I have occasionally corresponded with Deirdre McCloskey, and met the good doctor in person at FreedomFest in Rapid City, South Dakota (with my buddy Juan Carpio) in July 2021.
I re-post it here since it’s not unsound, and as I apparently qualify for the very restrictive fascist copyright license the Mises Institute is trying to slap on this piece—CC-BY-NC-ND (no doubt without the author’s knowledge or consent, making this license’s effectiveness questionable)1 —since my site is (I guess?) “non-commercial,” whatever that means. I guess they don’t want a “commercial” site (whatever that is; why an ostensibly pro-capitalist, pro-free market organization hates the profit motive is unclear) republishing their pro-freedom message—wouldn’t want to spread the ideas of liberty without some control and oversight! And I guess they don’t want any translations made—that is prohibited by the “ND”, or no derivative works, part. [continue reading…]
I just came across this column I had not seen before: Reginald Godwyn,
“Copyright, AI, and the Great Illusion,” Libertarian Alliance (28 June, 2025):
I have just looked at the judgment in Bartz v Anthropic, a case decided in California, but which is likely to have a broader reach by its example. Three authors—a novelist and two non-fiction writers—accused the AI company Anthropic of “stealing” their books to train a large language model named Claude. What the California court ruled was this: training AI on books may well constitute “transformative” use under American copyright law, and thus may not, in itself, be illegal. However, he refused to dismiss the case outright, allowing a trial to proceed on the question of how the books were obtained and stored. The case has been hailed as a copyright milestone. It possibly is that, but is also a symptom of a deeper decay in legal reasoning and our understanding of what machines, and laws, are for.
Let us first deal with the word “stealing.”
Anthropic did not reprint the authors’ books. It did not sell them under its own name. It did not post them online for free. It fed them into an algorithm that adjusted statistical weights across billions of nodes to predict language. This is not theft. It is not publication. And—despite the hyperventilations of rights-holders and their lobbyists—it is not infringement in any meaningful sense. It is the digital equivalent of reading, something no regime has yet dared outlaw outright. But if the plaintiffs and their backers in the publishing world succeed, reading may soon be an activity subject to rent.
What Anthropic did is no different in substance from what any literate man does when he reads a book and allows it to shape the way he speaks. The model, like the man, absorbs patterns. The man is praised for being learned. The machine is sued for being trained.
The idea that reading a book—even by machine—constitutes infringement is as grotesque as accusing a violinist of “stealing” Brahms by practising his Violin Concerto. But grotesque ideas live long when they serve those who collect fees.
Funny clip of Hoppe saying he would do the Joe Rogan show if asked. From the PFS 2023 Annual Meeting, when some of us stayed a few days after and had a nice dinner at Nusr-Et, near Bodrum. (Other photos below; one of them was used for the back cover of A Life in Liberty: Liber Amicorum in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (2024), presented at the 2024 PFS meeting a year later.) Hans mentions Dave Smith, whom we tried for a while to have appear at a PFS meeting, since Hans has pointed out how important it is to laugh at the state, to mock the regime.1
In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting some of them here in this Bookstream.
Saifedean Ammous was recently interviewed on Bitcoin Magazine TV discussing his work on bitcoin mining and stablecoins, as well as the US fiscal outlook. Saif examines whether growing stablecoin demand can reduce price inflation & help US fiscal solvency. He focusses on often-overlooked trade-offs: lost seigniorage, displaced long-term Treasury demand & bank credit, & more fragile short-term funding & rollover risk.
On occasion, and more frequently in recent years, I’ve been asked for links to online Austrian and Austro-libertarian works and resources. It used to be easy to point to Mises.org or other sites, but with the proliferation of groups and websites promoting these ideas, and with the decline or Mises.org’s usability1 and relevance, this has become more of a challenge.
Recent efforts by DavidVeksler (The Liberty Archive: Millions of Words of Libertarian and Austrian Books, Journals, Courses Liberated) and Rahim Taghizadegan (Mises.co: The Original Austrians: A Digital Library of the Austrian School of Economics) inspired me to create a page for Austro-Libertarian Guide and Libraries to link to these and other projects and resources. Check it out. We expect this guide to to develop and grow over time but for now it is a good place to start.
In 1884, a dollar bought roughly what it had bought before the Civil War.
America had fought its bloodiest war, printed greenbacks by the wagonload, and endured a roughly 75% surge in prices. And then the inflation went away. Twenty years later, prices had made the round trip. [continue reading…]
In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting some of them here in this Bookstream.
A więc w ONZ było tak… 👇 Mamy po prostu absolutnie najlepsze państwo na świecie. Nikt nie ma lepiej. Dajemy energię całej planecie, serio, cała Ziemia chodzi na naszej energii. Jesteśmy najmocniejsi na całej planecie, najsilniejsi w historii, i jakby nie było, jesteśmy też… pic.twitter.com/LYDBoZS39M
In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting some of them here in this Bookstream.
In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting some of them here in this Bookstream.
A więc w ONZ było tak… 👇
Mamy po prostu absolutnie najlepsze państwo na świecie. Nikt nie ma lepiej. Dajemy energię całej planecie, serio, cała Ziemia chodzi na naszej energii.
Jesteśmy najmocniejsi na całej planecie, najsilniejsi w historii, i jakby nie było, jesteśmy też… pic.twitter.com/LYDBoZS39M
This is a Polish satirical paraphrase of Trump’s speech to the UN General Assembly on September 22, 2026. The clip compresses the most self-congratulatory stretches of the address into carnival-barker Polish.
In the actual speech, Trump told the hall America is “back” and “stronger today than ever before,” that its economy is “the envy of the world,” its military the most powerful on earth, and that “our energy is fueling the planet.” He claimed that since taking office he had “settled eight wars” (Cambodia–Thailand, Kosovo–Serbia, DRC–Rwanda, Pakistan–India, Armenia–Azerbaijan, Gaza, plus others depending on the list), that almost every one of those countries wrote him a thank-you letter, and that Pakistan’s prime minister credited him with saving 30 million lives. He also threatened to “annihilate the Islamic Republic” if Iran would not take a deal, attacked the UN and the ICC, rejected global taxes and climate/AI governance, and sold border enforcement and cartel strikes as restoration of sovereignty. [continue reading…]
Vigilante justice: Motorcycle thieves tied up in a small Mexican town (AI-generated). Image source: Editorial staff
My English translation below of David Dürr, „Bürgerlicher Anarchismus: Selbstjustiz“ in eigentümlich frei (print issue ef 263, Sep./Oct. 2026), from my regular column “Bürgerlicher Anarchismus.”
Vigilante Justice
What Else
David Dürr
First published in eigentümlich frei, September/October 2026
Did you also read the recent reports from the Mexican city of Lagos de Moreno? The city apparently has a widespread problem with young people stealing motorcycles, usually under cover of darkness, riding them recklessly and then abandoning them somewhere. The bikes are found the following morning, often damaged. The police know about the problem but appear to have little appetite for tackling it. [continue reading…]
Here’s another reason to attend the Property and Freedom Society annual conference at The Karia Princess hotel in Bodrum, Turkey: Come and enjoy Liberty Libations and the best of Murray’s Mixology at the poolside Roth-Bar. [continue reading…]
Saifedean examines whether growing stablecoin demand can reduce price inflation & help US fiscal solvency. He focuses on often-overlooked trade-offs: lost seigniorage, displaced long-term Treasury demand & bank credit, & more fragile short-term funding & rollover risk.
It takes only 32 minutes to get from the Pizza Hut on Camp Lemmonier in Djibouti City to China’s only overseas military base on the northeast side of town. A mere 10 miles separate 4,000 US personnel from the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).
On a clear day, they can probably see each other’s flags without the spy tech.
In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting some of them here in this Bookstream.
In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting some of them here in this Bookstream.
In 2009, the Mises Institute published Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a project Guido Hülsmann and and Stephan Kinsella spearheaded to honor Hans Hoppe on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Only a few of the pieces were published independently; we are posting some of them here in this Bookstream.
As noted here, the 2026 Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society was recently held from Thursday, September 17, 2026 to Tuesday, September 22, 2026. Information on the 2027 meeting will be released in early 2027.
Rothbard at 100 is in production! As you can see, the books are printed in premium hardcover with gold foil stamping, and then they will be covered with a dust jacket. Also available as an audiobook and eBook. Preorder your copy now: https://t.co/iaEh0bk5G0pic.twitter.com/bapPGmhFHb
To donate with BITCOIN please use the address below. If you would like us to credit your payment (for dues, conference fees, etc.) please email Stephan Kinsella ([email protected]) when you make the bitcoin payment.
17M9V6m5X5Da4vNM5wWLjzcHz9qF36FPk6
“Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.” — FrédéricBastiat
“Because the concept of property, for instance, is so basic that everyone seems to have some immediate understanding of it, most people never think about it carefully and can, as a consequence, produce at best a very vague definition. But starting from imprecisely stated or assumed definitions and building a complex network of thought upon them can lead only to intellectual disaster. For the original imprecisions and loopholes will then pervade and distort everything derived from them. To avoid this, the concept of property must first be clarified.” —Hans-Hermann Hoppe, TSC, ch. 2
The Property and Freedom Society (PFS; Facebook) stands for an uncompromising intellectual radicalism: for justly acquired private property, freedom of contract, freedom of association—which logically implies the right to not associate with, or to discriminate against—anyone in one's personal and business relations—and unconditional free trade. It condemns imperialism and militarism and their fomenters, and champions peace. It rejects positivism, relativism, and egalitarianism in any form, whether of "outcome" or "opportunity," and it has an outspoken distaste for politics and politicians. As such it seeks to avoid any association with the policies and proponents of interventionism, which Ludwig von Mises identified in 1946 as the fatal flaw in the plan of the many earlier and contemporary attempts by intellectuals alarmed by the rising tide of socialism and totalitarianism to found an anti-socialist ideological movement. Mises wrote: "What these frightened intellectuals did not comprehend was that all those measures of government interference with business which they advocated are abortive. ... There is no middle way. Either the consumers are supreme or the government."
(A more complete statement of our Principles can be found here.)
I have occasionally corresponded with Deirdre McCloskey, and met the good doctor in person at FreedomFest in Rapid City, South Dakota (with my buddy Juan Carpio) in July 2021.
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