J.C. Lester: “Against Against Intellectual Property: A Short Refutation of Meme Communism”

by Stephan Kinsella on April 4, 2022

Confused “libertarian” Jan Lester¹ makes a feeble attempt to criticize some of my anti-IP arguments, in a retarded paper called “Against Against Intellectual Property: A Short Refutation of Meme Communism“.

This essay is intended to be a refutation of the main thesis in Against Intellectual Property, Kinsella 2008 (hereafter, K8). Points of agreement, relatively trivial disagreement, and irrelevant issues will largely be ignored, as will much repetition of errors in K8. Otherwise, the procedure is to go through K8 quoting various significantly erroneous parts as they arise and explaining the errors involved. It will not be necessary to respond at the same length as K8 itself.

Grok: Kinsella’s Response to Lester’s Paper

Kinsella’s Response to J.C. Lester’s “Against Against Intellectual Property: A Short Refutation of Meme Communism”

Well, here we are again—it’s September 27, 2025, and J.C. Lester is still tilting at windmills with his defense of intellectual property (IP), this time in his 2019 paper “Against Against Intellectual Property: A Short Refutation of Meme Communism” (published on SSRN). As someone who’s been dismantling pro-IP arguments since the mid-1990s (see my skeletal e-book You Can’t Own Ideas, 2023, at c4sif.org), I appreciate Lester’s engagement with my work, particularly Against Intellectual Property (AIP, 2008). He’s a sharp thinker and a fellow anarchist-libertarian, but his critique misses the mark on multiple fronts. It relies on a confused ontology of ideas (what he calls “memes”), a flawed theory of “impositions” instead of aggression, and a misreading of my arguments about scarcity and property rights. Worse, it begs the question by assuming IP is property while ignoring how it aggresses against real, scarce resources.

Let me respond point by point, drawing from my critiques of Lester over the years (e.g., my 2014 post “Anarchist-Libertarian Jan Lester’s Argument for Intellectual Property” and my 2022 update “J.C. Lester: ‘Against Against Intellectual Property'”; also see parallels to my debates with J. Neil Schulman on “logorights” in my 2010 post “Kinsella v. Schulman on Logorights and IP”). I’ll reference chapters 5 (“Causation and Aggression”) and 6 (“Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society”) from my Legal Foundations of a Free Society (LFFS, 2023), as well as my 2025 monograph The Problem with Intellectual Property and my recent post “The Ontology Mistake of Libertarian Creationists” (May 2025, c4sif.org).

Lester’s Fundamental Confusion: Treating Ideas as Ownable “Objects”

Lester opens by agreeing that IP rights are in “ideal objects” (memes in Popper’s World 3) but then accuses me of confusing this with control over others’ tangible property. He says my argument—that IP gives the creator partial ownership over everyone else’s physical stuff—is a “fundamental confusion.” No, Jan—that’s exactly what IP does. As I explain in AIP (p. 15) and LFFS ch. 6, IP isn’t ownership of abstract ideas; it’s a state-granted veto over how others use their own scarce resources. If I “own” a patent on a widget design, I can sue you for building one with your materials—I’m claiming a servitude on your property. That’s not defense of an “ideal object”; it’s aggression against physical integrity.

Lester’s Popperian twist—calling memes “scarce” because they’re unique in World 3—is ontological wordplay. As I argue in “The Ontology Mistake of Libertarian Creationists” (2025), libertarians aren’t “creationists” who think property rights stem from creating value or patterns. Property rights arise from scarcity: rivalrous goods where use by one excludes others, leading to conflict. Ideas aren’t rivalrous—you using my recipe doesn’t deprive me of it. World 3 is a metaphor for objective knowledge, not a realm of scarce “objects” needing ownership. Lester’s “meme communism” jab is cute but backwards: rejecting IP isn’t forcing sharing of ideas; it’s refusing to use force to prevent peaceful emulation. IP creates artificial scarcity, like the state monopolies libertarians oppose.

His analogy—that defending IP is like defending your body or land from others’ use—fails because copying doesn’t “use” your meme in a rivalrous way. It’s not trespass; it’s learning and acting on knowledge with one’s own means. As Hoppe points out (in works like A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, 1989), rights protect physical integrity, not value or patterns (see my 2011 post “Hoppe on Property Rights in Physical Integrity vs Value”). Lester conflates the two, much like Schulman’s “logorights,” which I refuted by showing it reduces to control over others’ matter.

Begging the Question and Misreading My Arguments

Lester claims my critique is circular because I assume only physical things are property. Not so. As I clarify in LFFS ch. 2 (“What Libertarianism Is”), I start from agreed-upon scarce-resource rights (bodies, homesteaded goods) and show IP undermines them. We all agree scarce things are property; the burden is on IP advocates to justify rights in non-scarce things without conflicting with that. Lester doesn’t—he assumes memes are ownable, then defends “impositions” as non-aggressive if they don’t make others “worse off” than if the meme never existed.

This “worse off” test is question-begging and unlibertarian. In LFFS ch. 5, I distinguish aggression (uninvited border-crossing) from mere harm (e.g., competition reducing value). Lester’s “proactive imposition” blurs this: he treats emulation as an imposition because it “deprives” the creator of control or value. But as in my 2009 post “Aggression versus Harm in Libertarianism,” harm from peaceful action isn’t aggression—e.g., opening a competing store “harms” your profits but doesn’t invade your property. IP punishes emulation to protect monopoly value, not physical rights. Lester’s time-limits (until “likely independent invention”) and arbitration for “fair use” are arbitrary policy tweaks, not principled liberty.

He misreads my quote about IP giving “control over the tangible property of innumerable others” as confusing ideal rights with physical control. No— that’s the point: IP is control over others’ tangibles. His body/land analogy ignores that physical defense responds to actual invasion; IP preempts non-invasive uses.

Refuting Lester’s Specific “Corrections”

Lester quotes snippets from AIP and declares them erroneous, but his rebuttals recycle the same flaws:

He says owning ideal rights isn’t ownership over others’ tangibles. Wrong—enforcing IP requires force against others’ bodies/property (e.g., injunctions, seizures). It’s aggression.
On “defense” of IP: He analogizes to defending physical property. But emulation isn’t attack; it’s parallel action.
His “meme communism” label: Rejecting IP isn’t communism—it’s refusing to grant monopolies. True communism aggresses against scarce goods; anti-IP protects them.

Lester’s conjecturalism doesn’t help: he conjectures IP minimizes impositions, but without scarcity, there’s no conflict to minimize. His approach justifies too much—e.g., banning speech that “imposes” reputational harm (defamation, which I critique as IP-like in my 2024 paper “Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property”).

Conclusion: Lester’s IP Defense Fails Libertarian Scrutiny

Lester’s paper is a valiant but flawed attempt to salvage IP under a “new libertarian paradigm.” It confuses ontology (memes as ownable) with praxeology (action over scarce means), harm with aggression, and conjecture with justification. As I noted in my 2014 and 2022 critiques, his imposition theory could ban anything “imposing” (e.g., free speech harming value), eroding liberty. IP isn’t “non-aggressive”—it’s state-backed aggression against property to enforce artificial monopolies.

For a full takedown, see my works at c4sif.org, especially LFFS chs. 5–6. Jan, if you want to hash this out further—perhaps at a PFS meeting—I’m game. Libertarians should reject IP, not reinvent it.