In New Zealand there is a law that gives floods legal rights. We can speak of the flood as owning those rights. They have legal capacity. Insects do ex analogia have (moral) rights. We ought not to harm them intentionally although we do not seem to have an obligation to maximise their pleasure. We have to obey those rights the insects have and as every living entity on Earth has. Those rights are the basis, the embryo, for a Property-owning democracy. I do not equate a Property-owning society with a liberal society. It can take that form but only if certian restrictions are made. We can imagine a property- owning democracy stripped of a parlamentary framework but that alternative is not relevant to consider here.
It is a good starting point to define liberalism, although intuitively, as an ideology based on freedom and equality. There is an emphasis in all liberalism that the preferences of the individuals matter. The spectra of the liberal ideology goes from John Locke and John Stuart Mill to Ludwig von Mises and Murrey Rothbard. Libertarianism ought to be viewed as a sort of liberalism. John Rawls seems to be a modern successor of John Stuart Mill.
For a beginner who just has started to reflect on liberal ideas and attitudes Libertarianism seems to be that system of ideas that is the most market friendly one. Some reflections may give us an other answer. The libertarians, say an anarchocapitalist, may be of the opinion that it is the start that matters. If the initial conditions are fair, we have to accept the outcome. From a property-owning democratic view, the picture is different. A new protecting agency may become dominant on the Market and although not called a state achieve monopoly. If you do not like that the state has a monopoly, it is not a good solution to accept it just because it is a private corporation that has it. The aspect of free competition is important. It is about choice, and the ability to choose is freedom.
If your liberalism is equivalent to a Property-owning democracy model, you will 1. Promote the view that everebody ought at least to have someting that they can spend on the Market, be a player in the game so to speak, but yes, a smaller one. 2. Accept governemental inventions to create a Market where there is no one. As in the school business. In Sweden the school system was viewed as someting of an administrative apparatus but after the influence of a Property-owning democracic ideological reform period the picture has changed. Today the pupils can buy educations with a "schoolcoin" financed through the tax system, choose the school of their own liking. Just because the State want it to be a Market there! Is not that democracy?!
My point is the following: A Property-owning democracy is more Market friendly than Libertarianism because the end matters, not just the starting point.
