A Critique of Stephan Kinsella's Approach To Rights Theory

An AI narration of the article 'A Critique of Stephan Kinsella's Approach To Rights Theory' by Jake Desyllas.

Stephan Kinsella famously overturned the libertarian case for intellectual property by refusing to prejudge the conclusion: instead of assuming IP was valid and hunting for arguments to fit, he followed the arguments wherever they led. In this short piece, Jake Desyllas turns that same standard back on Kinsella's own theory of rights. He argues that when Kinsella asks not *whether* but *when* we come to own ourselves, he is using exactly the motivated reasoning he so effectively diagnosed in others — quietly assuming that rights must be acquired rather than inherent. Drawing on Kinsella's own words, Desyllas shows the symmetry between the two cases and makes the case that the question of inherent versus acquired rights deserves to be reopened without a thumb on the scale.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction
1:25 The Problem Of Motivated Reasoning

First published at https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2025/8/6/a-critique-of-stephan-kinsellas-approach-to-rights-theory on 6 August 2025.