The Iron Law of Kleptocracy

According to John Locke, tyranny is a corruption of government: an abuse of power and law. Frederic Bastiat agreed and wrote of law being perverted" and used, not for the protection of property against plunder, but for the perpetration of plunder against property. He called this legal plunder."

This view of government and tyranny was shared by such great thinkers as Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, and Leonard Read.

Other libertarians have a different view of the state: one that is informed by an alternate origin story, according to which the state originated not by agreement but by aggression, not by contract but by conquest.