In post #18 Moratta wrote:

Ethics and morality cannot be in contradiction, but they are as different and related, as algebra and geometry or chemistry and biology. This speaks to a fundamental flaw in the Libertarian Party. As hedonists, they argue for the political rights of everyone to be idiots as long as no one else gets hurt. On the other hand, being concerned primarily with you and me as individuals, Objectivism seeks to discover the best life for one person. A better society is the wider consequence of everyone (or many of us) living eudaimonically.  
 
The problem here is: What to do with those who do not live well?  

I don't know the particulars of how Marotta distinguishes morality and ethics from one another.  But I think his approach to the Libertarian Party is off course.  They aren't all hedonists.  Some may be, but others aren't.  And, libertarianism (small 'l') is not based upon hedonism either.  Both the Libertarian Party and libertarians in general do argue for the political rights of everyone to be idiots as long as no one else gets hurt.  Libertarianism is constrained by its lack of a a sound moral philosophy for a foundation.  In the absence of that sound foundation its members can more easily go astray intellectually.

Where Marotta asks, "What to do with those who do not live well?" he strays into the implication that we, individuals who are doing well (or not), should do something.  Note that word "should" - that is where an Objectivist spots the implied moral duty to behave in some way that mitigates the problems of the idiots who are harming themselves.  That is straying into the altruistic/marxist conversion of someone else's need into your obligation.  It is part of the progressive's modus operandi for bicycle helmet laws.

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In answer to Marotta's post #19:

I wanted to make clear that, as we grow up, we go through a period of mental development where we learn to think about a considered action's moral nature.  A baby might take a spoon or some other object and strike out with it and there is no awareness of any right or wrong, but a few years later, may have adquired the understanding that it would be wrong to hit.  The hitting is an action, it is preceded by the thought of hitting as an option.  At that point, when a choice is about to be made about hitting or not hitting... that is when morality can assert itself as a pressure against hitting. 

We start without a set of internalized, prioritized understandings of what is of value, disvalue, right or wrong.  We begin to acquire these and internalize them and integrate them.  Life becomes very much about our psychological processes and experiences as we move through events acting and reacting to our circumstances in relation to our value structure - setting goals, adjusting our actions, adjusting our values, increasing our understanding.

Grownups, as a part of the legal system, form laws.  The laws always rest on moral beliefs, whether the underlying moral values or ethical standards are explicitly, and properly understood by the law makers or not.  The laws, by their nature, pay attention to actions.  So, as morality develops within the child before the child is mature enough or aware enough to conceptualize it explicitly, so too does morality come before the law, since the law is always based upon morality.

Marotta's discussions of how to get away with cutting in line, or when it would be sensible to hit a sibling are strangely beside the point.... even lacking in having a point.

Other people who do not live well do impact us when they violate our rights.

Having one's rights violated is the impact that is unacceptable.  Whether other people live well or do not live well isn't something that should be dealt with by law.  We don't want laws that force people to "live well" whatever that is.  This is because not living well is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause to violate someone's rights.  Mixing up living well and violation of rights is a kind of fuzzy thinking that leads people in one of two directions: One to start saying society should ensure everyone lives well and it will be better for everyone.  But of course that leads to redistribution.  The other way is to prohibit what some elites decide to be not living well and voila, we have fascism.
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Wolfer suggested the right to property as the center of all other rights.

That is an idea that  I got from Ayn Rand.  Here is what she said:

"The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object."

In my mind I see property rights (ownership) as a bundle of rights - each referring to a specific action that can be taken (without needing any permisson), and relating to a specific entity (my house, my car, my body, my life, etc.)  A right is a relationship between a person and an entity.  A relationship that deals with actions that can be taken with or to that entity. 

"Property" isn't just about a piece of land, an automobile, or a book.  Life itself is a set of ongoing actions... and I have a whole bundle of actions I can take without anyone's permission relative to my life.  My body is an entity and there are actions I can pursue in relation to my body. 
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...children have limited rights, based on the facts of their development. (The rights of children have been discussed here, but without resolution. We all seem to accept that as a person matures, they gain more rights.)

Children have individual rights, but the exercise of those rights are supervised by their parents or guardians. This is a necessary understanding and without it, children could be seen as property of others.  Without that understanding the governing power of the parents or guardians wouldn't be limited and what we recognize today as child abuse would be permissible.  But with that understanding we can set up laws that protect the child's rights from neglect or abuse by their parent or guardian.  Notice that a harmful drug should not be given to a child by either a drug dealer or by the child's parents.  That tells you that the right to life (and the rights that arise from that fundamental right) come from the child's own life.  Having worked for Los Angeles County's children's protective agency, I can tell you that if some third party harms a child, the police attend to that person, but the children's protection agency looks at the parents to see if they were doing their part to properly protect the child.
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If your reckless, ill-living neighbors create a hazard with their so-called lifestyle, at what point can you interfere by pointing to a loss of property? Is mere noise sufficient grounds? What if they just dress poorly or have a car that is junk. Does their sloppy attire and wreck of car lower the market value of your property?

That first sentence is a bit confusing.  "Reckless", 'hazard creating', "ill-living" - that is a mixture that is hard to know how to treat relative to one's property rights.  And more is needed in terms of understanding the context of the property in question.  For example, I live in a community with an HOA ("Home Owner's Association") which creates contractual rights and obligations.  All of us in this neighborhood voluntarily signed away any right to be noisy or to have a junk car in plain view.  We protect the market value of our property, to a degree, in this fashion.  As to the market value we need to keep in mind that we don't "own" the market value of a piece of property.  It isn't an action.  We can own the right to sell something, to seek the best price, to accept or reject offers made, etc., but we don't own the market value.