Maybe you think I'm insane... but I had a friend who was a pro guitarist in the 80's (classically trained but played fancy 80's-rock-style for the most part). When I expressed interest in learning to play bass, he told me that, despite being a righty who played "righty", if he had everything to do over again, he'd play "lefty" instead (that is, dominant hand on fingering).
His rationale was that guitars were designed to be played with the dominant hand on plucking because of all the intricate, multi-finger plucking patterns in classical guitar playing that demand a lot of pluck-hand dexterity. However, rock guitar typically has much more simplistic pluck-hand motions (just back and forth with a pick), with more emphasis on intricate fingering-hand patterns. Therefore, he said, if you're not playing classically, you'd want your strong hand on fingering, to handle the more demanding task.
It sounded reasonable to me, so I learned to play "lefty". It was not easy at the very beginning, but I tried messing around a bit with both approaches just to see the difference and frankly felt equally incompetant either way. My weak hand was the limiting factor regardless of which task it was doing, so I figured it made sense to put it on the less intricate task (i.e. plucking) and continue playing "lefty". I also liked the idea of doing things differently from everyone else, and figured maybe it would show up in my playing somehow and make it more distinctive.
After about a year and a half my playing was way beyond where most people expected, sounding to them more like I'd been playing for 3-5 years. It took me some time to learn to slap passably, though. I didn't really get decent at it until I'd played for 3-4 years, at which time I also developed strumming. 10 years later I am still hopeless with pluck-hand tapping; the difficulty of getting my weak hand to do that seems so daunting that I haven't really put much of any effort into it (especially because I don't really see where I'd use the technique musically; I'm not terribly interested in the applications I've heard).
Anyway in the end I'm not convinced that there's a clear advantage technique-wise to doing things either way. Bass has more pluck-hand stuff going on than your average chord-strummin' rock guitar, so it may just be that for any advantage you gain with one approach, you give up something else.
I think it just comes down to personal preference. Does one way or another feel especially difficult to you as a beginner? Do you have a basic attraction to the idea of doing things differently from everyone else? How important is instrument access/selection? Are there certain techniques (chording, tapping, slapping, fretless intonation, quick runs up and down the fingerboard, whatever) that you know you'll want to emphasize in your playing, and which are especially demanding on one hand or the other?
Overall, I'd tend to agree with Ken... I don't really imagine for most players that the pros and cons of playing one way or another will in the final calculation outweigh the instrument availability factor, and my knee-jerk recommendation to any new player would be to play "righty". But perhaps unlike Ken I'd encourage them to try both ways and make the choice for themselves. I'd say do things whichever way you think will accomplish the most for you down the line, but if that seems so difficult that you don't even want to play, well, do things the way that's easier now (whether that means from a technique or instrument-acquisition standpoint, or both).
My feelings are so hurt. You get my vote of e-tough for the day.
you call him e-tough, well you're making yourself out to be some kind of e-guru knowitall. something to consider - you don't know him or his situation, so you can't judge without being viewed as a hypocrite. 
