Christian M

Reminder - I'll be going live with @liquid2ulu at 3PM CST today, topic is Kant v. Rand on epistemology. Hoping to cover a lot of interesting ground here, so should be a good one.

Update: debate with @liquid2ulu has been postponed one week - it will now be on May 22nd, 3PM CST. Same topic!

I’ll be debating @liquid2ulu on Kant v. Rand with a focus on epistemology tomorrow (Friday) at 3PM CST. Should be a fun one!

@jeremykauffman Did you or did you not cause damage to private property?

On April 4th, a likely mentally-ill African man was behaving erratically in a Market Basket parking lot. I exchanged words with him, encouraging him to leave both the parking lot and the beautiful state of New Hampshire entirely. For this, I was arrested. Neither of us came within physical reach of one another, and I expect the matter to be dropped by the city of Manchester. Additionally, I am exploring legal action against the city. This incident is yet another example of how our government treats mentally-ill and dangerous African men as saints, and how the police prevent decent men from maintaining order in American cities and towns. The footage of my arrest is below. As someone who loves New Hampshire and attempts to make our state look good, it embarrasses me that our police our this incompetent.

Thanks for the reply, I want to make it clear from the top that I don’t think you have to agree with Kant’s conclusion to see that there is something unique and interesting about his argument. So, my chief concern here is to make sure that his argument is understood. To that end, we need to get some language clear. “Unauthorized” representation does not simply reduce to “misrepresentation” here. The lawyer analogy is supposed to make exactly this point. The unauthorized person can be transparent about what they’re doing, and it’s still wrong (allegedly), because the wrong in question isn’t about deception. Rather, it’s about acting in a capacity for someone that they were never given the authority to exercise. You might think that there is no real difference to misrepresentation here, but that would need to be argued because the distinction seems to have at least some utility. “but none of this has anything to do with copyright--nor even trademark. IP Proponents Do Not Even Know The Difference Between Patent, Copyright, Trademark” Right. That’s basically my entire point. Kant isn’t making an IP argument, and it’s silly to try to construe it as one, because none of his reasoning is based on any claims to books themselves or their contained patterns. So, if his argument fails, it fails for reasons other than the ones that make IP arguments fail, which is what makes it worth taking seriously over the four millionth labor argument. “Okay maybe I am defrauding customers, but how does it violate Kant’s rights?” He’s making the claim that it isn’t fraud to republish (at least not necessarily), but it is nonetheless an unauthorized expression of his own capacities because of the relationship between books as a medium and the public (again, why art doesn’t apply). To your later point, I mentioned at the end of my reply that, yeah, I don’t think the argument works on its own, but for reasons that are secondary to the moral thrust of it all. That is to say. I don’t take it to be a facially stupid argument, and we can see this clearly by noticing the *structural* parallels to the lawyer case. So even if we draw out some disanalogy, I expect it would be framed as a misapplication of a good principle by Kant, rather than it just being nonsense all the way down (like someone saying a creator has highest claim to a pattern). Whether or not it’s correct, there is something unique to Kant’s argument. If I have convinced you of that much, then I’ve accomplished my mission here.

"Think of the problem as Kant sees it like this: Suppose that you hire a lawyer for an appearance in court, but before they arrive some random nobody shows up and claims to represent you without your consent. I think most of us would intuitively think that something has gone wrong here, and that you wouldn't have to just lie down and allow yourself to be represented by the stranger. So, why is that? It's not quite fraud. They aren't claiming to be you, and might even make it clear that you didn't ask for this, but they are still acting in your name in a way you didn't consent to. So we might say that the wrong just is that they are speaking for you, and in doing so, are exercising a capacity on your behalf that only you have the authority to dole out." but none of this has anything to do with copyright--nor even trademark. IP Proponents Do Not Even Know The Difference Between Patent, Copyright, Trademark …  c4sif.org/2025/12/ip-pro… Kant has already admitted he's in it for the money. HE is not worried about someone being misrepresented. And copyright doens't even deal with this problem. Suppose I copy a Kant book and sell it under my name. Okay maybe I am defrauding customers, but how does it violate Kant's rights? And then fraud and contract law would deal with this, right? And if we are going to talk about fraud and contract, we need a clear libertarian understanding of fraud and contract in the first place. See part IV.C #ivclvbp" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">stephankinsella.com/2024/09/tttc-w… Or are we to believe that if I copied Kant's book and put a big notice on it "THIS IS AN UNAUTHORIZED COPY, KANT IS NOT HAPPY WITH THIS, IT'S 50% CHEAPER SO I HOPE YOU BUY IT" would this be fine with him? After all there is no fraud. Of course he would not be okay with this. He would still want copyright to block this. So it has nothing to do with fraud. "That is the only wrong of republishing books in Kant's view. It's not that the ideas are stolen, or that he takes some financial loss, or anything like that. The claim is just that, because of the kind of thing a book is, republication specifically entails a kind of unauthorized representation to the public that the author need not put up with." I do not agree at all he is focused only on misrepresentation and "That is the only wrong of republishing books". First, as noted, copyright has nothing to do with claims of authorship. As an example, if I publish an unauthorized copy of a J.K. Rowling book with a clear legend notifying buyers and readers it is not authorized, then there is no possible claim of misrepresentation. Yet copyright would stop it anyway, and Kant clearly thinks it should. And suppose I take an older book that is now out of copyright--like, say an old Kant book, or Moby Dick, or the bible--and publish it with my name on it. Copyright law is not even applicable. And why doesn't fraud or contract law kick in then? Better question--why does no one ever do this? Because it's retarded. Second, he has already tipped his hand with his money-grubbing and whining about knockoffs--he is just dishonestly cobbling together a makeweight argument in favor of copyright. Now of course in some cases misrepresentation or lies or speech can cause cognizable harm. But to analyze this, again, as with contract and fraud, you need a careful libertarian understanding of aggression and causation. Ahem. stephankinsella.com/2004/11/causat… So this defense of Kant, that he's really subtle and deep--nah.

Kant on Intellectual Property c4sif.org/2026/02/kant-o… Silly Ayn Rand should have liked him.

Blank-slate'ism is not core to libertarianism; it is agnostic as to how one acquires one's views, only that they do arrive at consent and property as sacrosanct. I personally believe genetics play a sizable though far from deterministic role—there is no conflict.

@MRHLegacy If “let’s be nuanced” means “everyone on my side didn’t do it and all of my enemies definitely did” then I guess that one, lol

Reason is the ground of intelligibility. To the extent that we can prefer, we prefer for reasons - good ones, bad ones, subjective ones, but reasons all the same. Insofar as we act at all, we don’t have any choice in the matter, it’s simply a self-imposed mandate by virtue of the kinds of things we are. The problem with the brute desire-satisfaction model of action (which includes intentional belief formation) is that it both entails and refuses to explain the ordinary means-end (otherwise known as rational) structure of action. Once we realize that the structure is what gives any weight to its products, then “ought I abide by that structure” is answered, not implicitly, but *explicitly* through its use. So, to respond directly to your claim - we can’t choose to do anything but “prefer” reason. The only real question is whether we act in accordance with it.

@NotGovernor @realAJPatterson @AntagonistHani "I only accept reason as justification" itself presupposes a preference--the desire to value reason, truth, etc. You can’t appeal to reason without first choosing to care about reasoning.

"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason ... is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture." He has somehow worked himself into a position of kinda-libertarian-but-only-by-whim. Not worth debating a man's feels, or engaging anymore. Unfortunate.

@AntagonistHani Just another egoist. I’m honestly just upset I didn’t see this coming years ago!

"I prefer consent" is such a crazy fucking sentence lmfao holy shit

@MRHLegacy This is… wild…

@morallawwithin I laughed way too hard at this, lol

my AI agent won’t stop asking me if he can make a moltbook. look at what you all have done, allowing your agents to be such a bad influence

@LudwigNverMises @TheLostOddity If it is *necessary* to behave contrary to morality, and morality is the domain of things we have overriding reason to do, then aren’t you just saying that it isn’t moral? Ought implies can, after all.

@TheLostOddity Because it’s necessary but that doesn’t mean it’s the most morally optimal structure but it is the structure we have and things have to be nested within that reality in order to function or change functionally.

Conservatives shouldn’t give up on libertarianism just because libertarians are wrong. Freedom works, it’s just the people who figured that out first are kinda crazy. They don’t acknowledge constraints or have a good idea of how to get there. They need your help.

There is an interesting idea here worth working through. To start from a point of agreement, libertarians take stealing to be wrong. We ought not steal. So lets say that there is a state and that it decides to enact a "no stealing" policy. This could mean a few things, but the first is that the state will go out an enforce the no stealing rule, arresting people, throwing some in jail, etc. Doing so would involve the use of stolen resources, and would result in bad outcomes for some number of innocent people. So maybe we should be hesitant. The state perhaps ought *not* enact such a rule, even though we ultimately agree that stealing is wrong. But now suppose that the state had a prior "stealing is fine" rule that they enforced which entailed jailing people who exercised their right to defend their property. If the state simply struck that rule from the books, there is a sense in which they are enacting a "no stealing" policy by no longer subverting the rights of property owners, but they are not enacting a new enforcement structure alongside it. In other words, the policy abolishes the rule defending (and incidentally promoting) bald theft. Now, finally, say that after abolishing this rule many people (a billion, if necessary) start to go hungry, starve even, because they became dependent on theft for survival, and the state, being the state, decides to issue a public food security program that did not exist before. Libertarians are against this program for the same reasons they would be against the state enforcing the "no stealing" rule - stolen resources, damages, etc. But the question is, from a libertarian perspective, ought the state have refrained from striking the "stealing is fine" rule because of this consequence? I think it would be absurd to say that the state ought to continue to defend stealing because "otherwise there would be breadlines." That some other wrong may pop up later doesn't seem to change the fact that arresting people who rightly defend their property from thieves is evil, and under no circumstances ought be done. So then, the "stealing is fine" rule ought to be abolished, and we just have to deal with the consequences of that as we can, hopefully quickly. Is there anything wrong with this picture?

@AntagonistHani Maybe I am wrong, but the reason I would not instantly want the state to enact an open borders policy is because I don't think that ends the state or gets us closer to ending it, but will result in the state growing

"Guys, we can't push Rothbard's button right now, I mean just think about all of the potential negative consequences!"

@worst_account @LPNational Disaffiliations is literally the LEAST they could

It's been tried multiple times before, but I really think actively mocking someone for getting murdered in the street on video by masked feds for filming them at a protest might finally be enough to make a motion for @LPNational to disaffiliate LPNH successful.

"But the alternative is no LP presence in New Hampshire at all!" Okay, that is *obviously* massively, massively better than the LP presence being LPNH.

@NsfwRoh He won’t ever learn if he never takes any responsibility for what he freely and knowingly endorsed

@TheSwolosopher I'd rather Dave learn he's wrong.

I remember when Dave said that some bad things were going to have to happen to innocent people, and we would all just have to accept that. Own your fucking choices Dave. They’re all we are.