Bill Maher can be infuriating (I hereby expel Bill Maher from the libertarian movement), but hey, the enemy of my enemy…
N.b.: For criticisms of fakertarians or over-rated libertarians—
Overrated, fake, or expelled “libertarians”
- On Taxing Harvard: Ranting about Thuggocrats and Waystation/Post-libertarians (May 3, 2025). “Waystation” and “post-libertarian” types “were never libertarians at all.”
- Maher: I hereby expel Bill Maher from the libertarian movement (June 17, 2009). Maher “is not now and never was a libertarian—not even close”; higher taxes, Obama, socialized medicine; “Maher: you’re out!”
- Nozick
- Slate’s Metcalf on Libertarianism and Nozick
- Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty,” in Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998)
- Rothbard, Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State
- Hayek: Don’t tell me to read Hayek
- Milton Friedman: Milton Friedman on Intolerance, Liberty, Mises, Etc. and Friedman and Socialism (June 10, 2005). Milton Friedman as a mixed bag who advocates socialistic policies (vouchers, negative income tax), not a principled libertarian.
- Yeager: Thumbs Down on Leland Yeager
- Jonah Goldberg
- On Jonah Goldberg’s Youthful Phase and Why Is Jonah Goldberg Still Here? (LewRockwell.com, June 27, 2001). Goldberg’s “Libertarian Lobe” column: ignorance or dishonesty about libertarianism, and the sneer that opposing state violence is adolescent.
- Why Is Jonah Goldberg Still Here? (Nov. 2, 2010). Follow-up: “abysmal ignorance—or dishonesty—about libertarianism and his wicked statism.”
- Tabarrok: Tabarrok and Murphy: Why Are US Drug Prices So High? and KOL469 | Haman Nature Hn 149: Tabarrok on Patents, Price Controls, and Drug Reimportation
- Stephen Pinker: Afterword to Hoppe’s The Great Fiction, Second Expanded Edition, PFP200 | Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Progress According to Pinker (Part II) (PFS 2018), Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Progress According to Pinker (Part II) (PFS 2018), Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Libertarian Search for a Grand Historical Narrative (Part I) (PFS 2018)
- What Kind of Libertarian Are You? (Cato) (July 2009). Hayek “was not really a libertarian”; Jeffrey Friedman is a “postlibertarian”; Cowen’s taxonomy dismissed.
And don’t get me started on alleged Serious Libertarian Anarchist Thinkers who are pathetically weak or bad on IP—
Anarchists/libertarians bad or soft on IP (Friedman, Lester, Huemer)
- Pro-IP “Anarchists” and anti-IP Patent Attorneys (April 14, 2015). Explicit list of anarchists who still support IP, including J.C. (Jan) Lester, Schulman, Spooner, Presley; notes utilitarian non-anarchists (Rand and others) are worse.
- Anarchist Libertarian Jan Lester’s Argument for Intellectual Property (April 1, 2014). Lester’s PFS talk called “another deeply flawed attempt” to defend IP, worse because it comes from an anarchist.
- Classical Liberals, Libertarians, Anarchists and Others on Intellectual Property (Oct. 6, 2015). Roster of stances; Lester marked “confused and bad on IP.”
- Huemer vs. Epstein on Intellectual Property (Nov. 1, 2015). Huemer “seems to oppose patent law, though in a fairly tepid and unprincipled fashion”; grouped with David Friedman as ambivalent because the approach is not rights-based.
- Volokh’s David Post: The High Cost of Copyright (Aug. 18, 2010). Comment exchange with David Friedman: his objection that calling patent and copyright a “distortion” assumes the conclusion, and the reply that the burden is on the utilitarian pro-IP case.
- KOL500 | Libertad Individual Interview (Sept. 30, 2026). Names the three together: “David Friedman is great, but he’s supposed to be an anarchist, but he’s still not sure about intellectual property. The same is true of Michael Huemer, and the same is true of Jan Lester… and even Jan Narveson.”
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