By stressing self-contradiction in the arguments of non-anarcho-Lockeans, Hoppe has solved the age-old problem of generalizing an ethic for mankind.
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In order to come to a policy conclusion, I have long maintained, economists have to come up with some kind of ethical system. Note that all branches of modern "welfare economics" have attempted to do just that: to continue to be "scientific" and therefore value-free, and yet to make all sorts of cherished policy pronouncements (since most economists would like at some point to get beyond their mathematical models and draw politically relevant conclusions). Most economists would not be caught dead with an ethical system or principle, believing that this would detract from their "scientific" status.
And yet, remarkably and extraordinarily, Hans Hoppe has proven me wrong. He has done it: he has deduced an anarcho-Lockean rights ethic from self-evident axioms.
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In other worlds, Hans Hoppe has brought to political ethics what Misesians are familiar with in praxeology and Aristotelian-Randians are familiar with in metaphysics: what we might call "hard-core axiomatics." It is self-contradictory and therefore self-refuting for anyone to deny the Misesian action axiom (that everyone acts), since the very attempt to deny it is itself an action. It is self-contradictory and therefore self-refuting to deny the Randian axiom of consciousness, since some consciousness has to be making this attempt at denial.
Hoppe is interested, not so much in keeping the argument going, but in demonstrating that any argument whatsoever (including of course anti-anarcho-Lockean ones) must imply self-ownership of the body of both the arguer and the listeners, as well as a homesteading-of-property right so that the arguers and listeners will be alive to listen to the argument and carry it on.
By stressing self-contradiction in the arguments of non-anarcho-Lockeans, Hoppe has solved the age-old problem of generalizing an ethic for mankind.
A future research program for Hoppe and other libertarian philosophers would be
(a) to see how far axiomatics can be extended into other spheres of ethics, or
(b) to see if and how this axiomatic could be integrated into the standard natural-law approach.