Elf Sternberg

The freedom of the individual can be curtailed not only by the government, but by a large variety of intermediate powers like work bosses, neighborhood associations, self-organized ethnic movements, organized religions, tough violent men, or social conventions. In a society such as ours, where the government maintains a nominal monopoly on the use of physical violence, there is plenty of room for people to be oppressed by such intermediate powers .. The founders of libertarianism ... failed to extend the principle [of liberty] to covertly violent, semi-violent, or nonviolent forms of coercion.