Greg Morin

There is no liberty without consent.

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

Resisting peer pressure is seen as a virtue in childhood and a vice in adulthood.

[Stephan Kinsella @NSKinsella]

https://t.co/bJ75K9jk4O @propfreedom
@beegarc_ @gregmorin @AlessandroFusi9 @HoppeQuotes @mcaogando @saifedean

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

Ultimate low time preference.

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

@anarcocampesino @NSKinsella @YouTube He’s Batman

[Saifedean Ammous @saifedean]

Listening to the greats, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and @NSKinsella, at the Rothbard at 100 conference in Porto.

[Stephan Kinsella @NSKinsella]

FYMNR!

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

@CsTominaga Wait. Aren’t you Satoshi 😂

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

There is no difference between public and private authority. Voting does not legitimize aggression but hey you keep believing in your statist fantasies that mistake mob rule for civil order.

Just because a million people vote for something and one voted against it doesn’t mean the million are right.

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

Except you’re not morally “correct”. This just an assertion. The contribution of AC to climate change is no more than that of pissing in the ocean causing an increase in the salinity of the water. But it’s easier for you to believe a lie so you can preen sanctimonious sermons about sacrificing thousands on the altar of climate hysteria.

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

@CsTominaga It’s exactly the same. The only difference is semantics. This group has “legal” authority and this one doesn’t. Says who? Oh the ones with self-anointed “legal” authority. Question begging justifications are all you seem to have in your circular logic.

[Saifedean Ammous @saifedean]

On Saturday 27 June, I'm speaking at Rothbard 100 in Porto, alongside Hoppe, @NSKinsella and many others. It will be the biggest libertarian event Portugal has held. Limited seats and they’re selling out. I hope to see you there!

https://t.co/brwP8GQzGM

[Sparrow Wallet 🐦 @SparrowWallet]

Unless @Apple's decision to terminate @craigraw's Apple Developer account is reversed by June 30, all new installs of Sparrow will fail, and development on macOS will end. If you value Sparrow, a repost would help. @AppleSupport

[Stephan Kinsella @NSKinsella]

"And no, the “negative servitudes” routine does not save you. It assumes the conclusion. It begins by declaring that the creator has no legitimate property interest in the invention, design, expression, or disclosed technical arrangement, and then announces that protecting that interest must be an illegitimate burden on someone else’s property. That is not proof. That is circular."

No. Your argument is circular since you are not accepting the burden of proof. You presumably agree that there ought to be property rights in material resources based on homesteading and contractual transfer. You presumably also agree that there can be negative easements if they are consented to. It is clear that a patent is a negative easement. But it was not consented to. It prima facie violates the very rights you already agreed to. The burden is on you to show why it's not. You can't satisfy it by your trick of saying "you haven't shown that it isn't". This is the trick you guys play: since you cannot justify IP rights you try to act as if they are presumed valid unless we can show they are not valid. That is not how argumentation works: you both establish what you do agree on and then examine whether a norm proposed is compatible with this, and you need to advance reasons.

So, the burden is not on me to prove IP is not a right; but... I have--it's incompatible with rights you already acknowledge. Can you seriously dispute that a contractually granted easement is legitimate--because of consent? Can you really deny that an IP right IS a negative easement or servitude? That's what it is: the holder of the IP right can prevent the owner of the burdened property from using it. That is what a negative easement is. If it's consensual it's fine. Just like if a girl consents to sex it's fine but if not it's rape. Consent makes all the difference. So where is the consent?
Now you will say "because I own the idea 'or its application". But that is what is in dispute. You are just making an assertion. You need an argument. You haven't given one. We both agree there should be rights in land and corporeal personalty. I don't have to prove it because you concede this. But you are now asserting a new type of right. The rights we agree on are based on the need for people to use resources without conflict, and so any property rights that provides normative support for the human activity of possessing and using a resource must include the right to first use it: to homestead an unused and previously unowned thing. This is the beginning of all property rights in previously unowned resources (body rights are a more primary and different matter). Notice that it is not creation: it is using, embordering, occupying—establishing an intersubjectively valid (objective) link between the claimant/user and the resource.
So you say well I own the invention because I created it. This is not an argument, it is assertion; because it presupposes creation is a source of rights. This is also not accepted by all parties, since all we accept is that there ought to be property rights in previously unowned resources established first and foremost by occupation and use. Not by "creation".
Even production does not create property rights. Production is not creation of a new ownable thing; it's making the things you possess (and maybe own) more useful. Even Rand recognized that all action is only rearranging resources, not creation. ()
So you need to show how the negative servitudes of IP rights are justified. Are they consented to, or does consent not matter? Which is it?
Since you are so pathetically out of your depth, it's embarrassing... I'll help you: here's how you would go about it. In addition to identifying the owner of a disputed and conflictable resource by resort to the principles of original appropriation and contractual transfers, there is a third, which is really a sort of subsidiary or implication of the others: rectification. If you commit aggression, trespass, you invade the borders of or alter the physical integrity of another's owned resource without consent, you owe rectification or restitution. So in addition to transferring a resource you own to someone consensually, by contract; your resource may be transferred by the operation of the legal system as a result of your committing a crime or tort against some victim.
Okay, so if B, the patentee or copyright holder, claims the right to prevent A from using his owned resource as he wants, what is the basis for this? It can only be a b or c. (a) who homesteaded it? well not B. It was either A, or his ancestor in title. (b) not contract; A has not consented to a negative easement. What about (c) tort? Did A invade the borders of B's owned resources and thereby damage him and owe him restitution? Well, unless he did, then no; and you can't say "well stealing my customers or the profit I could have made if you didn't copy from me" is not a legitimate response because it is assuming what you need to prove: that there can be ownership of ideas [or applications thereof, whatever that means], or that property rights stem from creation, which you also need an argument for. So it is your argument that is tendentious and question-begging. This is why you keep slipping back and forth between may and can, between property norms/rights and positive law, you want to muddy the issue, as if the the dispute was ever about whether IP law and IP rights "exist" and whether IP rights "can" exist. Yes, doofus, we know they do and can exist, like slavery or taxation, but the question is whether these laws are legitimate: whether they are libertarian: whether they are just. They are not. They are evil; destructive; moral abominations. Like you.

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

@CsTominaga So you can “own” “value”. Huh. So I guess you can own “beauty” as well.

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

@NSKinsella @JayantBhandari5 Is whistling permitted at the Museum?

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

Wow. No AC in a hospital. This is what decades of ignorant environmental hysterical propaganda has wrought: a people willing to sacrifice the old, young and weak on the alter of phantom sanctimony.

[Tony Aubé @aubetony]

After a hellish week in a Paris Airbnb with no AC (100°F outside, 108°F+ inside), I started looking into why the French are so opposed to AC.
There's many reasons: bureaucracy, poverty, etc. But the main one is decades of environmental campaigns that convinced people AC is the devil.
The result? You can't escape the heat. Most buses, metro lines, and shopping malls have no AC.
This Monday, 850 schools are closing because classroom temperatures exceed 104°F.
In Nantes, they built a brand-new train station and a hospital without AC for environmental reasons. The station is now partially closed because it's become a "furnace" that endangers travelers. Hospitals are covering windows with emergency foil blankets to protect patients.
The French demonize air conditioning because it creates carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Never mind that France already has one of most carbon-free electricity in the world thanks to nuclear, or that it accounts for less than 1% of global emissions.
They also oppose AC because it "just displace the problem" by dumping heat into the street. Never mind that studies suggest even if an entire city were air-conditioned, the increase in outdoor temperature would be at most about 1°F.
Instead, people are willing to endure 104°F+ indoors to avoid a marginal increase outdoors.
This ideology kills more people than firearms in the United States.
Across Europe, between 50,000 and 70,000 people die from heat every year, mostly the elderly and the poor. Compare that to roughly 44,000 Americans killed by firearms.
For comparison, despite having a similar population, deserts, and more extreme temperatures, the United States has only about 2,500 heat-related deaths per year thanks to widespread AC.
That's what bothers me most. The moralizing posture completely detached from reality.
People feel morally superior for "not polluting." They criticize America and its guns while tolerating policies that kills even more people.
I share this anecdote because I know it's shocking to Americans. Here, schools or hospitals reaching 104°F would be unnaceptable.
The absurdity is immediately obvious to us because we're looking from the outside. We see the gap between moral intentions and real-world consequences.
But we're no different. In America, we have dozens of similar issues where we're just as irrational, and we've become blind to them because the solution isn't politically acceptable.
How do can we bring back logic and pragmatism in our societies ahead of irrational political ideological ?

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Wow

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

You argue by metaphor and assertion. Just saying something is “theft” doesn’t make it so. “Taking” implies exclusive transfer from one party to another and yet you claim no such taking occurs if I posses in my mind an idea you also possess. Which is it?
But here is the rub “exploitation of value”… that’s what your whole argument boils down to: arbitrary assertion of who has a “right” to “exploit” “value”. So you are merely imposing a negative servitude on anyone you deem has no “right” to said “value”. So I have property I’m not allowed to freely deploy because someone else had some idea “first”. This isn’t freedom. This is slavery. Humanity frozen because we have to get permission from the whole world before we can act lest we violate the “rights” of someone out there who had an idea “first”

[Greg Morin @gregmorin]

@CsTominaga @Rerazer @NSKinsella @clnuponaisle5 So how can one have conflict over non-tangible “property” ie ideas? That’s the whole point. You do understand if I “stole” your idea you still have it.

[Tom Woods @ThomasEWoods]

After 7 decades of "civil rights" activism, we have a huge black population that believes murder ought to be legal if against a white person.

Black students ought to pretend to be white on college applications, since we are said to live in a "white supremacist" society. Strangely, they do not.

That's because the truth is this: white people, in the 7 decades since the civil rights movement, crippled their own children with preferential policies that favored much less qualified black applicants in schooling and employment.

Any qualification that blacks couldn't meet at the same rate as whites had to be thrown out (or you bankrupt yourself in court by trying to show, with a team of vulture lawyers after you, that the requirement was absolutely necessary).

Countless jurisdictions have had to throw out entry exams entirely after no amount of dumbing them down could get enough black students to pass them.

The campaign against "gifted and talented" programs, meanwhile, has been driven partly by the "disparate impact" doctrine.

You've heard some of the news items. Seattle phased out its "highly capable cohort" (separate accelerated classes/schools) starting around 2021-2022, and aimed for full phase-out by 2027-2028 (with some delays). The rationale? Addressing "historical inequity" and overrepresentation of white and Asian students.

Your student can't have those programs because we've decided there are too many people in them who look like him.

Rockville Centre, New York, has long moved away from gifted tracking toward mixed-ability classes. San Francisco Unified delayed Algebra I and eliminated honors/gifted math tracks for "equity" purposes. We could go on and on.

Even though some of America's most politically "progressive" people are in education, and despite repeated and aggressive (and expensive) efforts across the country, no school district anywhere in America, no matter how progressive, has ever managed to eliminate the black-white educational achievement gap, which by 12th grade is estimated as a four-year difference.

And vastly fewer black students percentage-wise choose to take advanced-placement classes even in school systems in which such classes are open to anyone.

Given that nobody anywhere has been able to solve this problem, why, apart from hatred and spite, should bright students be singled out to be deprived of a program that benefits them?

The disparities are evident even at the very beginning of the educational process. The National Center for Educational Statistics found that blacks entering kindergarten we're already disproportionately testing in the bottom, quarter of students in reading, math, and general knowledge.

Behavioral differences are also evident that early, and they persist to the future. On average, black students are much less likely than whites to be described by kindergarten teachers as a tentative, eager to learn, and persistent in carrying out assigned tasks, and they are more likely to be described as argumentative, quick tempered, and violent.

These discipline disparities persist over time. Later in life blacks are 2 1/2 times as likely to be suspended or expelled from school as whites.

Faced with statistics, like these, so-called civil rights groups, typically accuse white teachers of arbitrarily, singling out blacks for punishment. To the contrary, black teachers have been found to be even more critical of black students than white teachers are.

Moreover, Asian students are less than half as likely as whites to be suspended or expelled, and it is unreasonable to ask us to believe that an anti-white, pro-Asian bias permeates the American educational system.

And educational disparities between the races persist even when social class is taken into account, so that comfortable explanation doesn't work.

The crime statistics tell us everything: if you based your opinions on TV or the movies, you would think the big problem in America is white-on-black violence. In fact, the reality is so overwhelmingly the opposite that most people would be shocked to learn the real numbers.

Per 10,000 whites, 3.4 violent crimes are committed against blacks. Per 10,000 blacks, 153 violent crimes are committed against whites.

As time has gone on, special accommodations for blacks, and disabilities placed on whites, have only grown more intense.

In 2023 the percentage of white men in tenure-track faculty positions at Harvard declined from 39 percent in 2014 to 18 percent. That doesn't happen by accident.

Oh, who cares about Harvard faculty, some will say.

But it reflects a society-wide problem. Here are some other numbers we now know, that also incorporate the anti-male bias in hiring:

TV/Hollywood Writers: White men comprised roughly 48% of lower-level TV writers in 2011, dropping to 11.9% by 2024.

Medical school matriculants: White men accounted for 31% in 2014, declining to 20.5% in 2025.

The Atlantic staff: In 2013: 53% male / 89% white; by 2024: 36% male / 66% white.

University faculty hiring (tenure-track): At UC Berkeley, white men comprised 52.7% of new tenure-track faculty hires in 2015, dropping to 21.5% in 2023.

Humanities/social sciences faculty hires: UC Irvine hired 64 tenure-track assistant professors in humanities and social sciences since 2020 — only 3 (4.7%) were white men.

At UC Santa Cruz, of 59 assistant professors in Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (2020–2024), only 2 (3%) were white men.

Law school matriculants: White men accounted for 31.2% of law school matriculants in 2016, falling to 25.7% in 2024.

Corporate/tech entry- and mid-level (specifically Amazon): Entry-level “professionals” (college graduates) were 42.3% white male in 2014. By 2024, mid-level managers had fallen from 55.8% white male in 2014 to 33.8% (nearly 40% decline).

Tech workforce (specifically Google): White men represented nearly 50% of the workforce in 2014, dropping to less than one-third by 2024 (a roughly 34% relative decline).

Four years ago a survey of a thousand hiring managers in the United States came out that showed 16 percent of such managers had been expressly told to stop hiring white men.

Further, 48 percent of hiring managers say they have been instructed to prioritize "diversity" over merit, and 53% believe they will lose their jobs if they don’t hire accordingly.

All across the country there are special programs, of every shape and size, for minority applicants. If you had any idea of the scale of it, you would be shocked -- no matter how much you think you know about the subject.

Instead of the kind of gratitude you might expect from people who have benefited from the most systematic effort in any society to assist a minority group -- I haven't even mentioned the literal trillions in wealth redistribution -- it is never enough, and the recipients will scream "RACIST" in your face even for pointing any of this out.

We can hope that the Karmelo Anthony case accelerates the coming of the day when whites say: we have done everything humanly possible for you, and received only hatred and ingratitude in return. You are on your own now.