| | Allow me to suggest a specific difference: rights. I believe that it is a fair generalization that libertarians say that we have inalienable, natural rights. Most might say that they are God-given rights. Less religious or unreligious libertarians would say that by your nature as a human being, you need rights to live in society. (Alone on an island, you do not need rights. You cannot violate your own.) But no one can take your rights away in a metaphysical sense. They can deny you the practice of them or violate them, but the violation does not negate them. Indeed, violating some rights only calls for you to stand on the more (or most?) basic right to self-defense.
Objectivism is not a natural rights philosophy. Objectivists do not believe that rights are intrinsic, that you possess them automatically, or that rights must never be violated.
From a similar discussion about this book on MSK's OL.
Roger Bissell Michael E. Marotta... Discussing the errors of intrinsicisim, Peikoff creates a scenario in which you are swimming in the ocean and you come upon a desert island and the owner will not let you come up. In that case, says Peikoff, when it is a matter of your life or his right, then "it's finished as the end of rights; the context is gone, and you kill him before he kills you." (page189)
That raises disturbing questions about the virtue of selfishness in a society based on man's rights. ...
Michael, rights are ~not~ intrinsic ...
My understanding of rights is that they apply to environments in which survival alternatives are available that do not require initiating force against another. That's the vast majority of situations in which humans find themselves. Let's call these situations in which people can co-exist without initiating force "viable social contexts" or simply "social contexts." In such a context, you are morally obliged to respect each person as an end in himself, someone you must deal with through persuasion and trade.
On the other hand, if a situation arises where there is ~no~ non-coercive survival alternative -- such as Peikoff's desert island scenario, where the newcomer is denied access to his only means of survival -- then neither is there any moral obligation to refrain from initiating force. This may sound alarming, but ...
And we have had similar discussions here. I only point out that it is another philosophical difference between Libertarians and Objectivists.
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