In Globalization and Global Justice, Nicole Hassoun presents a new and fundamental challenge to libertarian political thought.Her Legitimacy Argument tries to show that natural rights libertarians are committed by their own principles to a requirement that their states recognize and meet the positive welfare here rights of certain merely potentially autonomous persons.Unfortunately, this argument suffers from two flaws.Hassoun needs to show, but has not shown, that the libertarian state would have to infringe any of the negative rights of the merely potentially autonomous cashel tail bag in such a way as to require consent from them.
Moreover, the libertarians could arrange their institutions, justifiably by their own lights, so as to expel all indigent, merely potentially autonomous persons from their territory.This second solution is intuitively unpalatable, but may be no more morally problematic than the basic natural rights libertarian view itself.