You wrote:

Fourthly, this argument confuses libertarianism for anarchism. Libertarianism advocates for the existence of government and the limit of its power to preventing coercion of individual liberty, protecting property rights, and enforcing contracts. Anarchists advocate for no government. There is a huge difference, and realizing this difference invalidates many of the criticisms of the mainstream libertarian framework brought up by Kos and others.

There are actually many anarchist strains of "libertarianism," and if one were to adhere to a strict definition, there would be a valid argument to expel any advocacy of the State(whether limited or minarchist) from libertarian theory. In general, anarchists do not advocate "no government," rather the argument is against "government" in the form of The State. That is, enforcement mechanisms one subscribes oneself to be done voluntarily with the right to secede from such.

Kos wasn't arguing against the anarchist version of libertarianism but the "minarchist" one. His argument boiled down to that government needed to be big enough to constrain corporate power and corporate monopoly and that government needed to provide a social safety net. Other than that, he was down with being a libertarian. My primary argument with Kos concerned the first point, not the second point per se. It is theoretically predictable and empirically verifiable that a strong centralized government power is an enabler of Corporate power, if "the corporation' is a part of the state's legal framework. For example,Kos argued in his original essay that government was needed to protect the citizen's privacy against the corporation, which in itself seems strange given that it's private data being tied compulsorily to a Government ID (SS#) that largely generates the threat to begin with. And, I imagine even kos had to realize the irony of his thesis after spending the better part of this year ranting on his blog against government granting immunity to corporations from private lawsuits as a result of the corporations(at the behest of the government) violating their customer's privacy rights.

Through the mechanisms I described characterizing a libertarian vision of government.

I would not at all characterize support for socialized medicine, income taxation, draconian "climate change" measures, "government-business partnerships," or "social safety nets" as libertarian positions.

Taking the approach of libertarianism being a modern development of classical liberalism, I think it's clear that its philosophical foundation is "statist," in contrast to an anarchist desire for a society without a state (but still the possibility of governing entities based on free association and mutual aid).

A minarchist libertarianism would envision a state with less of a role than the classical liberals. The question is if the natural progression of libertarian ideology is to reach a point where statism itself is no longer a viable position.

That is, once you start off on the road of libertarianism, do all roads lead to anarchism, and it's just some people stop along the way.

Although some could argue that governing entities based on the administration of territorial regions in an anarchist society would become states.

Aren't you all glad to have me back? ;)