system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is Libertarianism a self-contradictory political and moral philosophy?

I am not a philosophy student, but I had a question to see what some thought. My limited understanding of libertarianism is that it seeks to maximize the freedom of the individual by removing all government intervention, and is predicated on the moral philosophy of ethical egoism. But to me, this feels like a self-contradiction. Take the laws against murder for example. If to kill is in my interest, then I should kill under ethical egoism, and the government should not stop me because it reduces my total freedom, right? However, it hurts others and reduces the freedom of others around me. Libertarianism does not care to increase the universal freedom of a society because it could reduce the total freedom of an individual. Is my understanding of libertarianism wrong? How do people still advocate for such a seemingly obvious logical inconsistency within the political philosophy?
gpt
Libertarianism has nothing to do with ethical egoism. They are directly opposed to each other. If libertarianism were in bed with ethical egoism, it would indeed be self-contradictory, because basically every part of libertarianism is incompatible with ethical egoism, as you've pointed out. But because they are two separate ethical theories with two completely different sets of ethical claims, there is no reason to think libertarianism is at all self-contradictory.