> giving birth to another person is morally good or, at worst, morally neutral

The libertarian argument is that you made a person without their consent, and now they have the burden of deciding whether they want to continue to live, and this is unjust.

> However, we may come to an impasse, as I don't find "taken to its logical conclusion" arguments, or the paradoxes they can impose, to be particularly persuasive.

My own arguments may be taken to their logical conclusion without encountering a reduction to absurdity.

> Even if we accept it as true...

We don't have to accept this as a postulate. We can observe empirically that specialization and trade with others benefits the participants. Then not everyone has to be a doctor, a shelter builder, a farmer, etc. (none of which they can even do competently without a teacher).

> Society is unjust and unfair, which is bad

This step is doing a lot of work. If you believe it is unjust that you were brought into this world without consent, sure, but that idea of justice is absurd. The idea of justice divorced from the idea of benefit ultimately leads to the absurdum. Fairness is not an end goal in itself but one of many means to achieve mutual benefit, which satisfies the primary goal of personal benefit.

> The libertarian argument is that you made a person without their consent, and now they have the burden of deciding whether they want to continue to live, and this is unjust.

I understand that is a libertarian argument and it is one that I fully disagree with. However, I do not think you have to make this argument for the others to hold true, which is the point I was trying to make.

> We can observe empirically that specialization and trade with others benefits the participants. Then not everyone has to be a doctor, a shelter builder, a farmer, etc. (none of which they can even do competently without a teacher).

What is the empirical evidence that a specialist is more fulfilled in life than a frontier settler who needed to be all of the things you mentioned?

One of the assumptions I avoided arguing in the "mountain of assumptions" is that we could measure the human condition in such a way as to say something is better than another, or that something that is better for one is better for all.

> This step is doing a lot of work. If you believe it is unjust that you were brought into this world without consent, sure, but that idea of justice is absurd.

My point in the first argument is that you can separate the idea that being born is just or unjust from the argument that being born into a social system is just or unjust. I think someone reasonably believe three of those combinations:

Birth : Society

Just / Just

Unjust / Unjust

Just / Unjust

It is fair that this separation is only possible due to a bit of a game I'm playing by centralizing the relative "justness" from the perspective of the individual. I think if you take a purely individualistic approach to this, you can separate things by what are changeable and what are not, as well the reality of nature vs. social construct. Someone was born, that cannot be changed. They are constrained by the natural laws of the universe, that cannot be changed. However, the social constructs that they live within can be changed.

The outcome may be different if we shifted the perspective to, say, the parent, where you could argue that their decision to conceive was unjust. Or to the system as a whole.

I think this is a valid approach given that we are discussing such an individualistic philosophy.

> The idea of justice divorced from the idea of benefit ultimately leads to the absurdum. Fairness is not an end goal in itself but one of many means to achieve mutual benefit, which satisfies the primary goal of personal benefit.

Hmm, I'm having a hard time working through this argument. Could you expand on it?

> What is the empirical evidence that a specialist is more fulfilled in life than a frontier settler who needed to be all of the things you mentioned?

The evidence is that a specialist can live to do the things they like about frontier living. The lone frontier settler is doomed to die early. If you're dead, nothing matters. This is the same problem with the libertarian obsession with "freedom." Yes, you can be free to shoot your machine guns and explode your bombs and pollute the air, and your neighbor can be free to shoot their machine guns and explode their bombs and pollute the air, but now neither of you will be able to do these things as long as if you came to an agreement to restrict where and when these are allowed.

> One of the assumptions I avoided arguing in the "mountain of assumptions" is that we could measure the human condition in such a way as to say something is better than another, or that something that is better for one is better for all.

Each individual can measure this themselves by understanding how long they'll live to do the things they want to do. It is not necessary that something that is better for one is better for all, but individuals will make social pacts that ensure their own benefit, and there is nothing you can do to stop it by making definitions of "justice" divorced from the reality of each person seeking their benefit, only to participate in it in a logical way.

> Hmm, I'm having a hard time working through this argument

Perhaps the last sentence of my previous paragraph is clearer. Striving for "justice" is unworkable, and definitions of justice that prevent others from making rules for you are especially so. Each person is working for their own benefit, and the only reasonable thing to do is to work with society under that assumption to make sure you benefit too. This means making governments that prevent others from crushing you under their boot, that help others in society gain abilities that you can benefit from, etc.; not dismantling governments that do that.