Libertarian Welfare Rights: Can We Expel Them?

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 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 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.