WEBVTT

NOTE Authors Forum: Property, Freedom & Society

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:14.000
Our final presentation is going to be by Stefan Kinsella. He is the editor of Libertarian Papers and the co-editor of the book, Property, Freedom, and Society. Stefan?

2
00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:24.920
Thank you, Mark. It's nice to be here. I've been coming to the Austrian Scholars Conference

3
00:00:24.920 --> 00:00:29.760
for over 10 years, I think, and I think this is the first time I've woken up early enough

4
00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:37.680
to make it to the authors forum. So, good strategy. So, I'm here to talk about the book

5
00:00:37.680 --> 00:00:43.560
that I co-edited with Guido Holzmann, who can't be here today. It's Property, Freedom,

6
00:00:43.560 --> 00:00:47.240
Women's Society, Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

7
00:00:47.240 --> 00:00:51.480
What I have showing here are some pictures of the ceremony in which the book was given

8
00:00:51.480 --> 00:00:54.320
out.

9
00:00:54.320 --> 00:01:00.800
The book is a personal book, as testriests are, and so I'd like to go into a little bit

10
00:01:00.800 --> 00:01:05.080
of history of how the book came about.

11
00:01:05.080 --> 00:01:09.000
Guido and I have been really good friends for about 15 years.

12
00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:14.920
We met at the airport at Atlanta in 1996 or so, coming to one of these events, both of

13
00:01:14.920 --> 00:01:20.160
us coming here primarily to meet, to be with Hans and speak with Hans, and we've both been

14
00:01:20.160 --> 00:01:25.200
increasingly influenced by Hans and friends with him over the years, and he's been a mentor

15
00:01:25.200 --> 00:01:30.920
to us and to many others, and a few years back Guido and I thought of the idea that

16
00:01:30.920 --> 00:01:36.240
it was appropriate and necessary to do a festriff for Hans. There are many very good festrifts

17
00:01:36.240 --> 00:01:43.240
One of my favorites is the Rothbard, which I've devoured and which is a wonderful fester of Man Economy and Liberty.

18
00:01:43.240 --> 00:01:50.240
So about three years ago, we started planning the project in earnest.

19
00:01:50.240 --> 00:02:00.240
Guido, with his German mentality, thought we should divide the world into two, and I would take America and he would take the rest of the world.

20
00:02:00.240 --> 00:02:13.240
And it worked out to be about half and half, so about half of the contributors and Hans' associates, friends, colleagues, former students were from America and about half were from various parts of Europe and other parts of the globe.

21
00:02:13.240 --> 00:02:26.240
And that worked out well. I am an editor of some books, some legal books for Oxford and I deal with authors quite often from law firms all around the world submitting papers.

22
00:02:26.240 --> 00:02:33.240
paper, so I'm used to juggling people who submit things late, and so that was the case here.

23
00:02:33.240 --> 00:02:38.240
But we actually had very good turnout. It worked out well. It worked out on time.

24
00:02:38.240 --> 00:02:52.240
The plan was we chose the title. We had several alternative titles, but Hans is pretty literal and straight speaking sometimes, and he was the one who suggested the title for my against intellectual property article.

25
00:02:52.240 --> 00:02:58.240
He said call it against intellectual property. That's what it is. Okay. Good idea.

26
00:02:58.240 --> 00:03:06.240
And when he founded his Property and Freedom Society a few years ago, I remember Agito and I were there for the founding meeting in 2006 in Bodrum, Turkey.

27
00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:16.240
And before that, Hans was kicking around ideas for the title, and we were going to call it the Mount Ararat Society in competition with Mont Pelerin.

28
00:03:16.240 --> 00:03:28.240
Ararat is nearby, but it sounded maybe – had some of the wrong connotations. But Hans said, well, we're property and freedom, and it's a society, so property and freedom society.

29
00:03:28.240 --> 00:03:41.240
But the plan was Hans was turning 60 in September of 2009 last year, and we knew he would be at the Mises University in late July last year, so it was about a month from his birthday.

30
00:03:41.240 --> 00:03:42.240
."

31
00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:47.320
So we wanted to be secret and it was amazingly kept secret even though David Gordon contributed

32
00:03:47.320 --> 00:03:52.520
the chapter to the book.

33
00:03:52.520 --> 00:03:58.960
And so everyone was in on it except for Hans, his wife was in on it and we had a very nice

34
00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:04.080
reception which the pictures there from the reception at Judge Denson's house.

35
00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:08.400
So it was a very nice reception and I think Hans thought it was going to be a little birthday

36
00:04:08.400 --> 00:04:13.520
Party for him, but it turned out to be more than that. The book is full of wonderful essays,

37
00:04:13.520 --> 00:04:22.160
some are personal, some are, for once I wrote something in there not on NLF property, and

38
00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:30.640
Guido read a wonderful chapter, Joseph Salerno has a classic article from the past in there,

39
00:04:30.640 --> 00:04:34.040
and it's just a nice collection of articles from all over the world and on different topics

40
00:04:34.040 --> 00:04:48.040
of Hans' Interest Areas. And another good thing about the book was we published it. It was actually, I published it from my iPhone at the reception because it was ready to go on a PDF file online.

41
00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:57.040
The blog post was ready so I loaded up my little browser and I hit publish. So that was a pretty cool high tech way to do it. And we handed it out there.

42
00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:05.040
So the book is here. It's available on the Mises Institute site for free, and you can order it as well. So I'll take any questions after. Thank you.