> "However if we're reducing everything to violence (as libertarians tend to)" Libertarians tend to reduce arguments to discussions of violence since it is the

> "However if we're reducing everything to violence (as libertarians tend to)" Libertarians tend to reduce arguments to discussions of violence since it is the fundamental primitive around which most governments (or lack thereof) are organized. Specifically, a government (at least from a libertarian view) is any institution which exercises a monopoly on violence in a particular region. The mechanisms by which they maintain and exercise this monopoly serve to classify them. This reduction is just a starting point though. It is to philosophies of government what evolution is to biology: a founding principle that serves as a lens to understand the rest of it. But there is much more to biology than just a knowledge of evolution, and likewise libertarian thinking. Libertarians also, as a rule, follow the non-aggression principle and are not opposed to violence in all cases (e.g. self-defense, defense of others who did not initiate violence themselves, etc) [1]. This is a little less common amongst left-leaning libertarians, however. > "Homesteading is wonderful in a system where land is unlimited, it can be seen as an extension of the moral right to the work of your own hands. But in a system where land is limited, the very act of appropriating does deny the resource to others" Any philosophy of government has to deal with the blunt fact that the world is one of finite resources. Libertarians of different stripes have a lot to say about property in various forms; it's not something they always agree on. Libertarianism does not have as its direct goal maximizing the efficiency of resource usage, though many would argue that libertarian policies would have that result indirectly. Virtually all would argue that privately owned resources are at least available to others via the market (i.e. for a price), whereas any resource that is publicly monopolized is only available to others if the controlling government decides to share it (which is more likely in democratic societies, but not by their nature, required). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Personal_autonomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Personal_autonom...