Thanks for the responses....self-bump here.
I have realized that the Libertarian/Randian understanding of rights is quite asymmetric. Selfishness is a virtue-provided that you are the one acting in a selfish manner. Others cannot act in a purely selfish, egoistic manner; for by doing so, they would necessarily be screwing everyone else over.
If everyone acted purely out of selfish, self-interested calculation, then what's to stop any individual from stealing or destroying another's property? Nothing. So much for "absolute" property rights.
This is why the Libertarian doctrines of Ayn Rand, Hayek, etc. are self-refuting and self-contradictory. The standard of egoism must ONLY apply to you, and not anybody else in society.
Otherwise, you have purely anti-social behavior among individuals in society. Therefore, this is not a viable ideology.
Your understanding of self-interest is not much more sophisticated than Nash's version of self-interest. It wasn't good for his mental health. In the end, he admitted that even Soviet totalitarians have more self-restraint than he imagined possible.
Libertarians are sometimes smug because they know that every government in the history of man has failed, often due to its own regulatory incompetence. Individuality grows stronger. The power of voluntary contract and market-based economics grow stronger.
Statists are engaged in a pointless Sisyphean task. They will learn or they will keep rolling the boulder up the hill for the rest of eternity.
