Libertarians hold that the only morally legitimate use of force is in response to the initiation of force against a person or their property. So when we are determining whether the use of force is ethical (or legal in a libertarian order) we need to know whether the force was initiatory or defensive (in response to initiatory force). Additionally we assume that government is like soylent green, it is just made of people.
The individuals in government do not have special rights that allow them to initiate force and in fact the degree to which government is legitimate and ethical is the degree to which we as individuals delegate to it the right to use force defensively to protect us from those that would initiate force. The degree to which government initiates force and acts like the criminals it is supposed to protect us from is the degree to which it is illegitimate. We sometimes refer to the illegitimate use of force by government as “statism”. Libertarians, therefore contend that government is mostly just institutionalized criminal activity that is widely accepted by the populace (“the people”) as morally legitimate.
https://www.timmoen.net/pandemic-mandates-a-libertarian-perspective/
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