KOL496 | Matt Sands and Kinsella on the Universal Principles of Liberty and the Nations of Sanity “Peace Agreement”

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 496. Matt Sands of the Nations of Sanity project and I discuss the possible interrelationship between his project and my The Universal Principles of Liberty. Recorded Aug. 14, 2026. https://youtu.be/ET2ucqFU7Ak?si=VVcdipDX-umElPxR Related The Universal Principles of Liberty  Supplemental Principles | Kinsella’s Annotations and Commentary KOL442 | Together Strong Debate vs. Walter Block on Voluntary Slavery (Matthew Sands of Nations of Sanity) Fusillo on the Universal Principles of Liberty and Liberland Libertarian Nation and Related Projects Liberland KOL480 | The Liberland Constitution and Libertarian Principles (Liberland Prague, 2025) The Voluntaryist Constitution Liberland Constitution Christmas Party Prague 2025 See also draft Liberland Constitution, Art. I, §1, ¶¶3, 4: The Universal Principles of Liberty, adopted on 14 August 2025 and as they stand on the date of adoption of this Constitution, are hereby incorporated by reference and may be consulted for interpretive and suppletive purposes, to the extent that they are not incompatible with the provisions of this Constitution. Any further amendment to the Universal Principles of Liberty shall have no force within Liberland unless adopted as an amendment to this Constitution in accordance with the procedures set forth herein. Note: In the discussion we disagree on whether the standard of proof in a normal property dispute should be preponderance of the evidence or beyond a reasonable doubt. In subsequent offline discussion I sent the following comments to Matt (edited): Thinking more about the preponderance of the evidence issue we discussed. See for example this tweet about a property owner using force to eject someone who is a trespasser: always causing problems pic.twitter.com/mdecFjVTnW — Wolverine land (@Breaking57) August 15, 2026 Note: the property owner didn't have to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that they own the store to have the cops threaten force to eject him. Just like you don't have to "prove" "beyond a reasonable doubt" that you own your car, or your body, or are "not an aggressor," to have a right to use force against a trespasser/aggressor: someone attempting to use, alter the physical integrity of, or invade the borders of, your body or other resources that you own in accordance with principles of original appropriation and contractual transfer. Having rights, per se, has nothing to do with proof or standards. It's an if-then thing: if you have certain justified rights of exclusive control to certain resources, then you are justified in using force against the body or other resources possessed or owned by an aggressor. This general statement is not a statement about trials or proof in such fora. It's a statement about justifiable action. To return to one example I gave: if A and B claim grandpa's house (say, from his will), then if you use preponderance to award it to A, then later A can use that property claim to use force to prevent B from entering. Even that use of defensive force does not require any "proof." It is just the right of the owner. Matters of proof only apply in some later forum addressing the actions taken and seeking to recognize certain property rights claims or order punishment of a malfeasor. You have to keep in mind that things like the "right" to jury trial, due process, presumption of innocence, the exclusionary rule, beyond a reasonable doubt—none of these are actual rights. They are just "rights" that accompany being part of a political community: civil or political rights, not natural rights. They are just limits we want placed on powerful actors like the state. So, by arguing for employing the BRD standard in any forum determining ownership of a contested resource based on the general libertarian principles of self-ownership, original appropriation, contract, and rectification, you are importing standards that really meant as limits on the state's power, into how property rights are determined, applied, recognized, and enforced. There is simply no reason to do this. These things are not really even related. Property rights emerge as normative support for natural aspects of action such as control of one's body and homesteading and trading of external scarce resources. See On Property Rights in Superabundant Bananas and Property Rights as Normative Support for Possession. These principles have nothing to do with the state: only with (a) human action, praxeology, economics (descriptive); and (b) society and human interaction: norms, rights (normative). It is possible to have, and to imagine, any of the following, without a state invovled: (a) isolated Robinsonades, with human action and praxeology only (and personal, but not interpersonal, morals); (b) a non-normative society with trade and interaction, both cooperative and conflictual, a might-makes-right society; (c) a stateless normative society laws and rights that provide normative support for the natural aspects of action such as control of one's body and homesteading and trading of external scarce resources (and this society can be either pre-catallactic, or employ money). You can also have (d) something like (c) but with a state that undermines the normative role of private law and rights and is instead a sort of hybrid between (b) and (c). And when you have a state that assumes the power to create and enforce law including imposing punishment or sanctions on people for violating the state's criminal law, the state's claim of authority is usually cloaked in a variety of coverings that masque or even pretend to or maybe do blunt its nature. In other words, the balance between the state and its power and the populace it governs hinges on the great fiction of the state which is maintained by propaganda, by the state giving at least lip service to some obligations and duties that it has, some limits on its power, such as heeding the due process and other political or civil rights of its subjects; this can be done organically, as in Britain's unwritten "constitution," or in a written constitution such as the US Constitution that claims to authorize and limit a new state. The limits can be implied or stated as limits on power: such as in the enumerated powers structure of the constitution itself, (( See, e.g., Thomas B. McAffee, “Federalism and the Protection of Rights: The Modern Ninth Amendment’s Spreading Confusion [2],” Brigham Young University Law Review 1996, no. 2 (1996): 351–388 (arguing that the framers regarded the Constitution’s limited/enumerated powers scheme itself as a primary structural guarantor of popular rights, and that the Ninth Amendment was designed to preserve that federal structure against the risk that enumerating specific rights would be misread as creating a government of general powers limited only by the listed rights); idem, “The Bill of Rights, Social Contract Theory, and the Rights ‘Retained’ by the People,” Southern Illinois University Law Journal 16 (1992): 267–305  (arguing that the “other rights retained by the people” under the Ninth Amendment are those secured residually by the Constitution’s grant of only limited, enumerated powers to the national government, so that the amendment protects the original limited-powers design rather than authorizing judicial enforcement of unenumerated natural rights outside the written Constitution). )) or in statements about that the government may not do, or in "rights" such as those in the Bill of Rights that also limit federal government power. But such rights are not always real rights. (( By "real rights," as I am not speaking to a civil law audience, I do not mean what the civil law means, which is property rights pertaining to a "thing," a "res" (droits réels, derechos reales, iura in re), rights enforceable against the whole world (erga omnes)—as opposed to personal rights (droits personnels, iura in personam), rights against a specific person (typically arising from obligations/contracts) (which I object to in my theory of contracts; see The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract; KOL495 | “Rothbard’s Revolutionary Contract Theory,” Sociedad de la Libertad Latam (Peru): Rothbard 100: A Legacy for Future Generations). Instead I mean actual or legitimate rights, those recognized by libertarianism. )) If you wanted to limit federal power and prevent it from regulating normal crimes like murder and leave that demesne to the states, you could (attempt to) set up a government of enumerated and limited powers and just omit that power from the list. You could add something like the Tenth Amendment to emphasize the point that was already implied. This does not mean citizens have the right to commit murder, only that the fedgov has no jurisdiction over this. (( See my similar jurisdictional argument in KOL443 | Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach (PFS 2024). I argue that the external legal system has no jurisdiction over abortion, even if it is "murder"; it is governed by the mother's legal system itself. )) For other rights, actual rights like the right to bear arms or free speech, you could again protect this right from federal encroachment in multiple ways: you limit congress's power to regulate these activities by denying them a grant of power in an enumerated and limited powers scheme constitution; or you add a Bill of Rights limiting federal power; or both, for "great caution" as Madison said: The exceptions here or elsewhere in the Constitution, made in favor of particular rights, shall not be so construed as to diminish the just importance of other rights retained by the people, or as to enlarge the powers delegated by the Constitution; but either as actual limitations of such powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution. You could also limit the state by requiring it to respect "fake" "rights" of the citizens, like "due process,...