Good point. Wenzel doesn't have the least basic understanding of computer technology, and that is obvious by what he says about them rit IP. Either that or he is a troll.
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
I'm so tempted to get this formula just to release it and shut Wenzel up. Get it put up on TPB, and a few forums, and then post links to all of them in response to his "What's the Formula Stephan?" post.
Of course, Wenzel's argument seemed to be that, if a single person on the planet didn't have internet or the Google skills to look up the formula, it would still be scarce. Therefore, copyright is justified.
I thought about buying the formula, too. But I don't have anything to put on Drudge so wouldn't be able to test it, and I don't really trust anything Wenzel does at this point to be worthwhile or useful. The $550 price point was way too high, but I'd consider joining a pool. Not sure how pooling money to buy IP would work in his world.
I think Wenzel is trying to deflect focus on the IP debate onto selling his stupid Drudge Formula. Either he simply wasted 2 1/2 hours of Kinsella's time just to promote a $550 product (unlikely). Or he came up with a hypothetical Drudge Formula, saw how much interest it generated in discussions of the debate, came up with some hairbrained set of suggestions he calls a formula, and is trying to sell that instead of engaging in any further debate.
I checked his site earlier today. It seems he's doing more economics/current events, rather than personal attacks. But it also seems as though the comments have thinned out a bit. People staying away? Or just a delay in comment approvals?
luc2posse:I thought about buying the formula, too. But I don't have anything to put on Drudge so wouldn't be able to test it, and I don't really trust anything Wenzel does at this point to be worthwhile or useful.
a) Who cares? My whole purpose would just be to share it with the world. And stick it to Wenzel. There's been times when I couldn't find an audiobook free online anywhere (and trust me, I know how to look)...so I'd go buy it on Audible and create a torrent and put it out there. Sharing the info dude. That's what it's all about. Even Friedman understood this...
b) Surely you could find some use for it. Even if it's just a matter of selling it to someone else who wasn't aware of it.
Not sure how pooling money to buy IP would work in his world.
What are you talking about? IP is the best stuff to pool for...it's non-rivalrous: You don't even have to split time use with all the other people in the pool...you just make copies and everyone has it.
You've never split the cost of an online service and just shared one user account with people? You've never put money together for a high-end subscription service and distributed the info among all the people in the pool? You've never bought an expensive education product (e.g. a set of DVDs/CDs) with a group of people and just made copies for everyone?
I really highly doubt that. I honestly believe what he says on this. I don't doubt he has a process that he was able to use to increase his chance of getting picked up by Drudge and that he was honestly just using it as an example of what he thinks is "scarce", valuable information. There is no possible way that debate was all a ploy for selling this formula.
My guess is he just got a lot of emails about it and saw a profit opportunity, and one more way to try and attack Kinsella.
Could be a little of everything. I'd lean more toward people just getting tired of trying to keep up with all the posts. You respond to one, then other folks jump in, and you've got a little dialogue and an actual conversation thread. 4 hours later Wenzel's got another post up. Then you respond to that one, and the guys you were debating with in the last one come and respond in that one.
Pretty soon not only does the whole thing get kind of old, but even if you wanted to, it's tough to keep up with all your different threads...you have to try and remember who said what where, where you commented, where you haven't, and when...and then on top of that you've got the whole moderation thing, so there's a delay in your comments showing up.... So you'd have a hard time keeping up even if you tried...you never know when or even if your comment is going to show up, and so not only are you having to remember everything I just mentioned, but you have to keep up with everywhere you submitted a comment and keep checking back to see if it got approved before you can even move on with the discussion.
And what's more, I think depending on the platform you use to submit a comment, it actually affects when it will get approved. I'm not completely sure how it works, but it seems that sometimes, even when I got comments approved, there were others getting approved ahead of me, even if their timestamp was after mine. Meaning I submitted a comment, and others appeared in that same thread...then hours later mine appeared above theirs. My first guess would be that the Blogger platform might have an easier time receiving comments submitted from its own users (as opposed to those using some other OpenID from some other platform like LiveJournal, which I was using.) I could be totally wrong on that though.
Either way, I think 3-4 blog posts per day on the subject just wears down your audience. And particularly when all your arguments are the same tired fallacies, it just gets cumbersome.
But yeah, I'm sure Wenzel's gotten plenty of hatemail and comments calling him out for being an ego-bruised clown. And you can only fool yourself for so long. Eventually you get enough people telling you how much you suck all the time, even the biggest most delusional narcissist can start to get affected. I'm sure if he was getting more supporting comments, he'd turn the whole blog into an anti-Kinsella/Tucker site. Or at least start one.
thats because you have no idea what intellectual property is so you have no idea where your own intellectual property is and isnt, youre littering just as surely as if I tore pages out of a book and scattered them about a public park (something anarchists are no doubt inclined to do, no doubt).
I meant that I personally wouldn't make the decision to spend $550 with the only reason being to share it. My ego isn't as big as Wenzel's, so I wouldn't spend that much money just to stick it to him. I might spend less than that amount, however.
What are you talking about? IP is the best stuff to pool for...it's non-rivalrous: You don't even have to split time use with all the other people in the pool...you just make copies and everyone has it. You've never split the cost of an online service and just shared one user account with people? You've never put money together for a high-end subscription service and distributed the info among all the people in the pool? You've never bought an expensive education product (e.g. a set of DVDs/CDs) with a group of people and just made copies for everyone?
Yes, I've done many of those. I completely, 100% agree with you. You misunderstood me, or I wasn't clear enough.
I meant that I'm not sure how Wenzel would view it, how it would work in his world. From listening to the debate and reading his IP posts, I can only imagine he'd want his contract with the owner of the Paypal account, for the formula not to be shared with anyone else, and would consier pooling money and sharing the info with the other buyers as an immediate opportunity to sue or call in the Hell's Angels. Which, of course, is the main reason to pool money, buy the formula, share it widely, and see Wenzel's reaction.
I'd also guess that he does have a set of suggestions (= formula) for getting on Drudge, and I'd guess it's worthless for all practical purposes. When have his posts ever appeared on Drudge before? The only huge spike in his website traffic in the last 3 months came from around the time of the Fed speech story. I just don't see huge increases in his traffic where I can guess, "Ok, this is probably a Drudge spike."
It was good before, now it's just getting reaaally good...
Over 40 posts in the last two days...and not one mention of Kinsella or IP. And this after roughly 2-3 posts per day for the entire two weeks since the debate.
Quite the dropoff.
I think the goose is cooking pretty good by now.
Wheylous had linked this before, but I only just read it. Seems Kinsella was right on the money, as he penned this on Friday, and it was only today that the expose on Wenzel's aliases came out.
Posted as an update to the blog post on the debate, as well as on Facebook:
Some of my friends have admonished me for the Larouchie comments Wenzel is pretending to go crazy about. I do not disagree that it is possible it was a tactical error to even debate him, or take my approach in continuing to engage him. But I have not been persuaded that any of my comments to or about him were wrong (though I am open to this). Let me give some context. Wenzel appeared out of nowhere in 2008–2009 or so. He starts attacking Jeff Tucker and my IP comments—implying we are “communists” etc. Implying he has a “book” on IP coming out (and even a book on libertarian theory). He does this while cozying up to Mises Institute people and people interested in Austrian economics. He sets himself up as a big economic prognosticator, though no one had ever heard of the guy before. Is this even his original name? Where did he come from? No one knows. So this no-name non-scholar, a kind of loud-mouth crude braggart self-promoting showboat type, more akin to Bill O’Reilly or Morton Downey Jr., starts loudly braying and attacking me and Tucker. It was obvious to me then, and remains obvious now—in fact it’s more obvious now, after our “debate”—that he has no coherent theory of libertarianism or of IP. He could not even present one in our debate, for which he needed 2–3 months to “prepare.” I half-suspect he did it all as a ruse to sell his ridiculous Drudge formula, which is odd in itself that he would want to hawk $100 or $500 sales of a formula that he can only sell a small amount of, all the while claiming to be rich (offering to pay $500k if people can prove he is not a Larouchie) and while claiming to charge $750 per 10 minutes for a phone consultation (that amounts to $4500 per hour. yeahhhh…. right). The guys is an obvious blowhard, oddball, and loose cannon. A sensationalist, and not an intellectual or scholar. A few years ago at Mises Institute in Auburn I was sitting alone in the bar, on my iPad. Wenzel walks up to me and the first thing he says is a snarky, snide remark about me using an Apple product—after all I must be a hypocrite if I use a product from a company that uses copyright, right? So I smiled, changed the subject and bought him a drink. We had a long conversation, some nice, some of which he revealed utterly bizarre things that made me question his … perspectives on life, let’s just say (and which I did not mention in our debate, as they are irrelevant). Then his attacks continue on me and Tucker. He invited Tucker to debate him and Jeff (probalby wisely) declined. Wenzel then makes some rude, smartass comment that Tucker was a dumbass follower of mine but that at least I had a real theory to be contended with. This is a bizarre slight on Tucker, from whom I have learned a lot, but in any case I offered to “discuss” with him this issue. Within an hour he was trumpeting and promoting it though we had not worked out ground rules yet, and he was asking for a month or two. I guess, to prepare. So the guy is some outsider, a nobody, spoiling for a fight, looking for traffic. A blustering clown, really. In response to some queries abou this on FB I said what I think (I never mince words): that he would weasel out of the debate like a worm, and that he was a clown. If you listen to his interviews you’ll see what I mean. He is untalented, rude, and a hack. He is a clown. And as for the weasel comment—partly I did that so he could not back down. In any case, in the end he did as I predicted—he weaseled out of presenting a real case for IP or having a real debate about it by wasting time asking why he is a clown; in our “debate” he never did present a coherent view of IP and even today is still grasping for some coherent theory. Honestly it’s curious why he would even want a “debate.” Why would he debate me if he had no theory? Why would he even care? Why would he be certain that I am wrong? To get attention, obviously. Which he almost admits in subsequent posts bragging about how the debate increased his traffic. This guy is an unscholarly, crude oaf. He has the temerity to cozy up to the Mises Institute and then start attackin me and Jeff Tucker (and implicitly all the senior scholars and other Austro-libertarians who have learned what a horrible thing IP is) and now even the Institute’s leading intellectual and Rothbard’s closest intellectual associate, Hans-Hermann Hoppe—and in the name of Rothbard, to make it worse. In our debate Wenzel violated our pre-agreed upon rules; he was incivil; he did not give me equal time; he talked over me repeatedly; he evaded the issues and failed to answer questions and present a coherent case for IP. I gave this guys a long leash. I was polite to him. I ignored his earlier slights. I bought him a drink, and talked with him in person. I agreed to a discussion about IP with him, on the terms that we have a civil discussion as equals—not his normal clownish, amateur, embarrassingly oafish “interview” style (read: interrogation). He promoted it to high heaven, then was rude and blustery and loud and ridiculous. He covered up his intellectual and scholarly deficiencies with ridiculous bluster and outrageous rudeness. In response I sometimes laughed in bemusement, in utter amazement that a specimen like him even exists in the real world. And I sometimes mocked him, and toyed with him, since every time I tried to make a serious point I was met with his bizarre bluster and intellectual incompetence. Was it a tactical mistake to engage this mental troll? I don’t know. Was it immoral to mock him and not treat him with respect? I don’t think so. Does he deserve respect? This guy attacked me, Tucker, now Hoppe, and libertarianism itself (by promoting IP). It is rich that he plays the poor victim after engaging in this outrageous stuff. In any case: he has not (and cannot) demonstrated that IP in any form can be justified. I am actually surprised any Austro-libertarians take this guy seriously. I never have. No one I know that I respect ever has.
Some of my friends have admonished me for the Larouchie comments Wenzel is pretending to go crazy about. I do not disagree that it is possible it was a tactical error to even debate him, or take my approach in continuing to engage him.
But I have not been persuaded that any of my comments to or about him were wrong (though I am open to this). Let me give some context.
Wenzel appeared out of nowhere in 2008–2009 or so. He starts attacking Jeff Tucker and my IP comments—implying we are “communists” etc. Implying he has a “book” on IP coming out (and even a book on libertarian theory). He does this while cozying up to Mises Institute people and people interested in Austrian economics. He sets himself up as a big economic prognosticator, though no one had ever heard of the guy before. Is this even his original name? Where did he come from? No one knows.
So this no-name non-scholar, a kind of loud-mouth crude braggart self-promoting showboat type, more akin to Bill O’Reilly or Morton Downey Jr., starts loudly braying and attacking me and Tucker. It was obvious to me then, and remains obvious now—in fact it’s more obvious now, after our “debate”—that he has no coherent theory of libertarianism or of IP. He could not even present one in our debate, for which he needed 2–3 months to “prepare.” I half-suspect he did it all as a ruse to sell his ridiculous Drudge formula, which is odd in itself that he would want to hawk $100 or $500 sales of a formula that he can only sell a small amount of, all the while claiming to be rich (offering to pay $500k if people can prove he is not a Larouchie) and while claiming to charge $750 per 10 minutes for a phone consultation (that amounts to $4500 per hour. yeahhhh…. right).
The guys is an obvious blowhard, oddball, and loose cannon. A sensationalist, and not an intellectual or scholar.
A few years ago at Mises Institute in Auburn I was sitting alone in the bar, on my iPad. Wenzel walks up to me and the first thing he says is a snarky, snide remark about me using an Apple product—after all I must be a hypocrite if I use a product from a company that uses copyright, right? So I smiled, changed the subject and bought him a drink. We had a long conversation, some nice, some of which he revealed utterly bizarre things that made me question his … perspectives on life, let’s just say (and which I did not mention in our debate, as they are irrelevant).
Then his attacks continue on me and Tucker. He invited Tucker to debate him and Jeff (probalby wisely) declined. Wenzel then makes some rude, smartass comment that Tucker was a dumbass follower of mine but that at least I had a real theory to be contended with. This is a bizarre slight on Tucker, from whom I have learned a lot, but in any case I offered to “discuss” with him this issue. Within an hour he was trumpeting and promoting it though we had not worked out ground rules yet, and he was asking for a month or two. I guess, to prepare.
So the guy is some outsider, a nobody, spoiling for a fight, looking for traffic. A blustering clown, really. In response to some queries abou this on FB I said what I think (I never mince words): that he would weasel out of the debate like a worm, and that he was a clown. If you listen to his interviews you’ll see what I mean. He is untalented, rude, and a hack. He is a clown. And as for the weasel comment—partly I did that so he could not back down. In any case, in the end he did as I predicted—he weaseled out of presenting a real case for IP or having a real debate about it by wasting time asking why he is a clown; in our “debate” he never did present a coherent view of IP and even today is still grasping for some coherent theory.
Honestly it’s curious why he would even want a “debate.” Why would he debate me if he had no theory? Why would he even care? Why would he be certain that I am wrong? To get attention, obviously. Which he almost admits in subsequent posts bragging about how the debate increased his traffic. This guy is an unscholarly, crude oaf. He has the temerity to cozy up to the Mises Institute and then start attackin me and Jeff Tucker (and implicitly all the senior scholars and other Austro-libertarians who have learned what a horrible thing IP is) and now even the Institute’s leading intellectual and Rothbard’s closest intellectual associate, Hans-Hermann Hoppe—and in the name of Rothbard, to make it worse. In our debate Wenzel violated our pre-agreed upon rules; he was incivil; he did not give me equal time; he talked over me repeatedly; he evaded the issues and failed to answer questions and present a coherent case for IP.
I gave this guys a long leash. I was polite to him. I ignored his earlier slights. I bought him a drink, and talked with him in person. I agreed to a discussion about IP with him, on the terms that we have a civil discussion as equals—not his normal clownish, amateur, embarrassingly oafish “interview” style (read: interrogation). He promoted it to high heaven, then was rude and blustery and loud and ridiculous. He covered up his intellectual and scholarly deficiencies with ridiculous bluster and outrageous rudeness. In response I sometimes laughed in bemusement, in utter amazement that a specimen like him even exists in the real world. And I sometimes mocked him, and toyed with him, since every time I tried to make a serious point I was met with his bizarre bluster and intellectual incompetence. Was it a tactical mistake to engage this mental troll? I don’t know. Was it immoral to mock him and not treat him with respect? I don’t think so. Does he deserve respect? This guy attacked me, Tucker, now Hoppe, and libertarianism itself (by promoting IP). It is rich that he plays the poor victim after engaging in this outrageous stuff.
In any case: he has not (and cannot) demonstrated that IP in any form can be justified.
I am actually surprised any Austro-libertarians take this guy seriously. I never have. No one I know that I respect ever has.