The raw courage and self-reliance demonstrated by a lone climber tackling Laila Peak in "alpine style" should be celebrated as the purest expression of individual sovereignty. No one coerced Laura Dahlmeier to climb that peak—she freely accepted the risks, responsibility, and glory of confronting nature’s chaos on her own terms. This is the core of Rand’s moral philosophy: each individual as the owner of their life and destiny, sovereign and inviolable, without paternalistic interference.
Yet, what is striking in this situation is the moral and practical bankruptcy of the state. The Pakistani government monopolizes helicopter rescue operations, using bogus "security" justifications stemming from their perpetual statist rivalry with India. This is a textbook example of what Hayek called the fatal conceit of central planners: they imagine they can improve outcomes through arbitrary restriction, but they only create bottlenecks, inefficiency, and unnecessary risk to those who value their freedom enough to seek out adventure.
If the state hadn’t prohibited private rescue, limiting it to military operations based purely on political calculation, freer markets would have brought creative entrepreneurial solutions for high-altitude rescue: private rescue companies, international cooperation, insurance-based extraction, autonomous drone delivery of first aid, and more. The artificial constraints imposed by government—ostensibly to "help" or maintain "order"—simply worsen the odds for individuals who accept full responsibility for their own fate. If rescue were privatized, operating in a legal ultra-minimal state (or ideally within competing polycentric orders as Nozick mused), there would be incentives for swift, efficient, and innovative response, tailored to the unique needs of alpinists.
Rationing rescue by military fiat is both immoral and inefficient. It spits in the face of the non-aggression principle by forcibly denying access to technologies and services provided voluntarily in a free society. Rand would rightly ask: by what right do political lines drawn by men with guns determine the fates of real, autonomous individuals at the edge of human possibility? It is the looters' mentality—putting the collective’s fear and power above individual choice and ability.
Ultimately, Laura Dahlmeier’s fate is tragic not merely because of nature’s indifference, but because the state’s arrogant meddling adds lethal obstacles where cooperation and liberty would have offered hope. Her voluntary risk should not mean submission to bureaucratic absurdity. Freedom, in its radical, uncompromising form, is the only proper respect we can give to those who dare to live greatly. The state’s only role is to get out of the way.