There's a peculiar habit among American communists who insist that the United States represents everything wrong with capitalism while praising China as an example of what communism can accomplish.

Ask them what makes American capitalism so terrible, and you'll often hear about corporate subsidies, bailouts, government favoritism, politically connected billionaires, and politicians directing public resources toward handpicked businesses.

And on those complaints, we can find considerable common ground.

Government favoritism is an injustice. Politicians have no business taking money from taxpayers to reward favored corporations, protect politically connected businesses from competition, or determine which companies deserve to succeed.

But there's a rather inconvenient question for those who condemn these practices as capitalism while praising Communist Party-ruled China.

Have you ever looked into Huawei?

The $75 Billion Elephant in the Room

In 2019, The Wall Street Journal published an investigation estimating that Huawei had benefited from access to as much as $75 billion in Chinese state support over approximately 25 years.

The estimated assistance included:

• $46 billion in state-backed lending and credit facilities.

• $25 billion in estimated tax savings.

• $2 billion in discounted land purchases.

• $1.6 billion in direct government grants.

These figures represent different forms of assistance, including access to financing rather than simply cash handed over by the government. Huawei disputed the characterization that it received special treatment.

Nevertheless, the scale and variety of state involvement deserve examination.

And the financial assistance is only the beginning.

When the Government Is Your Banker, Customer, and Business Partner

Consider the additional advantages available to Huawei within China's state-directed economy.

State-backed international financing. Chinese policy banks have supported telecommunications projects abroad, including financing arrangements that helped foreign customers purchase Chinese equipment.

State-controlled customers. In 2021, China Mobile, itself a state-owned enterprise, awarded Huawei approximately 60% of its 5G base-station contracts in a major procurement round. That percentage alone doesn't prove an unfair award, but it illustrates the enormous commercial importance of government-controlled customers.

Government procurement preferences. Chinese policies have encouraged domestic technology purchasing and the development of national technology champions.

Semiconductor industrial policy. State-backed investment funds, research initiatives, tax incentives, and industrial support have helped develop China's domestic semiconductor ecosystem, including suppliers relevant to Huawei.

Protection from foreign competition. China's telecommunications market operates under extensive state regulation, licensing requirements, and restrictions on foreign participation.

International diplomatic support. Chinese officials have actively defended Huawei's interests abroad, including opposing foreign restrictions on its telecommunications equipment.

The HONOR transaction. In 2020, Huawei sold its HONOR smartphone business to a consortium that included state-backed entities. The transaction was reportedly valued at approximately $15 billion, although it should be distinguished from a direct subsidy.

Huawei is a privately held company, but it operates within an economy where the government possesses extraordinary power over credit, procurement, investment, regulation, and market access.

If those relationships are objectionable when they occur in America, why would they become admirable when they occur in China?

The Convenient Definition of Capitalism

Here's where the argument becomes especially revealing.

When an American corporation receives government assistance, we're told this demonstrates how capitalism works in the real world.

Apparently, adding those three words is sufficient to dispense with the need to define capitalism.

Never mind that laissez-faire capitalism rests on private property rights, voluntary exchange, competition, and the separation of government from economic favoritism.

A government forcibly collecting money from one person to subsidize another is exercising political power over economic resources.

That action contradicts laissez-faire capitalist principles.

Yet somehow, the same people who insist that every American government intervention should be attributed to capitalism can look at China's far more extensive state direction and describe it as a vindication of communism.

The standard changes with the flag.

And this is precisely why definitions matter.

Capitalism, socialism, and communism are economic and political concepts with identifiable principles. Their meanings cannot reasonably change every time someone wants to praise one government or condemn another.

What China Actually Demonstrates

China isn't a pure communist economy. It combines extensive private enterprise and markets with state ownership, Communist Party authority, industrial planning, and substantial government direction of economic activity.

Nor does socialism necessarily require subsidizing privately owned corporations. Socialist traditions differ considerably, including over whether markets should exist.

But state-directed allocation of resources is entirely compatible with important forms of socialist economic planning. It is fundamentally at odds with laissez-faire capitalism when imposed through coercive political favoritism.

This creates an uncomfortable problem for those who use government intervention as their principal indictment of capitalism.

If subsidies demonstrate the failure of capitalism, what do China's subsidies demonstrate?

If politically connected corporations prove that America is corrupt, what does Huawei's relationship with the Chinese state prove?

If government interference prevents American markets from serving consumers properly, why should even greater government interference be celebrated elsewhere?

You cannot answer these questions by repeatedly saying real-world capitalism.

You have to identify the principles you're judging and apply them consistently.

The Morality of Political Favoritism

The problem with corporate favoritism goes deeper than the amount of money involved.

It concerns the authority being exercised.

When a government subsidizes a business, it substitutes political judgment for the voluntary decisions of consumers, investors, and producers.

People who never agreed to finance that enterprise are compelled to contribute. Competitors who receive no equivalent assistance must operate against a business whose resources have been supplemented through political power.

Success becomes partly dependent on convincing politicians to direct other people's resources toward you.

And the incentives follow.

Businesses gain reasons to lobby rather than compete. Politicians gain opportunities to reward allies. Economic decisions become increasingly dependent on political relationships.

The more extensively the state controls economic resources, the greater the opportunities for political favoritism.

This is why the principle matters more than the nationality of the beneficiaries.

An American corporation has no greater moral claim to taxpayer subsidies than a Chinese corporation.

Neither does a government acquire the moral authority to redistribute private wealth merely by calling itself socialist, communist, democratic, or capitalist.

Political favoritism remains political favoritism, regardless of the ideology used to justify it.

The Standard That Exposes the Contradiction

Suppose we accepted the argument that capitalism should be judged by everything the American government does.

Would communism then have to be judged by everything the Chinese Communist Party does?

Its censorship? Its restrictions on private enterprise? Its political control of banking? Its industrial favoritism? Its suppression of independent political opposition?

Or would we suddenly be informed that these things don't represent real communism?

That's the convenience of refusing to define economic systems by their principles.

Capitalism becomes responsible for every government action its critics dislike, while communism becomes an idealized collection of outcomes its advocates hope to achieve.

One system is judged by its alleged failures, including policies that contradict its principles.

The other is judged by its promises, even when its actual institutions contradict those promises.

That isn't a serious method of economic analysis.

It's an exercise in selective attribution.

Conclusion: Apply Your Own Standard

If you object to corporate subsidies, oppose corporate subsidies.

If you object to government favoritism, oppose government favoritism.

If you believe political connections should not determine which businesses succeed, apply that principle to Huawei just as readily as you would to Amazon, Boeing, or General Motors.

But don't condemn American government intervention as capitalism and then celebrate Chinese government intervention as communism.

The same standard must apply to both.

And if your definition of capitalism is simply whatever the American government does, while your definition of communism is whatever you wish the Chinese government represented, perhaps your first problem isn't with economics.

Perhaps it's that you've never bothered to define the words you're using.

Sources and further reading

• The Wall Street Journal, December 25, 2019: “State Support Helped Fuel Huawei's Global Rise.” Investigation of approximately $75 billion in estimated Chinese government support.

• Congressional Research Service, China's New Semiconductor Policies: Issues for Congress, January 2022. Analysis of China's industrial policies and semiconductor incentives.

• MERICS, research on Huawei's role in China's semiconductor supply chain.

• Huawei annual reports, for company-disclosed government grants and financial information.

• Contemporary reporting on China Mobile's 2021 5G procurement and Huawei's 2020 sale of HONOR.

The financial estimates cited above describe historical support and should not be interpreted as current annual subsidy totals.

This essay by Gregory Salmieri was originally published in New Ideal on January 7, 2019.

The United States of America is regularly described as a “democracy” in a way that implies that this word names the essence of our political system. By “essence,” I mean the fundamental feature that sets the American system apart from the systems by which other nations were governed in the centuries prior to America’s founding, and the feature that America has since inspired much of the rest of the world to adopt. Because of this, “democracy” is often regarded as our fundamental political value — as the basic thing that we should strive to achieve more consistently in our own government and to promote abroad. Our oldest surviving political party dating back to 1828 takes its name from the word. Since about that time, a host of measures have been championed as “democratic.” These include the extension of suffrage to African Americans in 1870 and women in 1920, late-nineteenth-century amendments to many state constitutions allowing laws to be passed by referendum, and the establishment of campaign finance laws in the late twentieth century. Throughout this period, the term “democracy” has been used to champion laws such as the antitrust acts and various taxation and welfare policies aimed at reducing economic inequality. With regard to foreign policy, America entered World War I, in Woodrow Wilson’s words, to “make the world safe for democracy,” and the guiding principle behind George W. Bush’s response to the 9/11 attacks was the promotion of “democracy” in the Middle East.1

However, it is not always clear what “democracy” means, whether it always means the same thing, and, if not, which of its meanings refer to something that is both good and consistent with the American system of government. Recall that some of the most evil and repressive regimes of recent history have described themselves as democracies: the “German Democratic Republic,” which had to build a wall to prevent its oppressed citizens from escaping into West Berlin; “Democratic Kampuchea,” which killed millions of its citizens during its five-year reign; and the present-day “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” more commonly referred to as “North Korea.”

The word originates, of course, in ancient Greece, where it referred to a political system, such as that of Athens, in which the power (crasis) resides in the people (demos) as a whole. This was literally true in Athens, where as many decisions as practicable were made by an assembly of all available male citizens (a category that excluded slaves and resident aliens). The remaining decisions were made by smaller groups or individuals selected either by vote or by lot. The majority was empowered to do whatever it pleased.

By its fickle will, prominent citizens were regularly ostracized and occasionally executed. Socrates’ execution in 399 B.C. for “impiety” is the most famous example, but the philosophers Anaxagoras and Aristotle each faced similar charges, in both cases shortly after political factions with whom they were associated fell out of favor. Athenian generals and orators were also regularly exiled, and sometimes recalled from exile, for similarly transient reasons. Ancient critics, including Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides, blamed democracy for a host of other rash and unjust decisions, including those that led to the decades of war with Sparta that ended Athens’ standing as a world power. As a system of majority rule, such democracy lends itself to the abuse of minorities of all sorts. In particular, the ancient critics point out, “democracy” is a system in which the wealthy are vulnerable to expropriation by the envious masses.

In eighteenth-century English, “democracy” was understood to mean a political system like that of Ancient Athens. America’s Founders were anxious to point out the differences between democracy and the system they were building at both the state and federal levels. In Federalist 63, James Madison writes that what distinguishes “the American Governments” from those of ancient city-states is “the total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity” from American government. Neither at the state nor the federal level did citizens vote directly on policies. Instead, policies were set by popularly elected representatives, and the system of representation was devised so as to hinder the formation of majority factions that could sacrifice the rights of minorities.

Even apart from the historical examples, it should be easy to see the perils of “democracy” in its original meaning, which Ayn Rand glossed as follows: “unlimited majority rule, a social system in which one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose.”2

The frequent appeals to “democracy” in our contemporary political rhetoric reflect and reinforce the misguided idea that voting is the essential feature of the American political system and the cause of its moral legitimacy.

Voting certainly is one essential feature of our political system, but it is not the essence of the American system, nor is it sufficient to make a government morally legitimate. If it were, no essential difference would exist between the American system and the mob rule of ancient Athens, and nothing would be wrong with a political system under which people are routinely killed or exiled when the public mood turns against them.

The myopic focus on voting fostered by the current use of the term “democracy” has had disastrous effects. Wilson’s attempts to promote democracy abroad helped set the stage for the formation of Communist Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany.3  America’s recent attempts to promote democracy in the Middle East precipitated the elections by which both the terrorist group Hamas came to power in the Palestinian Territories and Islamic theocrats came to power in Egypt. It also led to the chaos in Iraq and Syria out of which ISIS emerged. In each case, American policy opposed autocratic regimes in favor of alternatives that had more popular support, but our policymakers gave little thought to what sorts of governments the majorities among these populations supported.

Extolling “democracy,” as the term is presently used, leads to an exclusive focus on the question of who should govern (the majority or some special faction), ignoring the question of how people ought to be governed. But this latter is the fundamental question; by comparison, the issue of how specific officials and policies should be selected is a mere detail. Putting aside for the moment the question of who governs, we can see that certain ways of governing are better — more just — and others worse.

For example, a government that prohibits slavery is better than an otherwise similar government under which some people are allowed to  “own” others. Likewise, a government under which individuals cannot be punished until a jury of their peers has convicted them of violating a specific law that is objectively written and published in advance is better than a government under which some people are empowered to summarily punish anyone they please. It is not the will of the people that makes objective law and the prohibition against slavery good. Quite the reverse: what makes a people good is recognizing and implementing such moral truths as that objective law is just and slavery is unjust. It is only on the basis of such truths that we can grasp why voting is essential to the moral legitimacy of a government.

This is the essence of the American system of government. Our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, begins with a metaphysical and moral foundation, from which it first derives the proper function of government, and only then addresses the issue of how and by whom a government should be established or altered. It is this objective moral perspective rather than the subjective deference to majority rule that animated the American Revolution, including the process by which our state and federal constitutions were crafted.

The Declaration’s foundational premise is “that all men are created equal.” To claim this is to deny that there are any innate distinctions of rank, by which some individuals or groups have natural authority over others. Reflecting on the Declaration fifty years later, Thomas Jefferson described this fundamental premise as “the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.”4 It is “from that equal creation,” as Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration puts it, that human beings derive the “inalienable rights” among which the Declaration counts the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The finished draft of course says that men are “endowed by their Creator” with these rights, but the context makes clear that the Creator — whether a personal God or an impersonal Nature — endows us with rights precisely by creating us as equals. Each of us is equally a human being, who can and must lead his own life, using his own judgment to define and achieve his own happiness, rather than relying on anyone else to rule or to serve him. Because of this, each of us needs and has a right to lead his own life devoted to his own chosen ends, free from forcible interference by others. A right, as Rand aptly put it, is “a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.”5

It is “to secure these rights,” the Declaration tells us, that “Governments are instituted among Men.” The fundamental standard for evaluating a government follows from this statement of its purpose. A government is good insofar as it serves to protect individual rights, and it is bad insofar as it jeopardizes them.

Since government’s purpose is securing the rights of the governed, and since no one is by nature entitled to govern over anyone else, it is the individuals governed by a government who must judge whether it is fulfilling its purpose, and they must alter or replace it when it fails to do so. It is in this sense that the Declaration tells us governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” so that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [viz. individual rights], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Since none among the governed (much less anyone apart from them) has any natural authority over the rest, when making decisions about how to govern themselves, they must approach one another as equals. Voting is an indispensable means to decision-making among equals, since it distributes authority equally among all concerned. This is why voting is an essential component of a moral government. This does not mean, however, that individuals are morally entitled to vote for any system of government they please. An inalienable right is one that no one, and no group, may violate. Accordingly, there can be no right of any majority to structure the government in a way that sacrifices the rights of a minority.

The people have the right to institute only that form of government that they judge will best promote their safety and happiness by protecting the inalienable rights of all the individuals involved. It is the principle of rights, and not the mere will of the people, that makes a government legitimate. The people’s right and responsibility is to recognize and implement this principle, and each of the people has a moral responsibility to himself and his fellows to take this principle as his standard when casting his vote.

The passage we have been discussing from the Declaration of Independence concerns a people’s decision to fundamentally alter its system of government —  to establish a new constitution or amend an existing one. But the point that voters have a moral responsibility to vote only for those people or measures that they judge to be consistent with the government’s function of protecting individual rights applies also to all the votes within a proper political system. This includes both votes by individual citizens for representatives and votes by legislators for laws. The power that voters of both sorts properly have is not a power to impose their will on others; it is the power to use their judgment to determine how best to carry out the proper functions of government. As Rand puts the point:

Voting is merely a proper political device — within a strictly, constitutionally delimited sphere of action — for choosing the practical means of implementing a society’s basic principles. But those principles are not determined by vote.6

As we have seen, even in the case of voting to ratify or amend a constitution, the basic principles cannot be determined by vote. For it is only by recognizing that all human beings are equal with respect to their rights (so that none may subjugate others) that a people realizes the moral need for voting as part of the process of establishing or altering a system of government. It follows from this same principle that voting is not the source of individuals’ rights, but instead a means by which a society can work together to articulate and secure these rights.

Voting certainly is one essential feature of our political system, but it is not the essence of the American system, nor is it sufficient to make a government morally legitimate.

Some individuals will necessarily be subjugated by others in any society that does not implement what Madison called “the vital principle of free government” namely: “that those who are to be bound by laws ought to have a voice in making them.”7 For this reason voting is an indispensable part of any moral system of government. Its purpose is not to enable the majority to exercise its will, but to prevent anyone from being in a position to arbitrarily impose his will on others — as lawmakers would be if they were not answerable to the people. This is the genius of the system that Madison and America’s other Founders devised. Leonard Peikoff explains:

By defining in detail the division of powers within the government and the ruling procedures, including the brilliant mechanism of checks and balances, they established a system whose operation and integrity were independent, so far as possible, of the moral character of any of its temporary officials — a system impervious, so far as possible, to subversion by an aspiring dictator or by the public mood of the moment.8

What does this imply about the questions surrounding the word “democracy” with which we began?

With regard to the terminological issue, we have seen why it is misleading to describe America as a democracy. Some of the defects of this description are remedied by the phrase “liberal democracy,” which The Oxford English Dictionary defines as “a democratic system of representative government in which individual rights and civil liberties are officially recognized and protected, and the exercise of political power is limited by the rule of law.”9 The phrase has gained currency over the past few decades, prompting its addition to the dictionary in 2010.

Describing America and similarly governed nations as “liberal democracies” is a marked improvement over describing them merely as “democracies.” However, both the phrase and its definition imply that this system of government is a species of the genus “democracy,” and that the feature of voting (which unites all the members of this genus) is fundamental to the feature of respecting individual rights (which sets liberal democracies apart from democracies of other sorts).

In fact, as we have seen, the reverse is the case: America was founded on the understanding that protecting individual rights is the purpose of government, and voting is merely a crucial means to this end. If the term “liberal” (here meaning “respecting individual rights”) is to be paired with the term “democratic” (meaning “involving elections”) to describe the American system of government, they should be paired in the opposite order: America has a democratic liberal system, not a liberal democracy.

In any case, once one has established that we have a system based on individual rights, it is redundant to add a term denoting the presence of elections because they are a necessary feature of any rights-respecting system. Moreover, the term “liberal” is itself vague, being associated with a nineteenth-century political movement that began as a defense of individual rights, but gradually transmuted, in the United States at least, into a movement that apologized for socialism.10 Unfortunately, there is no unambiguous name for the American system of government. The term “republic” was often used by our Founders, but this term too has often been used in other senses, as in the names of several Communist dictatorships mentioned earlier. Given this history, we might use the term “constitutional republic” or perhaps “individualistic republic” to name the American system.

Voting is essential to America and to any moral system of government, not because it enables the majority to assert its will, but because it protects each individual from being subject to the will of others. With this in mind, how should we evaluate the various policies that are promoted in the name of democracy? Those “democratic” reforms that extend the vote to previously disenfranchised individuals, such as African Americans and women, are morally good and represent a more consistent implementation of America’s founding principles. The same cannot be said of “democratic” reforms, such as constitutional amendments allowing referenda, that are intended to make the government more directly responsive to the will of the majority, nor can it be said of any measures that violate the rights of some in order to make people more equal in respects other than their freedom to lead their own lives by their own judgment.

With regard to encouraging “democracy” in other countries, we must recognize that, as Rand put it:

The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system — and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters’ power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.11

It is only to the extent that a society is committed to the principles articulated in America’s Declaration of Independence that it is capable of forming and maintaining a just government, and there has not yet been a society that has implemented these principles consistently. How a society with a substantial commitment to these principles, such as our own, should interact with one that has little or no recognition of them is a difficult question to which I do not have a complete answer. But part of the answer is that we must understand and promote what is good about our own form of government. This includes understanding the specific function elections properly serve in our system of government and encouraging other societies to hold elections when they will serve this function, rather than encouraging them even when they will be vehicles for majorities to tyrannize over minorities.

Above all, we must not let our own elections devolve into such vehicles. Every prominent figure in contemporary American culture encourages us to gang up on some minority group, be it the rich, immigrants, or others, and impose our will on them via the ballot box. In the face of this, each of us must remember that the fact that a majority of us wants something is no reason to think that it is right for us to have it, much less that it is right for us to seize it by governmental force at the expense of some minority. Every individual has an unalienable right to his life, his liberty, his property, and the pursuit of his own happiness. The sole purpose of a proper government is to secure these rights. We therefore have no moral right to vote for any person or any policy for any motive other than the sincere and reasoned conviction that it will serve this purpose.12

“Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.”

~ Thomas Sowell from his 1980 book Knowledge and Decisions

[Cross-posted at StephanKinsella.com]

From Per Bylund, guest editor of an upcoming symposium issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, is announcing: “Call for Papers: Special Issue of the JLS: “Whither Libertarianism?”,” JLS Blog (Nov. 02, 2026).

Please consider submitting to this special issue of JLS: “Whither Libertarianism?” https://t.co/5pH5Ms6BPd

— Per Bylund (@PerBylund) November 2, 2026

Bylund¹ sees the core issues as the meaning and application of the non-aggression principle amid thick-vs-thin debates, open-borders vs. property-rights views on immigration, principle vs. efficacy/utilitarianism (including in the Libertarian Party), assessments of Milei’s record, and some libertarians’ support for political Zionism (viewed as endorsing aggression and statism), plus related institutional failures (e.g., during COVID), progressive shifts, and alliances with the New Right or left that risk diluting radical libertarianism. This frames a call for philosophical clarification of where libertarianism is headed, focused on the NAP.

As he concluded his call for papers:

With a focus on the radical libertarian core – the NAP – and its interpretations, applications, and meanings, this special issue asks libertarians, old and new, to provide their best arguments for where libertarianism is headed, its strengths and weaknesses, and what libertarians should expect from the future of our philosophy.

I gave a brief reply on the social media formerly known as Twitter:

My answer is already implicit in various writings: it has to be principled and anarchist, informed by Misesian Austrian economics and Rothbardian and Hoppean political views; anti-intellectual property; anti-thickism; opposition to the idea that state-owned property is unowned and subject to homesteading; caution about armchair theorizing; and for reform of contract and rights theory.

See e.g. one of my latest, Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe: An Indispensable Framework,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026). https://t.co/5lFTVAFvxr
And others such as:

The Universal Principles of Liberty
Thickism criticisms https://t.co/33ax2oQpgW
The Problem with Intellectual Property https://t.co/QG3aFtmjgd
The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract https://t.co/LyuxEloC4h
The Limits of Armchair Theorizing: The Case of Threats https://t.co/h3JhRP7dx4
On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library https://t.co/GvLWmd4B0H
https://t.co/bLz8qRMH70

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) November 2, 2026

Here is a slightly more elaborated version of this. First, see my book Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) for the most comprehensive and updated restatement of my views on the heavier issues, plus a few important works published after that book. These are thus some …

Core Works

• Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023)
• The Universal Principles of Liberty (Aug. 14, 2025). A distillation of the principles elaborated on in LFFS.
• “Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe: An Indispensable Framework,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026). The initial section adds insights about intellectual property (Part IV) and the rest about the important foundations of libertarian theory (Parts I-II).
• “The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract,” Papinian Press Working Paper #1 (Sep. 7, 2024). Forthcoming in David Howden, ed., Palgrave Handbook of Misesian Austrian Economics (Palgrave, forthcoming 2026), part of the Palgrave Studies in Austrian Economics Book series. I would have included this in Part III, Libertarian Legal Theoryeither as a substitute for or companion to ch. 9
• “The Problem with Intellectual Property,” in Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics, Christoph Luetge and Marianne Thejls Ziegler, eds. (Springer, Dordrecht 2026; Robert McGee, section ed.). I would have included this also in Part IV, possibly substitute for Chapters 14 and 15.
• “Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property,” in A Life in Liberty: Liber Amicorum in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, edited by Jörg Guido Hülsmann & Stephan Kinsella (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2024). I would have included this in Part IV, on IP

So the answer to Bylund’s query is already implicit in my various writings: it has to be principled, consistent, and anarchist; informed by Misesian Austrian economics, and by Rothbardian and Hoppean political views; anti-intellectual property; anti-thickism; opposed to the idea that state-owned property is unowned and subject to homesteading; caution about armchair theorizing; and for reform of contract and rights theory. And others of course.

For more on some of these issues, in addition to the Core Works listed above, see the Additional Key Works below.

As for where we have been and where we are going or need to go:

• Libertarianism After Fifty Years: What Have We Learned?, in Legal Foundations of a Free Society
• Areas That Need Development from Libertarian Thinkers (Jan. 18, 2022)

Additional Key Works

• • Thickism: Criticisms of thickism
  • Armchair Theorizing:
    • The Limits of Armchair Theorizing
    • On the Non Liquet in Libertarian Theory and Armchair Theorizing
    • Roman Law and Hypothetical Cases
    • On Pushing the Button–the problem with magic
    • See also discussion of the flagpole hypo in The Liberty Magazine Polls: 1988, 1999, and 2008: Flagpoles, Parental Obligations, Private Nukes
  • Ownership of State Property: On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library
  • Possession vs. Ownership; Purpose of Rights and Norms
    • On Property Rights in Superabundant Bananas and Property Rights as Normative Support for Possession
    • On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library
  • Libertarian Party
    • Aggression and Property Rights Plank in the Libertarian Party Platform
    • Libertarian Party Trademark Assertions and Enforcement
  • Mutualism and Left Libertarianism: Left-Libertarians on Rothbardian Abandonment, Mises Blog (Aug. 22, 2009)
  • Libertarianism as Right; Problems with the Right and Alt-right:
    •  Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “A Realistic Libertarianism,” LewRockwell.com (Sept. 30, 2014), the basis for his speech “Realistic Libertarianism as Right-Libertarianism” (PFS 2014), reprinted in Hoppe, Getting Libertarianism Right (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2018) (“GLR”), ch. 1.
    • Hoppe, “From Nation to Household: The Middle American Illusions of Sam Francis (and Pat Buchanan)” (unpublished, 1996), HansHoppe.com (Aug. 5, 2025).
    • Hoppe, “Where the Right Goes Wrong,” Rothbard-Rockwell Report (April 1997): 7–14.
    • Hoppe, “On Conservatism and Libertarianism,” in Democracy—The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001), ch. 10.
    • Hoppe, “Libertarianism and the Alt-Right: In Search of a Libertarian Strategy for Social Change,” The Libertarian Alliance (Oct. 20, 2017) (PFS 2017 speech, Sept. 17, 2017), reprinted in GLR, ch. 3.
    • Kinsella, “Hoppe vs. the Alt-Right,” StephanKinsella.com (Aug. 5, 2025);
    • idem, “Classic Hoppe on the Realistic Right vs. the Egalitarian Left,” Property and Freedom Society (June 9, 2026).
  • Punishment and Restitution: Fraud, Restitution, and Retaliation: The Libertarian Approach
  • Covid
    • Stephan Kinsella, “Property, Freedom, and Defiance: PFS 2021 in a Covid World,” Property and Freedom Society (Oct. 1, 2021).
    • Idem, “Magness on Hoppe; the Kochtopus and the Mises Caucus,” StephanKinsella.com (Sept. 7, 2022) (discussing the libertarian establishment’s failure on Covid lockdowns, restrictions, and mandates).
    • Idem, “Brownstone Institute, The Covid Response at Five Years: A History of the End of Civilization (2025),” StephanKinsella.com (July 30, 2025).
    • Idem, “Trish Wood is Critical: Jeffrey Tucker on Complicity and the Covid Mindset,” Property and Freedom Society (May 10, 2026).
    • Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “State or Private Law Society on Dealing With Corona,” LewRockwell.com (Jan. 4, 2021) (interview by Thomas Jacob); also published as “Hoppe on the Lockdowns!,” Mises Wire (Jan. 4, 2021).
    • Hoppe, “On the Corona Panic and Other Insanities,” LewRockwell.com (Aug. 4, 2021) (interview by Andrea Venanzoni, translated from Atlantico, Aug. 2, 2021).
    • Hoppe, “Welcome and Introductions; How Would a Private Law Society Deal with Corona? (PFS 2021),” Property and Freedom Society (Oct. 10, 2021).
    • PFS, “Hoppe on Covid Lockdowns,” Property and Freedom Society (May 26, 2026) (collecting Hoppe’s Covid writings, interviews, and talks in English, German, French, and Italian).
    • Jeffrey A. Tucker, Liberty or Lockdown (Great Barrington, Mass.: American Institute for Economic Research, 2020).
    • Tucker, “The Downfall of the Gurus,” Epoch Times (Jan. 23, 2023).
    • Tucker, “Why Elite Libertarians Failed so Miserably on COVID,” Epoch Times (May 12, 2023); reposted with Walter Block’s reply at StephanKinsella.com (May 29, 2023).
    • Tucker, “What Broke Libertarianism?” Brownstone Journal (Sept. 10, 2024).
    • Tucker, “Since Lockdowns, a 12% GDP Loss; Half of US Dollar Purchasing Power Stolen,” Brownstone Journal (June 2, 2026); reposted at Property and Freedom Society (June 11, 2026)
  • Miscellaneous
    • Why I’m a Libertarian–or, Why Libertarianism is Beautiful, Mises blog (Dec. 12, 2006)
    • Why I Libertarian
    • The Nature of the State and Why Libertarians Hate It, StephanKinsella.com (May 3, 2010)
    • On the Core Principles of Libertarian Property Rights
    • On the Danger of Metaphors in Scientific Discourse
    • On the Obligation to Negotiate, Compromise, and Arbitrate
    • Rothbard on the “Original Sin” in Land Titles: 1969 vs. 1974 (Nov. 5, 2014)
    • Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe on the “Original Sin” in the Distribution of Property Rights (Oct. 7, 2014)
    • The Origin of “Libertarianism,” Mises Blog (Sept. 10, 2011); see also Rothbard on Leonard Read and the Origins of “Libertarianism” (Nov. 17, 2014)

1.  Bylund’s Typology of Knowledge: Physical vs. Catallactic; General vs. Applied; The Austrian School Was Right Again: Abolish IP in the EU; Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institute Support IP Socialism and 2026 World IP Day Coalition; “My Years with the Mises Institute,” n.106.