What bugs me about this chapter is trying to present nonaggression as an "axiom". When you want something to be considered an axiom you need to focus on the definition and prove that it is sound in its most basic applications. But instead the author jumps to all these abstract points like leftism and price controls and war.
From the article:
“Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else.
This doesn't really seem sound to me in the most basic cases. Person A vaguely threatens person B, then person B kills person A. Not okay. It also doesn't define what counts a "threat". There are many cases where person A claims person B threatened them and person B denies it.
So a lot of these general principles make sense but when he tries to simplify it into an axiomatic system it just seems to degenerate into error.
If Rothbard were honest, he would have admitted that the terms, though broadly meaningful, are too vague to be part of an "axiomatically" true principle.
Stimulating critique of Rothbard, Prof. C. I think that all people in all times and all places know what is right behavior for rational humans. Rather than attempting to justify that positive statement here in this text box, I will offer this link:
What bugs me about this chapter is trying to present nonaggression as an "axiom". When you want something to be considered an axiom you need to focus on the definition and prove that it is sound in its most basic applications. But instead the author jumps to all these abstract points like leftism and price controls and war.
From the article:
“Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else.
This doesn't really seem sound to me in the most basic cases. Person A vaguely threatens person B, then person B kills person A. Not okay. It also doesn't define what counts a "threat". There are many cases where person A claims person B threatened them and person B denies it.
So a lot of these general principles make sense but when he tries to simplify it into an axiomatic system it just seems to degenerate into error.
If Rothbard were honest, he would have admitted that the terms, though broadly meaningful, are too vague to be part of an "axiomatically" true principle.
Stimulating critique of Rothbard, Prof. C. I think that all people in all times and all places know what is right behavior for rational humans. Rather than attempting to justify that positive statement here in this text box, I will offer this link:
https://economicsandfreedom.substack.com/p/what-is-morality
> indeed, all reasoning
This links seems to have succumbed to rot many years ago, so you should probably replace it with one to the Internet Archive.
Fixed.