However, government is a special case: it reserves to itself a monopoly on violence and the ability to set the rules. Special cases deserve special treatment.
edit: it's a small world, I recognise your username from LP.
It's not as if private companies or entrepreneurial off-books pharmaceutically-oriented import-export fraternal organizations haven't resorted to violence. And they're hardly the only ones.
Standard Oil literally blew up the competition. Homestead Steel hired the Pinkertons to bash heads (and kill a few). Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Aetna kill indirectly by denying shelter, access to finances, or healthcare coverage.
The Libertardian arguments are getting more than a little tired, and we've heard them repeated a few too many times.
Is this a relevant line of argument? Yes, historically, companies have acted violently and even taken on state-like roles (I listed the EIC as an example elsewhere in this thread).
But these case are remarkable because they are rare, not common. And because in all such cases they predate the settlement of an uncontested government monopoly on violence in some geographical area.
I suppose you are mistaking me for a Rothtard, an anarcho-capitalist who believes in a free market in violence. Not so; it's been pretty well shown by now that centralising the social violence function is, on the whole, a better strategy.
But it comes with the downside that you've centralised a lot of power and it needs particular supervision and constraint.
"However, government is a special case: it reserves to itself a monopoly on violence and the ability to set the rules."
Now, either you're tautalogically defining any organization which sets rules and exacts violence in pursuit of its ends as a government (which is a meaningless distinction), or you're making a nonsense argument. Actually, both are nonsense arguments. Note too that I've included a number of other organizations other than state-registered corporations, though I include those.
Ongoing corporate war through the 2000s carried out by the Gulf Cartel subsidiary Los Zetas in Neuvo Lardo, Mexico, with death tolls running to the 100s annually:
http://www.pro8news.com/news/96625619.html
All of these are cases in which violence was used by companies directly or through conscious and deliberate disregard for human safety and consequences in the aim of profit. The use of force to secure control or direct gains.
Or perhaps you'd like to address companies such as Blackwater (now Xe), armed affiliates of oil, gas, mineral, and diamond operations, forestry operators, and others, who transact directly in death and force?
The distinction you're drawing simply doesn't exist.
Yes, but governmental violence is also used in the furthuring of private profit, and I'm not sure private profit off government policy is just a side effect and not also a symbiotic relationship. Bombs are expensive, rebuilding is expensive, terahertz scanners may do nothing for "security" but do wonders for bank accounts; and many of the costs to tax payers ultimately end up in private hands. Historically, governments have a lot more horrible things under their belt, but I'm still worried we now simply have an additional problem. I don't see much of a difference between power for the sake of power and profit for the sake of profit, and they make a great couple, too.
(That must be someone else, since I never used this nick before this account and don't even know what LP is. The Libertarian Party?)
However, government is a special case: it reserves to itself a monopoly on violence and the ability to set the rules. Special cases deserve special treatment.
edit: it's a small world, I recognise your username from LP.