And Max seems to be proposing anarchist utopianism.

Chief among these is the concept of environmental health. We cannot partition the environment. We all drink the same water; we all breathe the same air. Rivers, streams, aquifers and oceans cross property lines, and pollutants entering the water anywhere on the planet can cause problems almost anywhere else.

Including surely, locally. If I am your hypothetical polluter I will also become a victim of that pollution (eventually). Self interest and enlightened self interest are two fundementally different positions

I may be in the minority among libertarians in that I do not think that government is a necessary evil to be distrusted and reviled. I think government is a noble and moral human institution when it is bound by proper restrictions and set to perform its proper functions.

And governments should be mistrusted as a matter of principle

Sorry to be the grammar pedant, but I thought this distinction is worth pointing out.

Mistrust - Trusting someone unworthy of your trust.
Distrust - Not trusting someone.

I think you intended the latter.

Who thinks that people should have less freedom than they could feasibly have?

Republicans?

Since some people think I'm painting with too broad a brush, let me clarify my position and the one this post series is arguing against.

I believe that the government is best that governs least, and freedom, both for individuals and for business, should be increased to the greatest extent possible. I also believe that the government as it currently is is far too intrusive in many areas (and this is not solely the Republicans' fault). If that's what it means to be a libertarian, then I'm a libertarian. But that position seems too broad to be the essence of what libertarianism means, because I don't know anyone who disagrees with it. Who thinks that people should have less freedom than they could feasibly have?

What I'm responding to in this essay is not just the position that less red tape is good, but a specific political philosophy which holds that private property is an inviolable right, that the only legitimate type of economic interaction is one of full and mutual consent between individuals, and that the only responsibility of government is to prevent violence or fraud. Libertarians of this type, as a general rule, believe that all taxation is a moral wrong (some go so far as to call it theft or slavery), that all social safety-net programs funded with taxation should be abolished, that all public lands and public organizations should either be dismantled or sold to the highest bidder, and that that voluntary private charity should be solely responsible for caring for the needy. In short, they advocate the furthest extreme of laissez-faire capitalism and take that as the model for all of society.

This is not a straw man: there are many people who believe exactly this. Here's an example post by Timothy Sandefur, frequent guest author on Positive Liberty and the Panda's Thumb, which argues that there is no moral distinction between taxation and robbery. Even some commenters on this site have expressed this view.