into. Because you own, the raw,
materials, the factors of production that go into it.
And if you didn't, then you don't own it.
So like an employee on an assembly line, making a car for
Henry, Ford does not own the cars that come off of it, Contra
the labor theory of value in the Marxist who think he does,
that's why he's exploited. When there's a profit made and
some of his labor, Surplus value is taken from him.
By the evil greedy capitalist. Okay.
So all this ties in together. So, basically, under my theory
and under off towards. I don't think he stated it
clearly. There is no such thing as breach
of contract because there's no obligation to perform a
obligations are out the window. That's a, that's a legal concept
and that's an old-fashioned concept.
And by the way, even the law doesn't regard contracts really
as binding obligations because they almost never award.
What's called specific performance.
So if I promise to do something for you, like the paint, your
fence, or to sing at your wedding, or something like that.
And I fail to do it, they call it a breach, but the court won't
compel me with a coercive threat of force, to sing at the
wedding, or to paint the fence. They will simply order me to pay
some monetary. Damages to the party that I've
reached measured by how much damage or harm I did to them.
All right, that's called consequential.
Damages what the consequences are.
So in reality even An under the obligations or binding promises
theory of contract. They're really only transfers of
title to property which is what rothbart thinks contracts are
only transfers of title to property or you could think of
them. As I said, a pro license or
permission to use your property. Like I can let you borrow my
car. I can let you come into my house
to have dinner with me something like that, or I can let you come
into my restaurant to have a meal or I can let you come into
my shopping mall to shop and buy clothes, Etc.
Okay, but just as the girl, who agrees to let her date, kiss her
at any time on the date. She can change her mind at any
Towing time because she still owns her body, and when she
changes her mind and he kisses her.
Anyway, he can't say I have consent because earlier, she
promised, she would, let me kiss her because she changed her
mind. And the relevant consent is the
most recent consent by changing her mind.
She doesn't violate his rights. Okay, in fact, he violates her
rights by kissing her without his consent.
Likewise if I invite you into my home.
You're not committing trespass because you're there by
permission. But if I change my mind and
eject you, then I'm not violating your rights and I
could do that without having fine print on a contract saying
what I invite you into my home. I reserve the right to kick you
out. The presumption is that I have
that right all the time because I'm always the owner.
So I can always change my mind in a contract to transfer
ownership of property. Let's take a service contract.
I promise to paint your fence. Now, this is under rothbart's
and my Re you want me to paint your fence and you're going to
pay me a thousand dollars to do it.
So most people view that as an exchange or trade because
economically it is like I'm getting the value of the money
and the and the customer is getting the value of my services
and therefore people think of services as being sold.
Okay, which is and then they start you thinking of services
is being a known thing and therefore you can sell your
labor and therefore if you own your labor you can only Ideas
and intellectual property comes from this, but this is a
confusion in a normal exchange. I exchange an Apple for an
orange. There is a bilateral, Mutual
exchange of titles. Two titles are being exchanged,
both reciprocal and dependent upon each other, but not all
contracts. And that's an economic exchange
and illegal exchange. But in a contract for sale of
services, it's only illegal exchange.
I'm sorry. It's only an economic exchange
and that just means the motivations of the actors are
explained this. Sway.
The reason why I give you my services, why I paint your fence
is to get the money. The reason why you give me the
money is to get my services. Okay, so that's just the reason
you're explaining the reasons Of Human Action.
The purpose but legally, there's only one title exchange.
That is this exchange of the money, the transfer of the money
from the customer to me when I paint his fence.
I don't transfer any owned object to him.
I simply perform and an action that he desires me to perform.
He induces me too. Permit by transferring
conditionally. Some of his money to me.
So, and so on. Okay.
This is how we do contracts. And so, in that case, if I fail
to paint the fence, it's not a breach.
It's just that I don't perform the action.
That's the conditional trigger for the transfer of money to me.
I just failed to perform. One of the triggers are the
conditions that would transfer the money to me.
Remember the transfer of money. The one thousand dollar payment
is conditional. It's a future based conditional
transfer of title. That's Upon me performing, a
certain action. If I don't perform that action,
then I'm not in breach. Now if the customer wants to be
sure that I paint the fence because he needs it painted
before a party. And if I back out, it's going to
harm him. Then we can put in the contract,
another transfer of title, which is me, the painter.
I conditionally transfer some money to him, which we can call
damages in the event that I don't paint the fence.
So that gives me an economic incentive to actually perform.
And if I don't perform For my owe money to the customer.
Okay. Now that's what would happen
under the standard conventional view of contracts.
I would be viewed as being in breach and I would have to pay
damages to the customer. But under the title transfer
Theory, we just have a condition in the contract that I have to.
He has to pay me money if I paint, and if I fail to paint, I
have to pay him money. Okay.
Now we can do to negotiate that explicitly or we can we can we
can leave it up to custom, which fills in gaps.
In contracts. Now Patrick you implied that
contracts are written contracts or not, always written.
It. Don't have to be written quite
often. They're written and quite often.
The writing is the best evidence is the term.
You were looking for. When you said best something
else. It is often the best evidence of
what the meeting of the minds is, but it's not always because
sometimes you can have a simulation or fake contract or
sometimes you can have an oral or verbal agreement outside that
written, which contradicts that That or fills it in or changes
something. And that would be the contract.
Then contracts can be verbal and they don't even need to be
verbal. They can be purely.
Non non non verbal, for example, if I'm in France and I don't
speak, French my newspaper or candy bar.
I pointed the candy bar on the Shelf.
He understands my meaning. He hands it to me.
I give him, I give him a Euro and we make the exchange and I
walk away. So, in all contracts, there is
what's called communication. So that's what's that's what's
the best? That's where the meeting of the
minds idea comes about. So all contracts involve
communication. And the reason they evolve
communication is because all contracts involve at least one
transfer of title to Resource. And again, the owner of a
resource. The property owner of the
resource has the right to Grant or deny someone else the right
to use it or to even sell it completely.
But that requires some kind of manifestation of their consent.
It requires a communication, but that Be done by your action.
It could be done by a written agreement or can be done by even
people being silent and assuming that the background set of
assumptions and condition implicit customs and traditions
in the area are going to be used to fill in any uncertainties.
And by the way, all contracts, even written ones that are 100
pages long. They always are incomplete
because the future is uncertain, and it's never possible to
account for every possible thing that might happen.
So, We contract either explicitly or implicitly has to
has to presuppose good faith between the parties and the
willingness to resort to some kind of what we call.
Gap-filler principles are supportive, Provisions to solve
a dispute, when it wasn't provided for explicitly in the
oral Communications, or in the writing, the written contract.
And so normally that's what's going on customarily or which
reasonable or what a jury would say, or what?
Would arbitrator would say, okay, so I have nothing against
implicit Provisions in contracts at all.
Which Keith was talking about. However, I do think that some
fine print in contracts is probably not enforceable and
I've got an article on this, on my website, you know, if you
just do a click through a click, click through type agreement on
a website to accept their services and buried in Clause
128, which no one reads is a provision saying, by the way,
you owe me. Million dollars for life.
That's not going to be enforceable because there was
really no meeting of the minds. And the other side knows that
they just snuck it in there. It's not in good faith.
And so, I don't think that the writing should be 100%
dispositive of the actual meeting of the minds, because
there can be unreasonable Provisions in these contracts.
So now we come to the question of using a social media
platform, like a like Google or or Facebook or Twitter or
YouTube. And I don't think there's a
contract at all except in the sense of inviting someone to
your house. Okay, so they're basically
allowing you to use their services as long as they want
and they can kick you out at any time just like you can kick a
rude dinner guests out of your house it anytime even if you
didn't post a notice saying I reserve the right to eject rude
dinner guests they can change. And by the way, I believe the
terms of service of all these platforms probably do have a
provision anyway, and there are saying we've reserved the right
to Modified these terms at any time in our discretion.
So they already have that in there.
Anyway, so the question is, is there a breach of contract at
all. I mean, there's no transfer of
title. They're not demanding monetary
payment from you as a customer. Usually, these are free services
anyway, so there's no transfer talk.
There's no transfer of title from you, the customer to them.
You're not paying them anything. They're not transferring any
kind of title to you to anything.
They're simply letting you use their servers.
Temporarily. And as long as they want to,
okay, the only way there could be a breach of contract would be
if you paid them. And there was a written
agreement or some kind of agreement where they promise.
Just a matter of time, no matter what, but they would never do
that. Anyway, they would always
reserve the right to kick you off and maybe they would have to
refund you your your remaining subscription amount of something
like that. But again, it wouldn t, be
breach of contract it but just be a contractually, negotiate, a
transfer of title to this monetary payment or to the
refund of a monetary payment. That was already made.
Let me see if I have any other notes Here.
I wanted to get to. I don't know.
If we're going to have time to or should touch on this
argument, a lot of people be making about regulations which
centers around the CDA in the dmca the communications.
Decency Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the
late 90s under Bill Clinton, which basically gave us Safe par
vertices platforms like isps, and now these other platforms
like YouTube and Facebook and Google and Twitter, and blogs
blogging platforms, which basically Exempted them from
liability for defamation, basically, in the case of the
CDA. And for copyright infringement,
in the case of the dmca done by their users, so long as they
take down the offending content, in the case of copyright.
When they're asked to buy the alleged copyright holder, which
is why YouTube has this strikes thing where they can get, they
can remove your content. If someone complains, they have
to do that, to maintain their safe, Safe Harbor of liability.
And many people claim that, that's an unfair privilege.
Granted to these companies because they are acting more,
like, Publishers instead of neutral platforms, like the
telephone company is, and they're actually starting to
edit to censor and edit and maintain content control over
what's being posted. And that was Part of the deal.
However, that is a conventional mainstream view that we
Libertarians can't make because defamation law shouldn't exist
in the first place. No one should be liable for
defamation at all and copyright shouldn't exist.
So no one should be liable for that in the first place.
So it's not an unfair probe, which granted to these
companies. They shouldn't be.
I mean, if you argued that, the CD A Safe Harbor and the dmca
Safe Harbor should be removed from these companies, because
they're acting like Publishers. Not as mere neutral platforms.
Now, what you're saying is the state should come in and And
impose defamation and copyright liability on them for the bike,
for the vicariously, for the acts of their subscribers.
Or the Customers go by wrong. They should be immune from
liability for these actions since these these laws are
completely unjust in on libertarian.
So I would agree that they shouldn't be regulated for that
reason as well. And I also agree with Keith
that. Yeah, the solution is to just
wish to other platforms and that's what that's the ultimate
threat. And I think these companies are
harming themselves right now because they're going to they're
going to lose big time. If people start fleeing because
their Monopoly their networking, Mark Monopoly position is Not
guaranteed as you see, with my space and with what were the
others that that have crumbled in the past, you know, and that
have fallen to the current, the current holders of these of
these. Yes, I think me, we and locals
and all these others are a big threat to them.
And they're gonna, they might lose their Monopoly.
If they keep acting like, you know, Tech liberal sensor
idiots, who piss off their customers.
So, okay, and I still don't see why don't we all go?
Okay. I'll stop here.
Go ahead. Oh, no, it's fine.
It's fine. So I wanted to kind of do one
more around the table on this and then I also have prepared if
we want to or have time for it. I have a few paragraphs from
Jeff diced of the mises institute on their recent
Banning on why it son libertarian for them to do so
and I also have molyneux's argument written down here.
So Maybe, maybe Keith. And I do one more round table,
like, circle around with this. And then depending on how the
conversation looks, we can also rope in these other arguments
that we've heard. My comments, are that I pretty
much agree with everything that you've said on contract law as
well as Rowdy, the conceptions as as presented, especially the
part. The part that I was looking for
you to present was the part where, if you expect damages to
come out of not fulfilling the terms of a contract that you
have to put that in the contract.
So if I don't perform the action, I agreed to what
happens, that has to be part of the contract.
Otherwise, otherwise, let me, let me make one clarification.
Let me make one clarification there.
I don't think you have to put it in the contract, explicitly.
I think it's a good idea. I think I do believe there are
implicit there can be implicit terms of contracts.
It depends upon the custom and the, and the kind of default
understanding of the parties. It's just harder to prove.
Um, but in that case, you would say, is part of the contract
issue. It was just implicit.
And the let's see. I think I had three notes.
That was the first one. The second one was I didn't mean
to imply that written contracts with the only valid one.
Right? I just meant that it was the
Prime purpose of making it a written contract was kind of
twofold one to make the terms more explicit and to to sort of
freeze those terms in time. So that, you know, there's a
point in time where you can prove at least what part of the
agreement was. And then the third note was, I
think I disagree with you on the Million dollars in the fine
print thing, and maybe that's a conversation for another day,
because it's not really germane to the social media, Banning
stuff. But our, maybe it is.
I think if, if, if I go out of my way to write something down
and it's just like, I don't know, through laziness on the
part of the person signing the contract that they don't, that
they aren't aware of the terms. Like, what's the point in
writing this stuff down. If we're not going to be held to
the terms of the things that we wrote down.
Oh, I just didn't read that. Like what I don't understand
that. Maybe you can speak to that more
or if it's going to be a longer term thing.
If it's if it's a longer conversation, I'm happy to
invite you back and we can dive into it.
Then. Those are my three things.
Keith. Do you want to have?
Why don't you have your response?
Then? We'll go back to stiffen here.
Yeah. I just want to get clarification
by mr. Kinsella.
Do you agree that libertarianism rothbard organism is a sucess
systematic law code derived by means of logical.
Abduction. From a single principle being
original appropriation ownership of scarce resources.
The right of an exclusive control over scarce resources
private property. More or less?
Yeah, more or less. Okay.
So the last part. Yes.
Yeah. So my reasoning is that original
appropriation is the foundation of libertarianism which brings
us to the ownership of One's Own body.
You have an objective link because you have direct control
over it. Only others can indirectly
control your body by first directly exercising their own
scarce resources, their body. This gives us the right to
Across acquire property through the homesteading.
Original appropriation principle by having a better claim to
being the first Comer. This then gives us the right to
delegate the property. Once we are the rightful owners
and such delegation can include an easement such as giving you
an easement to my servers and thus, giving me an obligation to
respect that agreement because I voluntarily made the decision to
create. Create such a general
understanding to give you access to my scarce resources under
General. Generally recognized terms, does
my logic fall short there. I think in principle, that's a
good argument. Now imagine what?
No, go ahead. I was going to say well the
analogy that I would use it really is the fact that people
put so much effort into building their content on these platforms
under the assumption. They'll be there.
So long as you don't start posting, you know, pornographic
images of people under age advocating violence Etc.
So imagine I invite a ton of people to my house for Wedding.
And I just say, you know what, you don't have to pay me.
I like you guys, come over. So, everyone gets a plane
ticket, everyone flies out and I say, you know what?
I heard the groom voted for Trump, the day that everyone is
there waiting to come in and I go.
Now, I'm going to exclude you. Now it met your previous
criteria of, well, they're not accepting payment from you, but
it's not the payment, it is the general understanding between
the two parties that creates an obligation on me the homeowner.
So this is Sort of the analogy that I come to, when trying to
understand the principal justification for determining a
moral exclusion of property. The right to exclude people from
platforms and the immoral exclusion.
Well, okay, so that argument is probably the best one you can
make. So, theoretically, if Facebook.
So this idea that you own your, your, your domain, or you owner.
Page on Facebook is not coherent in libertarian terms because you
can only own scarce resources. So really, really the only thing
that's owned here are the physical computers that Facebook
owns. Now they're connected to the
internet and they do certain things, but they own their
servers. That's all they own, right?
And all you own is your computer and in theory, Facebook could
Grant an easement to a customer which they give an effect
partial ownership. Partial.
Cool. Actual ownership of those
servers to their customers. Okay.
So in that case, then if Facebook denies me access to it.
They're actually committing a type of trespass to me by taking
my property from me or denying me access to my property which
is part of the part of their server.
You can you have this in community and neighborhoods when
people restrictive covenants in neighborhoods, like associations
where everyone agrees not to use their house for certain
purposes, or for a business or to paint it, a garish color,
they all In usually Riding Hood pretty and in those types of
anything. Any agreement affecting real
property. Typically that is physical land
or homes attached to. It has to be done in writing.
That's the parol evidence rule or something like this that you
statute of frauds. You can grant a permanent
easement. Okay, so you would have to argue
that there is an easement granted by Facebook to their
servers, to their customers. Now, it's not in writing.
I can guarantee you that. So you'd have to say it's
implicit by the understanding of the parties because of the
arguments, you gave, if you could go to a tribunal and and
persuade a jury, or the arbitrator's to interpret the
unwritten agreement between the parties that way, then I would
agree. That's a Libertarian result.
And you now, you own part of Facebook's property your
co-owners with Facebook of their servers.
I just don't think that argument can fly for several reasons.
Number one. I am sure Facebook has in their
terms of service that you look at.
When you sign on to become a customer that they can change
the terms of service any time and that would imply that that
they could if they if they need like if a decision of an
arbitrator goes against them then they would simply amend
their terms of service going forward to say.
And by the way, we're not granting anyone an easement.
We can kick you out at any time even though you put a lot of
effort into it. So I think that is the actual
default understanding especially because right Now we seen
thousands of people be kicked off.
We all know that happens. So we know that it's not a
contractual term. So if you, if you sign on to a
Facebook and start a page there, you're doing it at your own
risk. Okay.
It's like call coming to the nuisance or Assumption of risk.
It's that kind of idea. So I just don't think as a
factual matter that they have agreed to that and I don't think
the customers think they've agreed to it and even if a court
or an arbitral tribunal decided the quote wrong way.
And made Facebook liable. I think they would just amend
their terms of service to clarify going forward.
That's how contracts get so long is because over time different
Court decisions are made and the lawyers wake up and realize this
and they start trying to contract around that.
So that's why you have all this fine print and these weird legal
Provisions. It contracts, they grow, and
they grow, and they develop over time.
And then and then the court law, the case law takes that into
account and moves on its own. Going forward.
So I simply think that it's like if you invite someone to your
house for a dinner party, you can kick them out the case of
the wedding. We I think it takes us to for
feel. We could discuss that if you
wanted to, but I think that takes us a field.
I can let you guys talk again if you want or ask questions, but
where I can address the fine print thing that Patrick talked
about real quickly. I don't think it would take too
long. Patrick.
I have probably 45 minutes of Questions and comments happening
right now. So fine, we should try it and
maybe we save that one for later.
Keith. You were about to say something.
I was just going to say the reason that I use the wedding
analogy instead of the inviting someone over for dinner.
Analogy is certainly the amount of resources that it takes or
that it does, stress is a person for engaging in the activity,
you inviting me over and then saying screw you, when I get to
the door, that's disappointing, but that's me wasting an hour or
two of my day. The whole wet.
The purpose of the wedding. Analogy is a massive amount of
resource allocation towards Achieving a generally understood
goal, and that I really think is analogous to.
I mean, look at the amount of hours.
Tim pool has like three hours a day on YouTube and Twitter and
stuff. And it takes a lot to build that
phone. That's why I don't consider it
an abusive analogy. All right.
Let me, I think the whole thing is a one-off thing where it
takes millions of people and its continuing over time, so we can
kind of see patterns and things like that.
And the other problem is you're sort of making an argument like
this detrimental Reliance argument which which is used in
contract law as a backstop. To the conventional Theory
saying that you detrimentally relied upon something to your
detriment. So you can say that just by the
nature of This Arrangement, Facebook know who's a lot of
people upon their presence of their pays.
They put a lot of effort into it.
Therefore, we should kind of hold them to something like a
quasi-contract, because of Reliance, but as I said against
look at Randy, Barnett's article is just a footnote on it, but
it's pretty understood that detrimental.
Reliance is just circular. Here's a better way to think
about it. Suppose take my painting.
The fence example supposed. You want your fence painted
before this party? You're having.
So you hire me and I say, I'll if you pay me a thousand
dollars. I'll paint the fit.
But and you say, well are you going to guarantee you're going
to paint the fence? But because if you don't paint
the screwed and I say, well, no, I'm not guaranteeing it.
But if I paint it you have to pay me 1000 and you say well, I
need you to guarantee it. So I need you to promise to pay
me two thousand dollars in Damages.
If you don't paint the fence. Now, I'm thinking.
Well now. The cost to me of painting, the
fence is higher, right? Because that, my and provide the
materials. Now, I'm I have a possible
liability like, suppose I get in a car wreck and I can't paint
the fence and I'm on the hook for two thousand dollars.
That's a cost to me. So I'm going to say, well, I'll
give you that guarantee. But only if you pay me $1100
paint, the fence. In other words, if the
homeowner, who's getting the service done wants to guarantee,
he needs to pay more like soda, Lords.
It's like, buying Insurance in a sense.
So the To the Facebook thing would be, you know, I want to
build this page and I want to make sure Facebook can't take it
away from me. How could I do that?
I have to negotiate with them that they have to pay me some
kind of monetary damages and a lot if they kick me off for no
good reason, Facebook's only going to do that.
If I pay them to take on that hassle of that reciprocal
Insurance obligation. So now instead of getting
Facebook free, I've got to pay them.
A hundred bucks a month. How many of these people doing?
Their Facebook pages would actually pay even a dollar is
most people are Cheapskates or poor, right?
That use Facebook. So I say, the, the old idea of
Caveat Emptor buyer beware, you know, you only get what you,
what you pay for. If you want this kind of
guarantee you need to pay for it and I think that's what would
happen in reality. So I think that if Facebook was
held liable in some kind of weird Court decision, they would
just change their contract, their terms of service to Sure
that they're not doing that and then you would know for sure.
You're not getting that guarantee and you would have to
do it at your own risk. I assumed you would agree that
if, if you use Facebook to form your community and your webpage
and Facebook tells you explicitly, listen, we could
jerk the rug out from under you at any time and we don't owe you
a single Cent work. We might even be capricious
about it. So use our service at your own
risk, then I assume you agree that there would be no, breach
of contract there. And I think that's the default
understanding now because that's what they're doing.
Everyone knows that. Yes, that's why I sense it.
That's just, yeah, that's why I brought up the examples of very
often when there's not a general agreement on certain things.
Organizations will make explicit no touching.
Wet paint, do not touch this piece of architecture.
Do not take pictures of this. No refunds.
No exchanges. This happens all the time.
So we should just expect this of media, social media,
organizations, and then you explicitly have Jack Dorsey
talking. How Twitter stands for freedom
of expression on October 5th, 20 2015, we stand for speaking.
The truth to power and we stand for empowering dialogue.
I mean, when that is the generally communicated idea,
that is the standard. We should hold them accountable
to now, as far as I'm so afraid of giving the state a micrometer
of power. I don't even know if I would
support, you know, taking money from them.
Even if we do decide that this was a breach of contract.
I think we just Need to recognize it as but as being
unjustifiable and a Severe mistreatment of people who do
not have a lot of ability to influence others in their lives.
So you can just look at it. As, you know, the psycho
manipulative spouse who though there should be.
This doesn't mean there should be rules about marriage or some
government gets to regulate marriages.
We as Libertarians need to be at the front lines recognizing why?
This is wrong. And why the solution is to
embrace Alternatives. So as far as breach of contract,
are you saying that no, breach of contract can even exist?
Again, the definition I'm working with is and
unjustifiable failure to perform under the terms of a contract
when performance is due. Are you saying that that can't
exist? Well, I mean this kind of
argument is a little bit like the Libertarians and the and the
common law Court kind of conspiracy guys.
They always cite Black's Law Dictionary because I don't know
anything about the law. I mean, just because there's a
definition and this because because the, the comment the the
positive law that were under the state, the state created in a
sense positive while we're under.
Has that consignee? That that's a Libertarian
concept even in the united. I'm sorry.
Can I can I rephrase the question?
Yeah, yeah, so so forget the dictionary definition.
Do you think by me promising to do something for another person?
I therefore and morally obligated to perform the action
that I promised to I do but not as a Libertarian.
Moral obligations are have nothing to do with
libertarianism. I disagree a lot of court by the
way. He As that he's doesn't matter
of contract. I disagree.
I think that's too rigid of a rule.
I think a promise can't be the basis of a contract, but the
word promise can indicate your consent to transfer title,
because that's what's understood by it.
So, it's just a question of understanding the communication
of the parties, but Let me even in even positive law in The
Chicago School, right? Which is has gained some
dominance in the law and economics, right?
The interpretation of law. They have something called the
efficient. You can look this up on
Wikipedia. I think the efficient breach of
contract theory, so they think that If you breach a contract
under the legal definition of breach, which means you don't
perform your obligation, you shouldn't be made to pay very
high damages. But only the damages that are a
consequence of the contract, because they think that
sometimes it's efficient to breach, a contract.
Like, if I could breach of contract and pay the other guy,
the damages, I owe him, but I think if I get more profit out
of breaching it from the other deal, I want to do, then the
economy is better off and all this.
That sort of dovetails with the rothbard Ian and my view, which
is that there is no such thing as breach of contract.
So, if I fail to paint the fence, so let's just take a,
let's say you hire me to paint your fence and I know you have a
birthday party coming up. I know that's why you what you
want it painted and I failed to paint the fence.
Even we don't even if we don't have an explicit agreement for
me to pay you damages. If I don't paint the fence, I
think it could be reasonable in some cases for there to be an
implicit. It title transfer from me back
to you which would be called damages, but it wouldn't really
be damages because it wouldn't be a breach, it would just be
there to try to to title transfers set up.
One is the payment of money to me, in terms of payment, if I
paint the fence and one is a payment of some kind of
disincentive payment to you if I fail to paint the fence, so
there's just two title transfers.
So if I choose not to paint the fence, you might say it's
immoral because it's just bad form, but but it's not really a
It's not even trespass. It's not even a breach of
anyone's rights. It's just an action that
triggers a payment from me to you.
Now, I so let's take let's take the Facebook case.
Even the current law. If you call it, a breach of
contract. When Facebook kicks me off.
They still are not going to be forced by a court, to put me
back on their servers because the court doesn't order specific
performance. Except in rare cases, like real
estate transfers because the, or the sale of a painting because
those are unique and there's money can suffice for that.
But for everything else, the law says, we don't want to handle
it. We don't want to, we don't want
to micromanage it. We just want to order you to pay
some money and then it's over. So all that Apple has Facebook
is ordered to pay you some kind of money.
So they kick Tom Woods off and he could sue them for breach of
contract. It just means they have to pay
him. Some some monetary damage was
called was still be heard. He still wouldn't be made whole,
he would just get some monetary payment.
He'd have to go find another service book would change our
terms of service of it off to pay the money.
It's money in the future and they would just suffer their
reputation would be harmed because everyone would know.
Well, he'll Facebook can kick me off whenever they want.
They're kicking all people left and right for politically
motivated. Stated reasons, I don't trust
them. They don't they won't even agree
to pay me or to guarantee that I have a slot there.
So they're going to start losing customers and they're going to
lose their profits and they're gonna, they're gonna, they're
gonna implode Keith. I want to make sure that the
primary purpose of this was to sort of bring the three of us
together. So I want them and you were kind
of the dissenting voice here. So I want to make sure that
what's your have, we modified your position.
What are your what was happening with you?
So the problem is, I don't know, you know, nearly as much about
law. So it's hard to, you know,
determine whether or not I'm making just a moral argument or
I'm making a Libertarian justification or I'm Wrong in
this has I have been many many times before.
I just see libertarianism as the only morally Justified
philosophical position. I think pretty much every other
competing ideology believes in aggression and therefore
slavery. So, I want us at the front of
this argument. So when everyone seeing the
blatant mistreatment of, you know, American Renaissance or
Alex, Jones or Stefan molyneux. If our only position as Well,
there are private company. Well, so is bowing and Raytheon
and Northrop Grumman. They're not technically involved
in aggression. But as Glenn Greenwald States,
the Israeli government contacts Facebook, so they could take
down Palestinian resistance or any sort of PLO organization.
So we actually are dealing with co-conspirators and we need to,
I'm sorry, I think we should be unapologetically anti social
media. It's not enough to just be anti
social media. We have to be active.
I tried to quote, the Joad, organs and thing.
I'm sorry that failed. So, um, so I know, I know that,
you know, being smart or having good arguments or writing books
is not a principle of libertarianism.
However, we should embrace all of those things.
It's not. You have to write a book as good
as democracy. The God That Failed when it's,
that's not necessary, but we should be heavily engaging in
these activities such as writing books, making good arguments.
And not recognized and being able to differentiate moral
business practices from immoral business practices.
Because if we just have to have standards of our own or else
who's going, who's going to take it?
The leftists of of Silicon Valley, I certainly hope.
Not. So thank you.
I'm just, I'm gonna have to watch this over again to find
out even where I stand or maybe there's something I totally
Miss. Well, I think you segwayed us
perfectly into Jeff duyst's article that he recently wrote
that brings up the The most common argument.
I've heard against the the Facebook's let's say property
right to kick you off and have you not come back and blah,
blah, blah is the one that they, you know, they were there in bed
with government. And so let me just read these
few paragraphs. This is our excerpts here.
I won't go through the whole thing by any means.
So there was a talk by Tom Woods.
Recently titled, the covid cult with more than 1.5 million
views. It was recorded at our live
event in Texas, two weeks ago, it offer challenges to the
official narrative surrounding the coronavirus particularly.
And with respect to mask mandates, the speech was nothing
less than a heartfelt tour. De force against the terrible
lockdowns, and pseudoscience plaguing the debate over covid
and a call to re-examine trade-offs and priorities.
It was, as you might imagine a mix of unassailable data
combined with our friend. Tom's strong prescription for
Liberty and personal choice rather than centralized state
edicts. In other words.
YouTube had no earthly business. Removing it, this kind of
discourse seems to me to be the best and highest use for
YouTube. It's most important function,
big Digital as Professor, Michael recktenwald, terms tech
companies have become quote government Alat.
He's supposedly, private Enterprise has turned into
instruments of state power and state.
Narratives. This sorted process is different
for each company. Some are more complicit than
others, a few are heroically non-compliant, but it involves a
mix of early startup funding connections and contracts with
state agencies, particularly relating to defense and
surveillance. And propaganda campaigns in
service of State narratives, recktenwald explains this
phenomenon in his own recent, talk titled, the Google election
quote. This is from the rich and Waltz
talk in short, Google, Facebook and others are not strictly,
private sector entities. They are government.
A Le T's in the sense that I have given to the term.
They are extensions and apparatus of the state.
Furthermore. These platforms are government
talat. He's with a particular interest
in the growth and extension of Government, ality itself.
This includes championing, every kind of subordinated and newly
created identity class that they can find, or create because such
endangered categories require State acknowledgement and
protection. Thus, the state's circumference
continues to expand big digital is partial to the interests and
growth of the state. It not only does business with
status but also shares their values.
This helps make sense of its leftist bent and their
preference for the Deep State Democrats.
Leftism is statism. Okay, so that's one of the most
common arguments. I have heard for sort of not
being too concerned with the property rights of large
companies like Google and Facebook, back to you control.
What are your thoughts? Yeah.
Yeah.
I like that. He's also made arguments in
recent. Mouths, I believe where he said
he's sort of deviating a bit on the defamation issue to where,
you know, he thinks that as a practical matter.
If you if you defame someone it does cause harm and there for
that, might be a vaccine. That's right.
Of course, pletely incompatible with Roth bards hardcore, proper
riparian view and libertarianism, you know, his
knowledge comma true and false chapter a day.
It's a liberty explains, exactly.
Why and he's right that defamation law is simply not.
Justifiable, Walter block is sort of made a version of the
argument that you're making here.
They die seems to be making here.
That it's not the contract. Breach argument is basically
that their effect is like Walter sued the New York Times for
defamation, even the Walters against defamation law because
he said, they're fair game because they're basically part
of the state. I'm leery of those arguments.
They are, they're not really part of the state.
They are they are evil socialist.
I will agree that. And there, you know, if we have
the libertarian Nuremberg war crimes, tribunal someday.
After the, After the Revolution, some people that were promoting
the state and supporting it might be held to account I
guess. But you know, I'd rather just
have Liberty and move on but you know, so Walters like the New
York Times as an agent 8, so it would be wrong for me to sue an
innocent person of defamation because the defamation laws
unjust but it's okay to use that kind of force against a wing of
the state. And likewise, I guess the
argument here is that Facebook and these companies are
effectively government alaniz are part of the state and
therefore they should be held to constitutional.
Limitations I guess Amendment free speech.
So violating your constitutional rights.
I'm leery of doing that because that's just giving the
government more power to put private more and more private
actors under their Ambit and basically regulate them, but
that was the argument. Given for the Civil Rights Act.
I'm sorry for the whichever acted was in the 60s that
basically not only prohibited government, government agencies,
state governments, and federal, whatever it was from,
Discriminating racially against blacks, and then women because
it violated the Fourteenth Amendment and all that kind of
stuff. But they, they they, they, they
restricted the property rights of private businesses, like,
restaurants and things. They call public accommodation
saying, even even private companies can't discriminate
based on race and things like that.
And that's an infringement of property rights there.
But their argument is that well, they're kind of government
tality because they're, they're open to the public.
They're serving a A public function because they had the
restaurant open to all comers. So they have to let all comers
come in. I'm very of all these arguments
because I want to restrict the power of the state.
Not give it power to classify some semi or mostly private
actors, like Facebook and like the New York Times as
quasi-governmental as an excuse to regulate them and to do
things like that. So, I'm leery of those arguments
and you think let me try this. Before let me try and steal, man
it real quick. Go ahead.
Just just got bigger. So like let's imagine a company
that that currently in the in current modern times makes roads
and you know, most of the money they get to make roads with is
money stolen from people, extorted through taxes, and then
pays them which then they use to create the roads.
It would be as if it would be like, for that company.
To then tell me that I'm not allowed to drive on the road
that they use, you know, in part my stolen resources.
To create, they would say that. Okay.
Well, Facebook takes tons of stolen money that belonged to
that, part of which Belongs to You Patrick.
And now they're trying to tell you, you can't use their
service. How can they do that?
Well, let's let's unpack it. So in the case of the roads, you
could make at least a coherent libertarian argument that money
is stolen from me as a taxpayer, the the state collects it and
then they give most of it to this private contractor to I
don't know to build a road and then I guess the private company
owns the road now. So you could argue that.
I have a claim of restitution from the state and also from to
get that money back. Basically you could say that.
I am up. I'm really the true owner on the
phone with, they don't let me use it.
Then they're increasing the Damage Done to be so you can
make that argument. In fact, I made an argument like
that in my, in my argument against open borders and
immigration by arguing, that the roads are owned by the citizens
as taxpayers and they have the right to use those roads because
they're the true owners. But immigrants from outside, the
US are not victims of the US state, or they're not taxpayers.
So they don't have if they're denied the right to use those
roads and public Spaces, by the it, by the ins, for example,
then their rights aren't violated because it's not their
property. So if you simply denied all
Outsiders the right to use, all public spaces that are truly
owned by the American citizen taxpayers, then that would
radically reduce immigration because you can't come into the
u.s. Unless you use a road basically.
And that would be a form of immigration control, that was
compatible with libertarian principles.
So Kind of made the argument before to a degree.
But to be clear for the audience.
I argued against that argument. I think it started with
Christopher Chase Rachel's and I didn't know that you had written
on it from that angle as well. I definitely disagree with that.
Maybe that's maybe that's our next show.
But yeah, and I don't, I mean, I'm not really against
immigration. I was just explaining that If
immigrants, if outside, if what he called outside.
And if foreigners are not permitted to use, if, if I don't
permit a foreigner to use my house, that's not a violation of
his rights. And if the government doesn't
let him use the roads, it's not a violation of his rights either
because he doesn't own the roads.
The only way to argue against that, is this argument that some
Libertarians make that all government?
Property is unowned and subject to homesteading, but I don't
believe that. I think that some property.
Government prevents us from using like the Wilderness.
You could say that's a No-No because it's not developed by
anyone. So that is subject to
homesteading. But roads and buildings are
clearly owned their just owned by the state legally, but the
true owner is the are all the peaceful innocent tax.
Citizens for and they have a better claim on it for
restitution. So I'm not really are literally
going to three hours. These are so interested in such
interesting. Topic out.
Keith is your only thing to say, Nope.
This has been a pleasure to speak with Patrick.
And mr. Kinsella.
My whole point is that I think we need to sort of elevate our
criticism. So when we say private good
public bad, I don't think that gets to the heart of it.
As Murray. Rothbard says, in, I think it's
for a new Liberty or ethics of Liberty.
Imagine, just before disbanding itself.
The state gives Kentucky to the Kennedys and New York to the
Rockefellers. Are they the now the just owner
since, you know, there? Group of private individuals.
The answer is obviously, no, because according to act the
root Theory, the root principle of libertarianism original
appropriation as Hans hop. Estates in democracy, The God
That Failed. That is just an illegitimate
contract. That Tyrant a gives to Tyrant to
be with seized property that they have no right to claim on
any more than I have the right to sell, Patrick's house to
Stephen. Because you know, I claim a Will
contract gives me the right to so now I'm just attempting to
sort of elevate the discussion here.
Yeah. Yeah, and I agree with all that,
Patrick. Let me ask a question.
So what's the analogy to Facebook, though, in the road
case? Because where did where did the
federal government pay Facebook with taxpayer dollars.
Like how could you make that argument that they don't really
own their servers? Well, to be clear.
I was that's not my argument. I was trying to pull it in
argument that a I've heard often from people and so they would I
think early. On Facebook was Project from the
CIA. So it was literally founded with
public money. They get hundreds of thousands
of dollars. If not millions of dollars every
year. I think it's tens of thousands
every month, or something like that, for responding to spy
requests, from government agencies from the US.
So they get tons and tons of money and they collude with the
government to, you know, provide our data upon warrants, and all
that stuff, and they get paid. A lot of money for that.
It's a good business for Facebook to cooperate with the
government collude with the government.
Let me, let me mention, let me mention a blog post of mine,
some some listeners might find so rothbard had an argument in
the 60s. When his more leftist phase
where he argued that like universities were basically,
Effectively agents of the state and they could be they could be
attacked by the students doing all the sit-ins and they can be
homesteaded by them. But later on he sort of backed
up like a, but seven years later, 1974.
He backed. He backed off of that and said,
basically that if there's property that there's there's
basically original sin in the in the property to like you can
trace it back to an act of theft.
That doesn't mean that the current owner can be just a
vested of it. As long as they're innocent
basically. And they weren't, they weren't,
they didn't during the ones who stole it and that's in my, I
think I have some blog posts once called rothbard on the
original sin and land, title's, 1969 versus 1974 where he sort
of and a lot of the left just like Kevin Carson.
And these guys, they they quote rothbard from 1969, but they
don't quote the extra paragraph that he added to the later
reprint of that article where he sort of backs off on that.
That's kind of interesting. So and I'm with the more modern
rothbard. I'm just Leary of calling them
agents of the state. Even if the CIA did get
Facebook, some money, look, the government subsidizes lots of
Corporations and businesses and even people, I mean, you know,
they just gave out a bunch of covid checks to tens of millions
of people in the country. That doesn't mean I own part of
their house. Now, you know, although,
although I've jokingly argued in the past that, you know, if I
live next to a Democrat, I'm Title to sneak over into his
yard and steal. His lawn mower is restitution if
I can get away with it, but you know as a practical matter,
that's so that has the problem self-help, you know being biased
in your own case and also, you know, it's a little vigilante
ish. But theoretically he's violating
my rights by supporting the state and so I'm entitled to
some restitution so I can steal his lawn mower.
Okay, let's let's wrap up. Then.
I have a few questions from the audience.
First. I want to start by thanking
King, the CEO of float. He's over on float right now.
He just did a super chat for $10.
He said that I Q is greater than IP.
Thank you for your support. King.
I appreciate it. Thank you for everything.
You do on the float website. You guys are awesome.
And I am trying to watch float chat.
Then we have some questions here.
These are from Cop Block Hot Springs.
He says so TOS is not a contract because there is no reciprocal
give and take. So I think this is a basic
contract question, right? There's a contract.
Where choir getting take At know.
So that's so the contract to be binding.
And remember the thinking of contract is enforceable
obligations. There has to be consideration.
Okay. Do I think that's actually a nun
libertarian notion in the civil law, the other big legal system
that is in Louisiana, and most of Europe.
Other than England. You don't have to have
consideration. You have to have cause which I
think makes sense but not consideration.
I think a contract is just transfer of title of property.
From one person to the other. so even a donation like if I give
you an apple as a gift in a cell, That's a conch one channel
transfer of title to a resource and that's perfectly binding
transfer of title. So you can call that a contract,
some contracts are reciprocal. That is my transfer of title to
you of my object that I own is conditioned upon.
You either doing something in the case of a service contract,
or you giving me title to something that you to title
transfers. So, I simply think that a
contract has to involve, at least one transfer of title to
some property. That's owned in the case of
Facebook. The customers not paying any
money, and Facebook is not giving anything that they own to
the customer. So there's, there's really no
contract. The only contract contractual
aspect of it is Facebook owns, its servers and their permitting
you to use it. So they're giving their consent
for you to temporarily use it. Like if I let someone My car or
drive my car for an hour, or borrow it or they borrow my
knife, or they come to my house for dinner as the owner, or if I
allow someone to kiss me or have sex with me and all those cases
is the owner of a resource using their ownership, right to Grant
consent to Grant permission, or to deny permission.
So, in that sense, the Facebook relationship is contractual in
that the owner of the resource. It's permitted resources, but
they can be it can be withdrawn at any time just like you can
change your mind about having sex or if The boxing kicking
guests out of your house at a dinner party.
Okay. Let me I'm going to try and
combine some of these questions together in the for the sake of
time. So the next one is so if you
face invites you to their servers you purchase computers
to do. So, then you face denies you
access. Can't you?
Sue? For costs La Mart offers free
internet. Is it really free if they're
using my data to track and sell? How is this different from you
face? On the first question, again,
that's more of a detrimental Reliance argument and I think
that's an invalid Theory because it's circular again.
If you want if you want to invest in these computer
servers, you need to start up your little Facebook, Community
or whatever. If you want to be sure that that
investment won't go to waste, you need to pay for it.
You need to basically buy insurance by being willing to
pay an extra fee to Facebook. Um for that security.
And if they won't grant you that if they refuse to negotiate
that, or if they charge a price that you don't want to pay, then
you're taking the risk. So I think it's, you know, be a
bill. Correct?
What was the second was? The second part.
If La Mart offers free internet. Is it really free if they're
using my data to track and sell? How is this different from you
face? No, it's not free.
But, but that's the, that's the terms.
That's the condition of you. You that's like, saying I will
let you come into my house for a dinner party.
But only if you help me set the table first, you know, and if
you don't help me set the table and I'm not going to bite you
over because you're not a good guest.
All right, if you don't set the table, don't don't enter my
house. If you don't want to, if you
want to let them have your data, don't use their free service or
their otherwise free service. If a company acquires a business
license, why are they not required to follow the
constitution of that state? If they don't like the law, they
can go somewhere else. So, this is, this is the thing.
I get the same argument from, like, Sovereign citizen types.
When they say, like if you sign the papers to get a driver's
license, well, you're consenting to the state.
It's like, ya know, if you don't get a driver's license, you are
under threat of violence. So you're doing what you need to
do to defend yourself. It's a self-defensive contract
things. I'm with a company.
If I file if I sign scribbles and Sign papers to keep myself
from being attacked for running a company.
Now, let's that's self-defense. That's not consent to anything.
I think that argument is a hybrid of two arguments.
One is the social contract argument, which we don't agree
with this Libertarians. And the other one is sort of
this nebulous idea that contract, the corporation's, get
some kind of special privilege from the state.
And therefore, in fact, the state uses this argument, the
state regulates corporations, and they have a corporate income
tax, which is in effect, double taxation of these.
Shareholders, right. And their argument for that, is
that well, we're granting privileges to the corporation.
And therefore, we can condition the grant of those privileges on
the, the corporation agreeing to some regulations and things.
But the problem with that is, is that there's a fallacy there.
In the, there's a commonly held belief that the court, the state
grants privileges to corporations, that they wouldn't
have on the free market and that's just false as Robert.
Hessen has debunked in the 70s and which I and And Roger pull
on and others. Like rothbard have written.
Basically, is this limited liability?
Grant Wood says, shareholders, are not liable to people that
employees of the corporation harm in a tort.
And but I think that's not a privilege of state grants you.
That's the natural position. That would happen on a free
market because you're not liable for other people's torts, unless
there's a special relationship like you're the employer and
their the employee or something like that.
And that's called vicarious liability or respondeat
Superior. So if the state disappeared and
we had our radical enter Capital Society, you could have people
get together and buy contract for more business organizations.
They could call them whatever they want.
They can call the corporations or whatever.
Just like, if people want to get married that are gay and they
want to say they're married. They have the right to call it
whatever they want, you know. I mean, so I can call it a
corporation and I wouldn't, and the shareholders who gets
invested money in this Corporation, wouldn't
necessarily have liability for torts or or, or acts done by
employees of the corporation because they didn't perform
them. So you don't need the state to
Grant you this this limited liability in the first place.
So it's not a privilege. Okay, last to wrap it up.
Go ahead, Keith just a, just a clarification on.
If you don't like it. You could move.
Well, if you don't like the business, well more or less you
can. Complain.
If you don't like the business, go to another one.
Well, isn't that just what we say about or stata say about the
country. If you don't like, you know, the
laws in America, you should move this again does not appreciate
the foundational principle of original appropriation.
I have a quote here from Chase Rachel's in spontaneous order.
We're just Nails it. He says the illegitimately of
the state rests on the fact that it exercises control over
resources that it's agents. Never acquired through original.
Creation or voluntary exchange and it does.
So without the consent of the rightful owners of set of
resources. So I do get that a lot where
people are like, well you signed a W-2 or you agreed to you know,
competing governments are the same as competing organizations.
You have to deal with one of them in order to live there for
companies and businesses are the same thing.
It again has just gotten us into the mindset of private.
Good public bad. We need to brain.
Leslie defend one or the other without getting to the
principles. So that is my position in
response to that allegation. Nice.
Okay. I can't pronounce your name.
Ben-shahar are written marriage contracts, enforceable for
damages for breach. This will take us far afield,
but in brief summary. The way I was Libertarians would
be a marriage is just a private non-legal and certainly should
be an on State and there should be a state.
But marriage is just a relationship that people enter
into and they can call, they can call it whatever they want.
And if you know if 33 lesbians in a nun, get together and they
call themselves married. And if the rest of society,
doesn't choose to use the word marriage for that because it's,
it's not the traditional. Then that's just a matter of
Civil Society. But I do believe that certain
relationships have legal consequences and in the law like
in the civil law in my home state of Louisiana is called
matrimonial regimes and that's more of a property in a contract
aspect. So, in other words, if two
people engage in an activity together, there can be legal
consequences. Like if I let you ride in my car
with me then I'm a plus M giving you a license or permission to
use my Car to sit in my car, right?
So there's a natural activity, has some legal consequences,
likewise? If two people get married or
call themselves married, then that can have legal
consequences, like co-ownership of property, visitation rights
at hospitals, and Times of this power of attorney, type rights,
to make medical decisions. Available is incapacitated
guardianship rights over children.
These are all the legal incidence that flow from this
private relationship. And they're essentially
contractual and whatever the legal system is in society, of
course, ought to enforce and respect these contracts and the
will of the parties. And at the State monopolizes
marriage as it's done, then it has the obligation to make sure
it's legal system, respects, the wishes of the parties.
And so if it says you can only have a marriage legal incidence
of But marriage, direct ignition of marriage and that has to be
man and a woman, then it's the States fault for denying
enforceability of a similar regime that flows from a
homosexual Union, and I think they should be four.
Do that for me, gay couples by not allowing their unions to be
the legal aspects of it to be legally enforced.
Whether you if you have to call it marriage for it to get the
benefit of that, then the state. That's the state's rules.
So fine. So I've been for gay marriage in
that sense for 20 years or 15 years, but in a free market, in
a free Society, you would just have people get together and
have this Arrangement it be like a little Corporation in a sense,
right? And the legal aspects of Of
aspects of it would be recognized by the property and
contract law of the legal system.
Okay, so we're not going to get the most of the remaining
questions. This will be the last one can a
businesses from audion Godin. Can a business owner walk up and
put their hand over your mouth because they don't like what you
say in their store. They could ask you to leave but
they could not physically, prevent your speech.
I like if, if my turns for entering my house is that you do
not utter the word Facebook. Well, you And other the word
Facebook in my house on pain of getting evicted?
Would you guys have to say about that?
Keith, you want to take a stab and then I can get my two cents.
So, as far as that, you can make any terms to your body and your
property. So, in other words, you're only
allowed to come in side, my house.
If you have a mask or you're only allowed, if you know, you
want to sleep with me or something like that.
While these might be ridiculous. Yes, you have the right to
exclude people. You have the right to say, I'm
not doing business with anyone and then you can start making
terms. All right.
Do business with some people. If they meet the criteria of
having masks or I will exclude Democrats, communist people
advocating, the end of the family, Etc.
Yes. You would be morally justified
in doing that if he's or no. At first, I thought it was
asking about the mask mandates, and those, I almost question
because we don't know what business is think because it's
always the state Governor saying when you're inside of a
business, you have to do it. So it's almost like you just
have to go in. Without one and if they don't
correct you then you know, this is a place where they don't care
and I think you should you should totally respect that.
So, yes, they are morally justified in putting their hand
over your mouth, to stop you from communicating if that is
the general understanding beforehand, just walking up to
someone and physically touching them.
I think that would be an invasion.
This is what I would consider physical interference with the
body. Autonomy of other individuals.
I think you need to give them. Hey, I don't like what you're
saying. You have to get out.
Now. You can't say you're a
trespasser and then blow their head off.
You have to give them. I don't know 20, 30 seconds to
get out something reasonable. I of course don't have the exact
answer for that. That is how I would try to
approach that situation using, you know, Common Sense morality
along with libertarian fundamentals, right?
I would roughly agree with that. And by the way that argument
contradicts your Your easement arguments book because Facebook
can kick you out. Even though he didn't say they
could, it's understood if someone comes into your house
and you say no one, may say this word or whatever, my house, that
doesn't mean that you can put your hand over their mouth.
Because all it means is that you can you can tell them to leave,
but you already have the right to tell them to leave.
And then if they refuse to leave after you, You told him, you
would say that a certain point, they do become a trespasser.
And I think at a certain point, force going to use to to kick
them out. And if they fight hard enough, I
mean it can even be lethal because if they pull a gun out
and they fight you off that you could shoot them.
But I mean, you know, if they escalated it could get as
violent as necessary, but but it's not not to trespass when
they well, the word, they've done something that they know is
going to get them kick. Get out.
All right. Well guys, thanks for joining us
today. This has been a really fun show.
I hope to have both of you back. For many more of these
discussions. This is what I live for.
So, thank you guys for participating in chat.
A lot of great questions and comments today.
Thanks for being respectful in the comments.
I appreciate that, too. That's a rare thing.
These days when the internet guys, you have any final.
Thoughts are last words, you want to pimp your platforms and
where people can find more information about you.
Nothing really content-wise else.
For me. If people could please check out
my library and bitch you channels along with my YouTube.
My channel is Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone.
I meant about 590 videos and interviews, attempting to
Advocate, the principles of self-ownership Truth in history,
free exchange of ideas, and philosophical libertarianism.
I have been working on a book for quite a while, which is an
edited collection of some of my articles that cover a lot of the
theory that I'm rely upon here. And hopefully, I'll have it done
in just a two or three months. It's going to be called law in
the libertarian world. So stay tuned for that.
It'll be free online everywhere and sold in paper at a
basically, it cost. So, and it's already online in
the old, the old articles are online already on my Stephan
kinsella.com. So that's my next project.
And then and then I'm going to work on a new IP book called
copy this book, which is a restatement of all the stuff.
I've learned over the last 20 years, discussing all these
issues. I'm looking forward to that
right now. Alright.
Alright guys, thanks for watching.
We will see you next time.