What do people think?
Does the right to do what you want on your own property stop at your country’s border, or should we trust the market to do the right thing and allow Iran to do as they choose?
Additionally, does a private company within your own country have the right to develop nuclear weapons on their own property?
In both cases we can assume that they claim they only want them for defence purposes and have no intention of hurting anybody else.
Countries/governments do not have rights. The people do. I don’t think they actually want nuclear weapons however, they would probably prefer some farming equipment.
Honestly? Nuclear weapons should not exist period.
A hundred times Yes
Countries and governments are organisations made up of people. Like it or not they are democratically elected. But even so, if a private individual wants to develop nuclear weapons within Iran, should they be allowed to?
Also, I don’t think Iran has any shortage of farming equipment. They are an incredibly rich country due to their oil reserves. The problem they have is UN sanctions do not allow them to trade effectively with the rest of the world.
But they do. Without the technology we would also have no nuclear power and have to continue our reliance on fossil fuels.
A lifeboat situation is a specie of the logical fallacy of isolation.
Does the US have the right to nuclear weapons?
That’s a nice theoretical answer. However the reality is there’s a group of likely nut jobs getting closer and closer to being able to evaporate major cities. Now I whole heartedly agree with a non intervention policy and think an ideal world would be purely anarcho capitalist. However complete and total military disengagement with the world after previous administrations have spent a good century pissing people off might not be the best path. The real question is what would be a policy to follow in the framework of a draw down of troops and overseas presence/intervention that would best appease the most angry nutters while addressing the very real risk of attack that our ‘afore mentioned ‘leaders’ have exposed us to. Mises’ statement about what you replace a fire with doesn’t mean there aren’t varying degrees of effective means for extinguishing a particular fire. Immediate pull out isn’t necessarily the best option. And whatever your position on whether or not governments have rights or not, it’s not the only relevant and hardly the most immediate concern vis a vi whether or not I’mADinnerJacket and his superiors in Iran have the ability to nuke cities.
Groups are abstractions. If anyone has rights, it can only be individuals.
As for worrying about nuclear war… Within a few minutes after the first clumsy attempt to use a nuke on any ally of the US, the entire country of origin will probably be given one warning before being carpet-nuked. If a second nuke is ever used, the entire Middle East will be wiped off the map before it even hits the news, and maybe North Korea also for good measure. I suspect heads of state don’t like the idea of nuclear war any more than we do.
Rothbard says that possession of WMDs is effectively aggression, as they have no purpose but taking life. I agree with that assertion. The hell does anyone need a nuclear weapon for? Not just Iran, but any country.
All weapons have essentially no purpose but taking life. Even while one can wound someone with a weapon like a 9mm pistol very easily without killing them, I would argue that such use is secondary, and that the primary purpose of that weapon is still to take life. Once one moves on to rifles, it is becomes nigh impossible to argue that their primary purpose is not taking life. Furthermore, it does not follow that having weapon like a fully automatic AK-47, which is a definitely a killing not a wounding gun, is aggression just because its purpose is nothing other than taking life because, in self-defense, it is often necessary to have no other purpose than to kill one’s attacker if conditions dictate it.
As a result, by analogy, I do not believe that Rothbard gives a good reason for the possession of WMDs being immoral. However, I do agree that the intuition of his argument is definitely right, but I would personally focus on the fact that WMDs often have too large of a effective killing radius to be able to efficiently differentiate between civilians, and non-civilians thus breaking a condition of a just war that all measures must be taken to minimize civilian deaths. Nevertheless, I do not believe my assertion outright bans the holding of WMDs, though it is hard to justifying having weapons of the power of hydrogen bombs.
This can have quite the slippery slope result.
Legally, of course. Law based on whether or not something (notice I did not say “someone”) is a threat to others is completely arbitrary. No one has a right to not be scared. Otherwise, planting a tree that might fall on my neighbor’s house could be considered illegal.
One’s right to do with his or her property stops at his or her property boundaries.
I see no viable reason for not allowing every government in the world to own nuclear weapons.
Yeah sure, they can build them, but since Iran is a declared enemy of Israel, the backlash from the Jewish community should be so strong that the US will be forced to say something about it.
There already is a group of nutjobs that have the capability to evaporate major cities- and they’ve done it more than once(the United States). Keeping troops overseas doesn’t do anything to protect anyone- its only purpose is occupation and to continue the bloodbath of foreign and US military lives. Immediate pullout is not only the best option- its the only option that needs to be taken.
Agreed.
I know of no treaty that forbids them.
Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
No. No one has a right to anything because rights are not positive. Instead, rights are negative.
In what way is he advocating positive property rights?