How might child abuse be handled in a stateless society?
The Scenario
Single-father Bob physically abuses his 3-year old daughter, Jane. (Jane’s mother died while giving birth to her, and there is no extended family.) A nursery nurse becomes suspicious that Bob may be mistreating Jane. She informs the charity Friends-of-Babies, which investigates cases of child abuse, and re-homes abused children. Friends-of-Babies investigate the allegations made by the nurse. They make an assessment, and conclude that Bob is indeed abusing Jane, and that she would be better off if she were removed from that situation, and re-homed with loving foster parents.
A Free Market in Law
Law is the resolution of disputes. What is being disputed here is the ownership right to raise Jane. Bob currently owns this right, and the Friends-of-Babies organization is challenging him for it; they are claiming it for themselves. Assuming Bob objects to the charity’s claim, there is a dispute and the case will go to court. The court will award the right to raise Jane to one disputant or the other.
Free markets produce according to consumer demand. Free market firms strive for excellence in satisfying consumers, and firms that fail to use resources efficiently for this purpose do not survive the competition. This is as true for a free market in the law industry as it is for any other industry. The laws that are produced are those that consumers demand. If free market courts produce laws that are seen as unfair or unjust, they will lose customers. For a free market court, a reputation for honesty, fairness, wisdom and good judgment is essential for continued business.
Friends-of-Babies present their evidence to the court. The court becomes convinced that Bob is an abusive parent. Now they must make their decision. Child abuse, of the kind Bob committed, is widely considered by individuals in society as sufficient justification for intervention; this child needs rescuing. Therefore the court will likely decide in favor of Friends-of-Babies. They would not want to be known as an organization that lets child abuse continue. Following the court decision, Bob must give up Jane to the charity. If he resists, the charity can physically take Jane from him, and Bob has no grounds to complain. Thus Jane is rescued from her abusive father, and is soon found a loving new home.
Some Objections
Now a few objections to this scenario…
1. What if Friends-of-Babies doesn’t exist? Lots of people feel strongly about protecting children from abuse, and would be willing to donate to such an organization, so we may be confident that such charities will exist.
2. What if Bob doesn’t agree to go to court? As with any dispute, the alternative to arbitration is a martial contest, which neither disputant wants. If Bob is innocent, he has incentive to go to court to defend himself against the spurious claim. If Bob is guilty, he still has an incentive to go to court, if only because the consequences of not going to court would be worse. With a court decision, the harm that Friends-of-Babies inflicts on Bob is strictly limited, but if Bob refuses to go to court (makes himself an outlaw), the actions taken against him could be much more severe.
3. How do you define ‘abuse’? That is to be decided by the consumers of laws. There will always be different opinions about what actions justify intervening in the parent-child relationship. The variation will be reflected in the choice of laws offered to consumers, and could vary significantly between cultures. With no monopoly in the law industry, there is no need to search for an ‘objective’ definition, and no need for universal agreement on the definition.
4. Isn’t this just kidnapping, and aggression against Bob? See note…
5. Doesn’t this imply parental obligations, and “positive rights”? See note…
Conclusion
I have outlined how child abuse might be handled in a stateless society, with free markets in law and child protection. For all the usual reasons that free markets are better than monopolies, we would expect the laws produced and the protection given to children to be superior with the free market system. Therefore, all other things being equal, children will be safer and child abuse will be far less common without a State.
Note
The last two objections involve libertarian legal theory. My answer is that this court decision may well be consistent with libertarianism. To understand how this could be the case, see Walter Block’s Libertarianism, positive obligations and property abandonment: children's rights, and Stephan Kinsella’s How We Come to Own Ourselves.
Government Explained 2: The Special Piece of Paper
Law without Government
I would recommend a link to something that outlines (in a simple/concise manner) how free market law works. For many, including myself, free market law is the most difficult part of an ancap society to wrap ones head around. In other markets there can be niche markets for people who do not share the same tastes as the norm. For example, most people like packaged food, but a small number of people like organic food. In a free market the organic eaters aren't forced to eat packaged food because there are small companies that provide for this niche market, probably at a higher cost due to scaling.
In a legal system as you have described though, I would assume that Bob would use a niche firm for providing his law and this niche firm believes in corporal punishment of children. The friends-of-babies likely does not employ the same law firm and the one they employ does not agree with corporal punishment of children.
While Bob may have to pay more for his law (again, due to scaling), he has chosen his firm and it would go against the NAP to force your law on him.
I think what this comes down to is whether or not children are property. If children are property then they do not have rights and Bob can do whatever he wants with or to his child. If children are not property then they are people and have all the same rights as an adult in which case no actor (friends-of-babies) can force the child to do anything it doesn't agree to.
Micah:I would recommend a link to something that outlines (in a simple/concise manner) how free market law works. For many, including myself, free market law is the most difficult part of an ancap society to wrap ones head around. In other markets there can be niche markets for people who do not share the same tastes as the norm. For example, most people like packaged food, but a small number of people like organic food. In a free market the organic eaters aren't forced to eat packaged food because there are small companies that provide for this niche market, probably at a higher cost due to scaling.
The best description IMO is David Friedman's chapter Police, Courts, and Laws - on the market in The Machinery of Freedom.
Micah:In a legal system as you have described though, I would assume that Bob would use a niche firm for providing his law and this niche firm believes in corporal punishment of children. The friends-of-babies likely does not employ the same law firm and the one they employ does not agree with corporal punishment of children.
This is answered when Friedman discusses the bargaining process between courts using different law codes, in the above link. Basically, a court enforcing draconian laws ("killing redheads" is the example often used) would not survive the competition in a free market.
Micah:I think what this comes down to is whether or not children are property. If children are property then they do not have rights and Bob can do whatever he wants with or to his child. If children are not property then they are people and have all the same rights as an adult in which case no actor (friends-of-babies) can force the child to do anything it doesn't agree to.
As I said, this is libertarian legal theory stuff that I wanted to keep out of scope of this post. But read Walter Block's paper. The answers lie within.
This is not difficult at all. If a parent is initiating force against a kid, then the kid has the right to press charges against the parent. If the kid does not choose to press charges, then no crime has been committed. A kid also has the absolute right to run away and either live on its own or seek other parents. However, it is a violation of the non-aggression axiom for any 3rd party to take a child from its parents against its will.
I should note that I reject the idea of allowing the market to determine the content of the law. I am a Rothbardian, so I believe that the law is absolute and must be universally agreed upon, otherwise a stateless society is unworkable. Any "court" that attempts to enforce a law in conflict with the natural law (the non-aggression axiom) may be forcibly shut down. A minarchist state that enforces the non-aggression axiom must permit competition, but only provided that the competitors enforce the same law (those that don't are criminal organizations). If a free market in the content of law is permitted (rather than merely the provision of law), it will lead to initiations of force (just as the very existence of a legislature that can invent "laws" leads to initiations of force). Those who support the existence of legislatures or a "free market" in the content of the law are advocates of the initiation of force and therefore also support violating natural rights.
If an action is "widely considered by individuals in society as sufficient justification," but if the child does not wish to be separated from the parents, then it is a criminal act against both the child and its parents to take that kid away from its family. This is the rationalization used by the social worker creeps and their supporters to justify stealing kids from small religious groups and is something that no supposed "libertarian" should condone.
Extended family! Religious organizations! I don't think there would be an industry of nosy-nannies running around sniffing for child abuse in a natural order society. When has this ever been until modern times under the auspices of the modern Nanny State??
Grandparents, aunts, uncles and other extended family members must stand in line ahead of "compassionate" strangers who would intervene against a parent because seizing custody of children from their genetic relatives can be highly profitable. In other words, the incentives to manufacture evidence of abuse in order to take children away and sell them is huge and genetic strangers, unlike genetic relatives, have no natural reason not to exploit children in this way. Somehow, people are so brainwashed in the modern world that they've forgotten that the world is an extremely dangerous place for children whose parents or other genetic relatives are not around to look out for them. The idea of altruistic strangers is largely a myth. Genetic relatives take care of their children because nature has programmed them to do so because it is in the interests of the survival of their genes to do so but genetic strangers lose nothing from the abuse of a child and stand to gain a great deal. Google "Franklin sex scandal."
Clayton -
Also, I think that you have to be careful thinking of law as a "product". Law, in a natural order society, does not exist except in the minds of people based on what they understand about court case decisions. There is no legislature issuing edicts, there's just the body of decided court cases. So, the actual product is court decisions, or arbitrated agreements. The body of law simply emerges out of the set of realistically possible arbitrated agreements in the event of a dispute... there are no specific "laws", per se. You can't say, "there's a law against murder" because there is no law against murder, it's just that if you murder someone, you are almost certainly going to be brought to suit and punished.
So, laws don't get produced, but law (as an emergent phenomenon) does.
Clayton:Extended family! Religious organizations! I don't think there would be an industry of nosy-nannies running around sniffing for child abuse in a natural order society. When has this ever been until modern times under the auspices of the modern Nanny State?? Grandparents, aunts, uncles and other extended family members must stand in line ahead of "compassionate" strangers who would intervene against a parent because seizing custody of children from their genetic relatives can be highly profitable. In other words, the incentives to manufacture evidence of abuse in order to take children away and sell them is huge and genetic strangers, unlike genetic relatives, have no natural reason not to exploit children in this way. Somehow, people are so brainwashed in the modern world that they've forgotten that the world is an extremely dangerous place for children whose parents or other genetic relatives are not around to look out for them. The idea of altruistic strangers is largely a myth. Genetic relatives take care of their children because nature has programmed them to do so because it is in the interests of the survival of their genes to do so but genetic strangers lose nothing from the abuse of a child and stand to gain a great deal. Google "Franklin sex scandal."
Would a non-genetic family member have the right to intervene? For instance, would a step-father who had a very close relationship with his step-son be able to take him away from his abusive alcoholic mother after they (the step-father and the mother) had broken up? Or would say, an uncle who is not related by blood be able to fight for custody over his niece or nephew?
Cheers.
Would a non-genetic family member have the right to intervene? For instance, would a step-father who had a very close relationship with his step-son be able to take him away from his abusive alcoholic mother after they (the step-father and the mother) had broken up?
I think he should have to wait in line behind other genetic relatives.
Or would say, an uncle who is not related by blood be able to fight for custody over his niece or nephew?
Again, he stands in line behind all the genetic relatives. After the genetic relatives, then comes associates and the order of precedence should be according to the amount of economic investment (measured in time, dollars, etc.) which they have made into the child. Some organization that advertises itself as "compassionate" must still stand in line behind a step-parent, godparent or other associate who has actually invested something into the child's well-being.
This is my view, in any case. The current legal system could hardly be less like what I'm describing.
Clayton:I think he should have to wait in line behind other genetic relatives.
Ok. Since he would have to 'wait in line' so to speak, assuming that no other relatives were concerned would the voice of the abusive alcoholic mother come first (after all, she is a genetic relative; the step-father is not)? Also, what if none of the childs genetic relatives or close-associates (like the step father) care? Is it then the duty of psychologists and other official agencies, etc. to intervene?
Sorry for the dumb questions :P
I kind of agree with you in a lot of ways. My only point would be that we don't necessarily have to wait for anarchy to implement what I believe is a far more 'natural' way of solving child abuse. Do you know of any good books on the extended family? I am also interested in sociology as a whole (one of the many areas I am lagging :P)
Well, that's a really tough situation and my inclination is to say that the step-parent should basically be legally powerless. Let's change the situation just slightly. Instead of an abusive alcoholic mother, you have a naive young single mother who is married by an older pedophile man precisely because she has a young, vulnerable daughter. It's not that hard to fabricate evidence of alcoholism or substance abuse and take photographs of a bruise the young girl got on her legs when running outdoors. Bada bing bada boom, pedophile man ends up with full custody of a little girl who is essentially his sex slave without any voice in the world to protect her. Permitting genetic strangers to intervene is extremely dangerous and our culture generally does not recognize this. Legally, we tend to take people at face value. The step-father who makes a good show of loving his children is presumed to be a "loving Dad." The truth might be precisely the opposite and the evidence shows that step-fathers are actually extremely dangerous. The charity organization that puts on a pious facade of "compassion" is taken at face value to be truly desiring to just help kids... but the reality is a lot more sinister. Kids are pimped out of orphanages (Franklin sex scandal) and it is a simple praxeological deduction to realize that pedophiles must be attracted to foster parenting precisely because they get legitimate access to vulnerable kids who have little or no further recourse to protection (the foster parents are the last stop in the State's child protection system and the State is loathe to believe the accusations of foster children because foster parents are hard to come by and the State has no further alternatives).
Well, definitely we should not wait. Fortunately, a small and growing contingent of psychologists are starting to point out some of the more insane aspects of our current system. I don't have any book recommendations except the book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters which is about evolutionary psychology and briefly discusses this subject (pp. 119-120).
Statism is Crime:If a parent is initiating force against a kid, then the kid has the right to press charges against the parent.
Yes, but how many 3-year-olds know they have this right?
Statism is Crime:If the kid does not choose to press charges, then no crime has been committed.
Surely you don't mean that. Your username suggests to me you consider taxation to be a crime, and yet you submit to it and don't press charges, so how can it be a crime?
Statism is Crime:A kid also has the absolute right to run away and either live on its own or seek other parents.
As above. While true, this statement is useless for the scenario I presented because a 3-year-old lacks the ability to run away, and lacks the knowledge that he has the right to do so.
Statism is Crime:However, it is a violation of the non-aggression axiom for any 3rd party to take a child from its parents against its will.
Not necessarily. See Block. It could be considered an act of homesteading. By abusing the child, the parents abandon their right to raise the child, so this right becomes homesteadable by any third party.
Statism is Crime:I should note that I reject the idea of allowing the market to determine the content of the law. I am a Rothbardian, so I believe that the law is absolute and must be universally agreed upon, otherwise a stateless society is unworkable. Any "court" that attempts to enforce a law in conflict with the natural law (the non-aggression axiom) may be forcibly shut down. A minarchist state that enforces the non-aggression axiom must permit competition, but only provided that the competitors enforce the same law (those that don't are criminal organizations). If a free market in the content of law is permitted (rather than merely the provision of law), it will lead to initiations of force (just as the very existence of a legislature that can invent "laws" leads to initiations of force). Those who support the existence of legislatures or a "free market" in the content of the law are advocates of the initiation of force and therefore also support violating natural rights.
I was previously a Rothbardian, so I understand where you're coming from, but this now seems terribly confused to me. The alternative to a free market in law is a monopoly, so you are supporting a monopoly of the content of law, which makes you by definition a statist.
I will ask you the question that led me down the road to abandoning this Rothbardian idea of anarchy operating under the umbrella of a basic legal code: how specific/detailed is this "absolute law" or "basic legal code" that must be "universally agreed upon"? In other words, how much scope for interpretation is there within this umbrella concept of "universally agreed upon" law?
Statism is Crime:If an action is "widely considered by individuals in society as sufficient justification," but if the child does not wish to be separated from the parents, then it is a criminal act against both the child and its parents to take that kid away from its family.
It may not be a criminal act against the parents (see Block). To say that it is a criminal act against the child is to assume that the child has homesteaded his body to the extent that he has a right to decide who raises him. This is not the case for babies.
Statism is Crime:This is the rationalization used by the social worker creeps and their supporters to justify stealing kids from small religious groups and is something that no supposed "libertarian" should condone.
Do you find it satisfactory that rescuing children from abusive parents is a violation of libertarian law? Isn't it a bit odd that the consequences of libertarian law are so un-utilitarian in the case of children, when in almost all other circumstances, libertarian laws result in utilitarian consequences? Block shows that rescuing children from abusive parents is not necessarily a violation of libertarian law, hence libertarian laws also result in good consequences where children are involved. To say that rescuing a child from abusive parents is unlibertarian is simply a misunderstanding of libertarianism.
Clayton:Extended family!
I made the supposition that there was no extended family. You can of course substitute "Jane's grandparents/aunt/uncle" for "the Friends-of-Babies organization" is my analysis.
I did this to demonstrate precisely that the party claiming the right to raise the child need have no link (familial or otherwise) to the child, in order to claim it and possibly be awarded it. So long as the court expects the child to be better off with the other party, they will award that party the right. Presumably, if it is a family member claiming it, the chances of this are higher. The court will have to be extra careful when the new claimant is not a relative, for it would be disasterous for the court's reputation for it to relocate Jane from one abusive household to another, possibly more abusive one.
Clayton:The idea of altruistic strangers is largely a myth.
How do you explain the millions donated to children's charities today?
Clayton:Genetic relatives take care of their children because nature has programmed them to do so because it is in the interests of the survival of their genes to do so but genetic strangers lose nothing from the abuse of a child and stand to gain a great deal.
True, and this is why the court will need to be extra careful when the new claimant is not a relative. But not all wannabe foster parents are wannabe abusers.
Clayton:Google "Franklin sex scandal."
Yep, that's exactly the kind of thing we'd expect when we have a monopoly in the law and child protection industries.
Clayton:Also, I think that you have to be careful thinking of law as a "product". Law, in a natural order society, does not exist except in the minds of people based on what they understand about court case decisions. There is no legislature issuing edicts, there's just the body of decided court cases. So, the actual product is court decisions, or arbitrated agreements. The body of law simply emerges out of the set of realistically possible arbitrated agreements in the event of a dispute... there are no specific "laws", per se. You can't say, "there's a law against murder" because there is no law against murder, it's just that if you murder someone, you are almost certainly going to be brought to suit and punished.
All true, but I don't see why I should stop using the term product for what is produced by courts.
As free market courts will respond to the consumer demand of the monied interests I can say with 99'99% certainty this.
This will present a lucrative oppurtunity for those with money to bring up gross charges against any parent they deem unfit. The stronger their interests weight the balance, the more likely the court will be to award custody of these kids basically to the highest bidder. Kids will be traded coast to coast from one business owner to his friends as "adoption" when in reality it is just slavery.
"slippery slope" fallacy or not. This is what will happen.
(IOW: if the monied interests deem "red head killing" or other draconian laws in their own interest (say a large amount of worker agitators, ie plebes, are red heads) it will survive. Gvien the history of the wealthy classes and their views towards the common people, I see no reason to think "free market" law would be anything than a return to pre-feudal roman-esque law.)
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
EvilSocialistFellow:Would a non-genetic family member have the right to intervene? For instance, would a step-father who had a very close relationship with his step-son be able to take him away from his abusive alcoholic mother after they (the step-father and the mother) had broken up? Or would say, an uncle who is not related by blood be able to fight for custody over his niece or nephew?
These questions are coming from a statist or central planning mindset. With a monopoly on law, these questions need to be debated and resolved by the politicial philosophers guiding the monopolist, so that the monopolist knows how to make decisions. With a free market in law however, it is perfectly legitimate for me to say "let the market decide". In other words, these questions are for entrepreneurs to grapple with, not political philosophers. In fact, "let the market decide" is the only answer that a libertarian anarchist qua libertarian anarchist can give.
Clayton, your answers to ESF's questions are reasonable, but you should make it clear that you are speaking not as a libertarian anarchist when you answer them, but as a legal entrepreneur and/or evolutionary psychologist. It is an example of the trap that many libertarian anarchists fall into. Like when a statist asks (innocently) something like "with a free market in roads, will there be toll booths at every street corner?". The libertarian anarchist must answer this with "That is for entrepreneurs to decide, but here is one way I can imagine entrepreneurs could charge for road use...". To not make it clear that answering the question takes us out of the realm of political philosophy is to do a disservice to the libertarian anarchism... the statist may reject your entrepreneurial ideas as unworkable, and in doing so believe wrongly that it follows that libertarian anarchy itself is unworkable. Throwing the baby out with the bath water, as it were. It could easily be the case that your entrepreneurial ideas ARE unworkable, but that only means that YOU would fail if YOU were setting yourself up as an entrepreneur in a free market; it doesn't mean that free markets themselves are unworkable. As it happens though, in my opinion your ideas sound very reasonable from the entrepreneurial point-of-view, and well supported by the field of evolutionary psychology.
So ESF, remember that Clayton, when he talks about his ideas about who should have precedence to raise a child, is speaking as a potential legal entrepreneur, not saying "this is how things will be under libertarian anarchy". If you disagree with him on these particulars, it does not invalidate either libertarianism or anarchism.
trulib:So ESF, remember that Clayton, when he talks about his ideas about who should have precedence to raise a child, is speaking as a potential legal entrepreneur, not saying "this is how things will be under libertarian anarchy". If you disagree with him on these particulars, it does not invalidate either libertarianism or anarchism.
Yes I knew this but 'let the market decide' isn't exactly an answer that fully addresses my question. I don't like answers that are too mechanical and systematic. I am actually looking for the answer that allows for a margin for error, not an answer which seems to aim for complete and utter perfection (utopia). 'Let the market decide' seems to be an answer which suggests any possible conceivable flaw I could possibly conjure up is something that can be dealt with by an entrepeneur from some place at some time. Also, I am looking here for sociological structures, not free market solutions - sociology cannot be simplified to an economic science.
EiK:As free market courts will respond to the consumer demand of the monied interests I can say with 99'99% certainty this.
If I take "monied interests" to mean "consumers", then this actually a trusim, and exactly what I said in my OP.
If I take this as the standard objection to libertarian anarchism that "the rich will rule", then refer to point #8 in Roderick Long's Responses to 10 Objections.
EiK:This will present a lucrative oppurtunity for those with money to bring up gross charges against any parent they deem unfit. The stronger their interests weight the balance, the more likely the court will be to award custody of these kids basically to the highest bidder. Kids will be traded coast to coast from one business owner to his friends as "adoption" when in reality it is just slavery.
Even if I accept this as likely to happen, I would still point out that this kind of horror is more likely - easier to get away with (see Franklin case) - with a monopoly on law than with a free market. So this cannot count as a point against anarchy.
Also it is far easier to topple the "monied class" than it is the political class. (Of course, in the current system, these two classes work together, but without political support, the monied class are always at the mercy of consumers, who can topple them - quickly and without fuss - simply by spending their money elsewhere. A political revolution is far harder to achieve.)
But I do not accept your vision as a likely result of anarchy. For the same reason that it is the mass consumer that determines what kinds of food gets produced by a free market in food, it will be the mass consumer that determines what laws gets produced by a free market in law. In fact, this is actually even more true of law than it is of food, because a court's profitability is even more dependent on having a good reputation than a food producer. A dishonest court that awards particular court decisions in favor of the highest bidder will not survive competition. Courts must produce for the masses.
EiK:"slippery slope" fallacy or not. This is what will happen.
I wish I had a crystal ball too ;-)
As for slippery slope, this is no more of a slippery slope than any other matter of legal jurisprudence.
EiK:(IOW: if the monied interests deem "red head killing" or other draconian laws in their own interest (say a large amount of worker agitators, ie plebes, are red heads) it will survive. Gvien the history of the wealthy classes and their views towards the common people, I see no reason to think "free market" law would be anything than a return to pre-feudal roman-esque law.)
Well I do not share your pessimism.
Lastly, I would like to point out that pessimism about the consequences of anarchy is also no reason to reject it. See Kinsella on What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist. I think I recall David Friedman saying that, while he expects anarchic laws to be "largely libertarian", he is pessimistic about the likelihood of them being absolutely libertarian. But his pessimism does not lead him to abandon the idea of anarchy and instead support a State, even a minarchic one which will enforce libertarian laws (which no State can do entirely because a State is inherently unlibertarian).
ESF:Yes I knew this but 'let the market decide' isn't exactly an answer that fully addresses my question. I don't like answers that are too mechanical and systematic. I am actually looking for the answer that allows for a margin for error, not an answer which seems to aim for complete and utter perfection (utopia).
OK, that's fine then. I just wanted to make sure you weren't misunderstanding the context in which he was speaking, because mistaking political philosophy for legal entrepreneurial speculation is something I've seen lots of newbies here do, and many experienced posters fail to point out when they are changing the context from one to the other.
ESF:'Let the market decide' seems to be an answer which suggests any possible conceivable flaw I could possibly conjure up is something that can be dealt with by an entrepeneur from some place at some time.
This is possibly an obvious point, but to find a flaw in anarchy, that flaw must not be a flaw in the context of a monopoly on law as well. A "flaw" like 'its difficult to know when a child is better off being removed from his parents' is not a point against anarchy, because its just as difficult to know this with a State. (I'm not saying you don't know this, ESF, just making the point). To be a flaw in anarchy, it must be something that the market can't solve but the State can.
And yet, what could this possibly be? The State is simply defined as an organisation with a monopoly on law; it cannot solve problems that private institutions cannot solve, it can only make laws that favor itself (like making theft-by-itself, taxation, legal), and create additional monopolies (like monopolies in money and education) and cartels (like banking and pharmaceutical cartels). Aggression is the only thing that a State can do that a firm in a free market cannot.
ESF:Also, I am looking here for sociological structures, not free market solutions - sociology cannot be simplified to an economic science.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you say more?
trulib:This is possibly an obvious point, but to find a flaw in anarchy, that flaw must not be a flaw in the context of a monopoly on law as well. A "flaw" like 'its difficult to know when a child is better off being removed from his parents' is not a point against anarchy, because its just as difficult to know this with a State. (I'm not saying you don't know this, ESF, just making the point). To be a flaw in anarchy, it must be something that the market can't solve but the State can.
No but I need to know why the market can solve these issues better than the state. Not only does the market have to solve the issues better but the net benefits must also exceed the net costs (if any) of the actual transition phrase to anarchy.
That the issues (such as child abuse) caused as a result of the complex relationships people share with one another in a society cannot be solved by mechanical market structures like supply and demand but can only be solved by sociological features that occur naturally as a result of the transition phrase to a free society like, for example the extended family. That is why I prefer Clayton's extended family solution over some sort of service that an entrepeneur can provide.
I think you're looking at the situation all wrong. My position is as follows. As human beings, we should all desire children to live and prosper so it's insane to prevent anyone who wants to contribute to a child's well-being from doing so*. In other words, if John Doe Philanthropist wants to write a check to Tommy Child, there should be no law preventing him from doing so. However, support to children consists of much more than just money, it also includes playing with them, teaching them, hanging out with them, and so on. Parenting rights actually are not so much the right to do these things - anyone already has that right by the above principle that we should all desire human children to live and prosper. Rather, parenting rights consist in the much more specific power to selectively exclude others from providing support to their children. This power is ultimately a protective power, the primary reason a parent would want to exclude someone from providing support for their child is precisely because they believe that support is self-seeking in some way, such as a pedophile hanging out with a kid and giving the kid gifts to earn its trust. It this protective power of exclusion that I think must be handed off in some kind of rational priority order.
Now, let's look at the mechanics of a particular dispute. Alice is a single mother. She is an alcoholic and she beats her young son Bob when she's angry. Charlie is a truly well-motivated stranger that just doesn't like to see a kid being beaten up by an adult, even if that adult happens to be a parent. Note that stopping an abuse is the same thing as providing support, just in the negative.
One day, Charlie sees Alice beating Bob and decides to take action. He gets some evidence that Alice was beating Bob to back up his legal case then shows up at Alice's front door-step to forcibly take custody of the child. At this point Alice calls her PDA and Bob's PDA also shows up and the standoff is sent to court to be decided.
At this point, the dispute is of the following nature. Charlie's position is "I am providing support for your son by preventing you from abusing him." Alice's position is "I'm the parent, I have the right to exclude you from attempting to care for my son." There are two sides to this. First of all, Alice certainly has the power to exclude since she is the genetic parent, however, by our first principle that we should all desire to see human children live and prosper, she doesn't have the right to both exclude support from others and refuse to provide that support herself. In the case of abuse, we can say it this way, a parent doesn't have the right to exclude abuse-prevention from a stranger and abuse the child. The parent can only exclude abuse-prevention if he or she is not abusing the child. However, the parent can restore his or her right to exclude abuse-prevention simply by stopping abuse. So, in this case where Charlie has actual evidence of Alice's abuse of Bob, Alice should agree to some kind of monitoring to prove she is not abusing Bob if she wants to prevent Charlie from intervening.
However, the legal liability for intervention must be unlimited. If a parent can later show that he or she was not, in fact, abusive or the case was irregular, or what have you, and the original decision is overturned, the entire period of time for which the child was removed from the parent's custody must be categorized as kidnapping and all penalties for this must apply. Otherwise, you have a situation where strangers - such as pedophiles - can go fishing for cases where a parent doesn't have good legal representation or whatever. The only way to stop this is to make sure that whensoever the parent can raise a proper legal defense - even if it is ten years into the future - the legal shyster will be punished for the true magnitude of his or her crime.
Also, I reject the concept of "abusive parent". Legally, there should be no such concept, only "parental abuse." The former is a psychological theory. The latter is simply a matter of determining what, in fact, has happened. I'm deeply suspicious of ad hoc psychological theories invented by legal activists to serve their own ends. In the example, even if Charlie wins the right to prevent abuse of Bob by Alice, this does not constitute a transfer of custody from Alice to Charlie since the matter at hand was not the psychological question of whether Alice is an abusive parent but, rather, whether Alice retains the right to prevent Charlie from intervening to stop an act of abuse.
*Actually, I want to reword this a little... by virtue of being a human being (having human DNA and the genetic impulse to human survival), I have a legitimate interest in the life and prosperity of any human child and, therefore, no one should have the right to prevent me from providing support to a child if I want to... except a parent (or, more generally, a guardian).
ESF:No but I need to know why the market can solve these issues better than the state.
Yeah, that's what I meant. But we know from economic reasoning that markets are superior to monopolies. All the rest is detail. Like, we can talk about why, in particular, a free market in education, say, is superior to a monopoly of education. But it is, or should be, sufficient (for those who've grasped this simple economic truth) to say that a free market in education is superior to a monopoly of education simply because this is true whenever free markets are compared to monopolies. The critic of a free market in law, who supports free markets in other industries, has to explain why law is an exception to the general rule.
ESF:Not only does the market have to solve the issues better but the net benefits must also exceed the net costs (if any) of the actual transition phrase to anarchy.
The transition to anarchy is really a whole seperate issue, and a big and important one. As you mentioned on the other thread, you are not quite convinced about the viability of anarchism, so I think it is first necessary for me to try to convince you that the goal is worth having, i.e. anarchy is superior to statism. Then we can talk about the potential costs of a transition to come to a conclusion whether the benefits of anarchy outweight those costs. If you're not yet convinced that anarchy will deliver any benefit over what we have now, it seems premature to start considering what the costs of a transition might be.
But since you brought it up... Personally, I'm quite optimistic that the costs of a transition will be relatively low, and certainly outweighed by the full benefits that will come when the transition is complete. In my opinion, secessionism (rather than, say, privatization) is the lowest cost transition strategy. (Maybe start a new thread if you want to discuss this though, as its very off-topic).
Clayton:I think you're looking at the situation all wrong.
Really? Because I agree with pretty much everything that follows in your post. Perhaps we're just looking at the situation from different angles. :-P
Clayton:My position is as follows. As human beings, we should all desire children to live and prosper so it's insane to prevent anyone who wants to contribute to a child's well-being from doing so*.
While I agree, I wouldn't word it like that. It sounds like you're deriving ought from is, the "is" being informed by evolutionary psychology, in particular the theory of genetic altruism. Rather I would say that it is an empirical observation that children require a special kind of protection due to their immaturity, and that human beings tend to recognize this; we all strongly recognize that adults and children are not-alike in a very important sense: we recognize the validity of the idea of childhood, where somebody has parenting rights over the child.
Clayton:parenting rights consist in the much more specific power to selectively exclude others from providing support to their children. This power is ultimately a protective power, the primary reason a parent would want to exclude someone from providing support for their child is precisely because they believe that support is self-seeking in some way, such as a pedophile hanging out with a kid and giving the kid gifts to earn its trust.
I think this is a wonderful definition of parenting rights, or, in my OP phraseology, the right to raise a child. I will adopt it.
Clayton:It this protective power of exclusion that I think must be handed off in some kind of rational priority order.
Yes, I would think that any court that awarded the parenting rights to Friends-of-Babies when an uncle is claiming the rights would fail due to competition. Obviously, if there are no relatives - which was supposed in my scenario from the beginning - the reputable Friends-of-Babies organization would be higher in the priority order than some single man, possibly a pedophile, claiming the child directly (rather than being screened by Friends-of-Babies for his suitability as a foster parent).
So no disagreement here. Free market courts will hand parental rights off by some kind of rational priority order. Competition impels them to do so.
Clayton:Now, let's look at the mechanics of a particular dispute. Alice is a single mother. She is an alcoholic and she beats her young son Bob when she's angry. Charlie is a truly well-motivated stranger that just doesn't like to see a kid being beaten up by an adult, even if that adult happens to be a parent. Note that stopping an abuse is the same thing as providing support, just in the negative. One day, Charlie sees Alice beating Bob and decides to take action. He gets some evidence that Alice was beating Bob to back up his legal case then shows up at Alice's front door-step to forcibly take custody of the child. At this point Alice calls her PDA and Bob's PDA also shows up and the standoff is sent to court to be decided.
Your whole scenario is not different from mine in any significant way. Your solution is also identical to mine, or rather, to Walter Block's. You are just using different terms to Block. He describes it in terms of abandonment theory.
Clayton:(Alice) doesn't have the right to both exclude support from others and refuse to provide that support herself. The parent can only exclude abuse-prevention if he or she is not abusing the child.
Combining your terms with Block's, if Alice both excludes support from others and refuses to provide that support herself, she is abandoning her right to raise the child. Thus the right to raise the child can be (re-)homesteaded. If Alice, who is abusing the child, prevents Charlie from helping the child, she is guilty of the crime of forestalling (defined as "preventing someone from homesteading property").
Clayton:However, the parent can restore his or her right to exclude abuse-prevention simply by stopping abuse. So, in this case where Charlie has actual evidence of Alice's abuse of Bob, Alice should agree to some kind of monitoring to prove she is not abusing Bob if she wants to prevent Charlie from intervening.
Yes, OK, you are just saying that even though Alice has abandoned her parental right to raise the child, she can herself re-homestead the right she abandoned - by stopping the abuse. But what if this continues? At some point, Charlie ought to be able to take her to court for forstalling, so long as he has enough evidence to persuade that court that 1) Alice really was an abuser (really had abandoned the right), and, if he wants to claim full parental rights for himself, 2) that he is a suitable foster parent, and there is no other more suitable claimant to be found (like a relative).
Clayton:However, the legal liability for intervention must be unlimited. If a parent can later show that he or she was not, in fact, abusive or the case was irregular, or what have you, and the original decision is overturned, the entire period of time for which the child was removed from the parent's custody must be categorized as kidnapping and all penalties for this must apply. Otherwise, you have a situation where strangers - such as pedophiles - can go fishing for cases where a parent doesn't have good legal representation or whatever. The only way to stop this is to make sure that whensoever the parent can raise a proper legal defense - even if it is ten years into the future - the legal shyster will be punished for the true magnitude of his or her crime.
Agree 100%.
Clayton:Also, I reject the concept of "abusive parent". Legally, there should be no such concept, only "parental abuse." The former is a psychological theory. The latter is simply a matter of determining what, in fact, has happened.
I agree, sort of. If we define "parental abuse" as "actions taken by the owner of the right to raise a child which constitute abandonment of that right" then it is a precise legal definition. Making that definition more concrete is, of course, the task of legal entrepreneurs, and to be determined largely by customs, i.e. customary law.
An "abusive parent" therefore simply means "an individual who has committed parental abuse". I don't see how this is any less of a precise legal term than "parental abuse" itself. I do not mean by it some kind of psychological theory. But maybe I missed your point.
Overall, I'd say we agree with each other completely Clayton, but our terminological differences might make it seem otherwise.
Child abuse still occurs in this society.
The only societies where child abuse does not occur are idealized or utopian ones. It is a given that child abuse will always exist, but the question is: what kind of society will best succeed at limiting the amount of child abuse that occurs? The answer has got to be, ceteris paribus, an anarchic one.
@Wibee: Yep. The really sad part is that the majority of child abuse is systemic. Children are abused in so many ways precisely because the system creates the rules in such a way that they are going to be abused. I don't think it's because those within the system want children to be abused but because they don't feel the costs of their mistakes. Just another example where disconnecting consequences from decisions leads to bad outcomes.
Clayton: Also, I think that you have to be careful thinking of law as a "product". Law, in a natural order society, does not exist except in the minds of people based on what they understand about court case decisions. There is no legislature issuing edicts, there's just the body of decided court cases. So, the actual product is court decisions, or arbitrated agreements. The body of law simply emerges out of the set of realistically possible arbitrated agreements in the event of a dispute... there are no specific "laws", per se. You can't say, "there's a law against murder" because there is no law against murder, it's just that if you murder someone, you are almost certainly going to be brought to suit and punished. So, laws don't get produced, but law (as an emergent phenomenon) does. Clayton -
that's a very nice way to put it. Thanks for an insight, I hadn't thought about it this way.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
trulib:Yeah, that's what I meant. But we know from economic reasoning that markets are superior to monopolies. All the rest is detail. Like, we can talk about why, in particular, a free market in education, say, is superior to a monopoly of education. But it is, or should be, sufficient (for those who've grasped this simple economic truth) to say that a free market in education is superior to a monopoly of education simply because this is true whenever free markets are compared to monopolies. The critic of a free market in law, who supports free markets in other industries, has to explain why law is an exception to the general rule. The transition to anarchy is really a whole seperate issue, and a big and important one. As you mentioned on the other thread, you are not quite convinced about the viability of anarchism, so I think it is first necessary for me to try to convince you that the goal is worth having, i.e. anarchy is superior to statism. Then we can talk about the potential costs of a transition to come to a conclusion whether the benefits of anarchy outweight those costs. If you're not yet convinced that anarchy will deliver any benefit over what we have now, it seems premature to start considering what the costs of a transition might be. But since you brought it up... Personally, I'm quite optimistic that the costs of a transition will be relatively low, and certainly outweighed by the full benefits that will come when the transition is complete. In my opinion, secessionism (rather than, say, privatization) is the lowest cost transition strategy. (Maybe start a new thread if you want to discuss this though, as its very off-topic).
I think you're reading into my arguments against AnCap slightly wrong. My arguments are not that AnCap would be less prosperous on the whole as such (I understand what is wrong with saying 'on the whole' - I am just being lazy) but that some people would 'get left behind'. I explained this in far more detail here: http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/23085/404151.aspx#404151
I'd be interested to know whether you would prefer superhuman progress and only a few people living in (absolute) poverty or moderate progress and no-one living in (absolute) poverty. My thoughts in terms of the prevention of child abuse are the same.
Capitalism is the 'wealth generator' so to speak but the state is the 'wealth redistributor'. Having said that, I only want minimalised wealth redistribution so to speak.
Combining your terms with Block's, if Alice both excludes support from others and refuses to provide that support herself, she isabandoning her right to raise the child. Thus the right to raise the child can be (re-)homesteaded. If Alice, who is abusing the child, prevents Charlie from helping the child, she is guilty of the crime of forestalling (defined as "preventing someone from homesteading property").
Block's model might apply to children of a certain age but I'm specifically thinking of very young children, from birth to about 7 or 8 years old where most children are very easily manipulated into accepting obviously unacceptable situations (consider the Elizabeth Smart case or the Shawn Hornbeck case, these are much older children still easily coerced into a horrible situation). For these children, homesteading is the wrong model because homesteading implies that children are a physical resource which can be improved. If children from birth to 7 or 8 years of age are a resource, pray tell, what sort of resource are they and what sorts of improvements could entrepreneurs make to them in order to resell at a profit the rights they bought? The fact is that children in this age range have no other value than as offspring of their genetic parents and other relatives.
Older children might be able to work to pay for their room and board and so might be a valuable resource and the homesteading model might be able to be applied but children in such dire circumstances must also be presumed to be emancipated so that they are free to flee their would-be guardians. Otherwise, you get 19th century Britain child labor. In other words, it should be up to the child to decide whether the cure (de facto servitude) is worse than the disease (homelessness).
In my model (by contrast to the current legal system), "custody" per se could never be revoked because anyone who cares to do so may care for the child (including an abusive parent) so long as the guardian does not exclude them, except in the case where natural guardianship has been reversed (see below). I think it would be best to follow a policy of augmented caretaking rather than transfer of custody in most cases where there is neglect or abuse. In other words, what Charlie would win - if he won - in his dispute with Alice is the right not to be excluded from caring for Bob by Alice. He would not win the right to exclude Alice or anyone else from caring for Bob. Note, however, that Charlie forcibly intervening to prevent Alice from beating Bob is not Charlie excluding Alice from providing care to Bob. Rather, he is simply providing care for Bob by preventing Alice from harming him. So, caretaking would simply be augmented by addition of caretakers who cannot be refused by the parent.
Thinking along these lines a little further, imagine that in addition to abusing her child, Alice also neglects him and permits all sorts of dangerous people to come around him. These people are a danger to Bob, one of them might kidnap him and so on. Charlie sees this dangerous situation and wants the power to protect Bob from the dangers that Alice is not protecting him from. Following a similar line as above, Charlie collects some evidence of Alice's neglect then shows up on her doorstep and explains that he intends to protect Bob from her dangerous friends. The PDAs show up and the case goes to court.
Now, in this case, Charlie is seeking the protective or guardian power, not just a caretaking right. If he wins, Charlie would now have the power to exclude people from caring for Bob. This power is extremely dangerous to be granted to genetic strangers so (a) there must be no one else more closely related to Bob in line ahead of Charlie or who is a genetic stranger but has provably invested more capital into Bob and (b) if such a person wasn't around at the time the case was decided but later shows up, Charlie's right to exclude cannot apply to them and the guardian power must be liable to be reassigned back to the person with higher priority. Even in this case, Charlie still has not won the right to exclude Alice from caring for Bob, he has only won the right to exclude the dangerous people hanging around Bob from caring for him (or being around him at all). From a protection point of view, Charlie is actually in a power-sharing relationship with Alice.
The reversal of natural guardianship - the power to completely exclude a genetic parent from caring for his or her child in the way that most genetic parents have the power to exclude others from caring for their child - must be reserved for only the most extreme cases and should always go to another genetic relative except in those tragic cases where there just isn't any. The world is an extremely dangerous place for children in this unfortunate situation. For this reason, the door for reform of the genetic parent must always be held open. To extend the above example, let's say Alice is constantly thrashing Bob and neglecting him so Alice's parents step in and sue to have the power to exclude Alice from caring for Bob - reversing natural guardianship. In today's system, this power is regularly exercised by the State, ex-spouses, step-parents, child protection agencies, abuse shelters, religious organizations and just about any Tom, Dick or Harry who prints a business card to the effect of caring for kids. As a divorcee, I have been victimized by this system which is why I've given it a lot of thought.
Clayton:Block's model might apply to children of a certain age but I'm specifically thinking of very young children, from birth to about 7 or 8 years old where most children are very easily manipulated into accepting obviously unacceptable situations
Block's model applies precisely to children of this age group. My scenario was a 3-year-old for a reason.
Clayton:For these children, homesteading is the wrong model because homesteading implies that children are a physical resource which can be improved. If children from birth to 7 or 8 years of age are a resource, pray tell, what sort of resource are they and what sorts of improvements could entrepreneurs make to them in order to resell at a profit the rights they bought?
From the economic point-of-view, children ARE a physical resource which can be improved. To "improve" a child is to raise it. Do you object to my referring to children as "physical", or "a resource"? (Because later on you say, "invest capital into the child", which certainly sounds like you are comfortable with both terms). Obviously, this is not to say that children are "just a resource". There is a crucial difference between a non-human resource and a human resource, but the latter is still a resource in the economic sense.
You are using the term entrepreneur in the narrow sense, meaning someone who seeks monetary profits. While it may sound horrific to some people, we Austrians should be comfortable with the idea of a free market in rights to raise children. I would have no objection to an entrepreneur buying the rights to raise a child, with the intention of selling that right later at a higher price. (Note that since the price of the right to raise a child will probably decrease as the child gets older, and the rights are costly to hold anyway, such an entrepreneur would not want to hold on to the rights for very long. Think of a profit-making adoption agency, which profits from connecting buyers and sellers, not from making improvements to the product in between.)
As Rothbard explained, as libertarians we should fully support such a market being free, because (unsurprisingly, really) a free market is superior to a monopoly here too.
Rothbard:Now if a parent may own his child (within the framework of non-aggression [non-abuse - Block] and runaway-freedom), then he may also transfer that ownership to someone else. He may give the child out for adoption, or he may sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract. In short, we must face the fact that the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children. Superficially, this sounds monstrous and inhuman. But closer thought will reveal the superior humanism of such a market. For we must realize that there is a market for children now, but that since the government prohibits sale of children at a price, the parents may now only give their children away to a licensed adoption agency free of charge. This means that we now indeed have a child-market, but that the government enforces a maximum price control of zero, and restricts the market to a few privileged and therefore monopolistic agencies. The result has been a typical market where the price of the commodity is held by government far below the free-market price: an enormous “shortage” of the good. The demand for babies and children is usually far greater than the supply, and hence we see daily tragedies of adults denied the joys of adopting children by prying and tyrannical adoption agencies. In fact, we find a large unsatisfied demand by adults and couples for children, along with a large number of surplus and unwanted babies neglected or maltreated by their parents. Allowing a free market in children would eliminate this imbalance, and would allow for an allocation of babies and children away from parents who dislike or do not care for their children, and toward foster parents who deeply desire such children. Everyone involved: the natural parents, the children, and the foster parents purchasing the children, would be better off in this sort of society.
For more, see Economics of Adoption: A Libertarian Approach.
I can't tell if you support a free market in raising children or not. Can you confirm?
Anyway, I posited that Friends-of-Babies are a charity, precisely because I am not totally sure whether or not such an organization would be viable as a (monetary-) profit-making firm. It may be viable, in which case great, because then it will probably more efficient. But if its not viable, then I am sure the same role will be carried out by a charity. So rather than make this assumption of viability, I decided simply to posit Friends-of-Babies as a charity.
Clayton:The fact is that children in this age range have no other value than as offspring of their genetic parents and other relatives.
This is a remarkable statement, easily shown to be false. As I said earlier, not all wannabe foster parents are wannabe abusers. Do you disagree with this?
Also, since you skipped it earlier, I'll ask you again: how do you explain the fact that, even today, people donate money to organizations dedicated to helping out unrelated children who are in bad situations?
People clearly DO value other people's children. If they didn't we'd all just say "who cares what parents do to their kids, they don't carry my genes". But we don't all say this. 'What about the children?' is a very popular theme for threads around here. How do you explain this, if young children only have value to their genetic relatives?
If I may summarise the rest of your post. You are saying that one of the following four situations can occur.
You are saying that 1 > 2 > 3 > 4, i.e. 1 is ideal, 2 is second-best, 3 is third-best and 4 is only for the most extreme cases. I agree with you. I am confident that free market courts will see it this way too.
ESF:I think you're reading into my arguments against AnCap slightly wrong. My arguments are not that AnCap would be less prosperous on the whole as such (I understand what is wrong with saying 'on the whole' - I am just being lazy) but that some people would 'get left behind'. I explained this in far more detail here: http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/23085/404151.aspx#404151 I'd be interested to know whether you would prefer superhuman progress and only a few people living in (absolute) poverty or moderate progress and no-one living in (absolute) poverty. My thoughts in terms of the prevention of child abuse are the same. Capitalism is the 'wealth generator' so to speak but the state is the 'wealth redistributor'. Having said that, I only want minimalised wealth redistribution so to speak.
ESF, I am not going to respond to this because its way off-topic, and would require quite a lengthy reply to unpick it all. In short, I disagree with several of your premises. If you feel like it, start a new thread for it. Maybe title it "Does AnCap leave people behind?"
Everything in your post before this question is irrelevant to the discussion. The market in child adoption is an entirely different issue than forcible re-assignment of parenting rights. There might be a market for adoption of children who have been forcibly removed from their parents (essentially, free-market foster parenting) but the entrepreneurs in this market have to stand in line behind everybody else, including even friends and associates of the parents and/or the child. The only interests being served in the adoption market are the interests of the consumers (the foster parents), therefore, it should be the final alternative to all others and a child in such a situation should enjoy enhanced rights against his guardians vis-a-vis natural parents or other parenting arrangements, in other words, the child should be freer to run away (I don't accept Rothbardian non-aggression when applied to the parent-child relationship).
Clayton:The fact is that children in this age range have no other value than as offspring of their genetic parents and other relatives. This is a remarkable statement, easily shown to be false. As I said earlier, not all wannabe foster parents are wannabe abusers. Do you disagree with this?
What I'm trying to say is that the child qua child has no value to anyone because it is a human being. If you buy a hammer, you can use it to build a house (producer good). If you buy a house, you can enjoy living in the house (consumer good). If you buy a child, what can you produce with it without engaging in slavery? And what can it possibly mean to "consume" a child? Child rape? Cannibalism? I agree that an adoption market would be selling the opportunity to parent a child and this is definitely something which can be consumed (the parenting experience) but the child itself cannot be consumed.
Actually, this is perfectly in line with and supports my central thesis that every human being has an interest (or "right", if you like, though that word is overused) in the life and prosperity of every child on the planet. What I mean by that is that it's aggression for one stranger to prevent another stranger from helping any child. The only people who possess a right to exclude support or help to a child are the child's parents because they have the guardian power. The vast amounts of money donated in causes to help children simply go to support this thesis.
If I may summarise the rest of your post. You are saying that one of the following four situations can occur. 1. Alice has full parental rights, i.e. she can exclude anyone from caring for Bob, including Charlie. 2. Alice and Charlie both have partial parental rights. Alice can exclude anyone from caring for Bob, except Charlie. 3. Alice and Charlie both have partial parental rights. Charlie can exclude anyone from caring for Bob, except Alice. 4. Charlie has full parental rights, i.e. she can exclude anyone from caring for Bob, including Alice. You are saying that 1 > 2 > 3 > 4, i.e. 1 is ideal, 2 is second-best, 3 is third-best and 4 is only for the most extreme cases. I agree with you. I am confident that free market courts will see it this way too.
1. Alice has full parental rights, i.e. she can exclude anyone from caring for Bob, including Charlie. 2. Alice and Charlie both have partial parental rights. Alice can exclude anyone from caring for Bob, except Charlie. 3. Alice and Charlie both have partial parental rights. Charlie can exclude anyone from caring for Bob, except Alice. 4. Charlie has full parental rights, i.e. she can exclude anyone from caring for Bob, including Alice. You are saying that 1 > 2 > 3 > 4, i.e. 1 is ideal, 2 is second-best, 3 is third-best and 4 is only for the most extreme cases. I agree with you. I am confident that free market courts will see it this way too.
Excellent summary. I guess I should have just written that instead of the wall of text... :-P
Are children property or humans? If they are property, at what age do they become humans? Is the age of switching from property to human arbitrary or logically defined? Is the age averaged over the population or is it different for every child? Are children somehow special cases of human?
In anarchy, if children are property then they can be bought, sold, traded, used, abused, etc. in any way the owner likes, just like a chair. If children are humans, then they have the right to choose what they want and if they make a 'bad' choice no one should stop them (bad is a value judgement). The same could be said for an adult who stays in an abusive relationship.
If children are somehow special cases of humans that need to be looked after by society then does this extend to mentally handicapped adults? What about only mildly handicapped? What about people with just a low IQ? What about people who repeatedly make poor life choices? What about intelligent adults in a foreign land where they can't speak the language (can't communicate), do they fall into the category of 'society should choose for them'?
Clayton:Everything in your post before this question is irrelevant to the discussion.
OK, good, never mind then. You had me worried there for a second.
Clayton:If you buy a hammer, you can use it to build a house (producer good). If you buy a house, you can enjoy living in the house (consumer good). If you buy a child, what can you produce with it without engaging in slavery? And what can it possibly mean to "consume" a child?
Yes, I think part of the mix up might be the use of the phrase "buy a child". Of course this does not mean the same as "buy a hammer" because you can do just about anything peaceful with a hammer and not your lose your rights to it, but with a child there are more stipulations about what you can and cannot do with it, i.e. you must raise the child, and not abuse it, if you want to keep your rights to it. "Buy a child" is really just shorthand for "buy the rights to raise a child" or "buy the parental/guardianship rights to a child". I shall have to be more careful in future to use the longer form to avoid this possible confusion.
Good conversation. Thanks.
Micah:Are children property or humans? If they are property, at what age do they become humans? Is the age of switching from property to human arbitrary or logically defined? Is the age averaged over the population or is it different for every child? Are children somehow special cases of human? In anarchy, if children are property then they can be bought, sold, traded, used, abused, etc. in any way the owner likes, just like a chair. If children are humans, then they have the right to choose what they want and if they make a 'bad' choice no one should stop them (bad is a value judgement).
In anarchy, if children are property then they can be bought, sold, traded, used, abused, etc. in any way the owner likes, just like a chair. If children are humans, then they have the right to choose what they want and if they make a 'bad' choice no one should stop them (bad is a value judgement).
Have you read either of the papers I linked to in the OP?
Have you read any of what Clayton or I have written this thread?
It becomes tiresome to read these same questions/objections again and again. They have been addressed and resolved, if you take the time to read about it and think it through.
Micah:If children are somehow special cases of humans that need to be looked after by society then does this extend to mentally handicapped adults? What about only mildly handicapped? What about people with just a low IQ? What about people who repeatedly make poor life choices? What about intelligent adults in a foreign land where they can't speak the language (can't communicate), do they fall into the category of 'society should choose for them'?
Who the heck is society? Can society look after someone? Can society act? Can society choose? (You are going to keep getting called on this, by the way; it is a serious methodological error.)
You do raise a good point though, which is that Block's abandonment theory doesn't (or need not) just apply to children.
There is nothing particularly special about the category childhood, except that it is the most obvious example of a group that needs special legal status. I expect the severely mentally handicapped would be a similar category, where it is recognized that guardianship rights apply. There would be a different set of actions that would be considered abuse/abandonment of this right as compared to abuse/abandonment of parental rights. I don't expect any of those other groups you mention would be considered a special legal category, but I'm guessing. If enough consumers want these kinds of laws (and are prepared to pay for them) than they will be produced.
Note that another group that may get a special legal category would be animals. Block's abandonment theory solves the whole worry about "animal rights" as well. Some animals may be placed in a special legal category, where abuse of them constitutes abandonment, and hence the animals can be rescued from their abusers the exact way children would be. Thanks to Block, we no longer have to be apologists for animal abusers: animal abuse could be considered unlibertarian.
It seems to me that you are proposing that some humans have full rights to liberty and some humans have limited rights to liberty. This seems to go against the underlying philosophy of individualism, though perhaps you do not support individualism (I am not familiar with your political beliefs).
trulib : If enough consumers want these kinds of laws (and are prepared to pay for them) than they will be produced.
If enough consumers want these kinds of laws (and are prepared to pay for them) than they will be produced.
It seems that the line you are drawing as to who gets liberty and who doesn't is set by the majority. By this logic, if the majority of people think red heds should not be allowed liberty, then red heds won't get liberty. Do you agree with this statement?
Micah:It seems to me that you are proposing that some humans have full rights to liberty and some humans have limited rights to liberty. This seems to go against the underlying philosophy of individualism, though perhaps you do not support individualism (I am not familiar with your political beliefs).
Read Block's paper. Please.
Micah:It seems that the line you are drawing as to who gets liberty and who doesn't is set by the majority. By this logic, if the majority of people think red heds should not be allowed liberty, then red heds won't get liberty. Do you agree with this statement?
I'll discuss this with you if you like (in a new thread though please), but it will save us both a lot of time if you read David Friedman's Police, Courts, and Laws first. Thanks.
It seems to me that you are proposing that some humans have full rights to liberty and some humans have limited rights to liberty.
I take more of a legal realist stance. I have no idea what a "right to liberty" is so how can anyone have one? Rather, look at the problem in terms of actual or potential disputes. I feed my kid cheese puffs but my neighbor thinks this is neglect and attempts to prevent me from feeding cheese puffs to my kid. This is a dispute and the dispute is between me and my neighbor. Or, I tell my kid to go to his room and he stomps his feet and says "no!" at which I threaten to swat him on the backside if he doesn't go. The same neighbor sees this as abuse and not only abuse but a dispute between me and my child. However, it is a serious mistake to characterize this as a dispute between me and my child since my child is incapable of asserting himself in a court of law. So, the dispute is still between me and my neighbor if the neighbor tries to intervene.
Children do not have the right to drive cars, operate lawnmowers, cash paychecks and any number of things that you do every day and take for granted, as an adult. This is part of the reason that egoism breaks down on close inspection, IMO.
Clayton: Children do not have the right to drive cars, operate lawnmowers, cash paychecks and any number of things that you do every day and take for granted, as an adult. This is part of the reason that egoism breaks down on close inspection, IMO.
I agree that egoism breaks down here unless you assume children (and mentally handicapped, etc.) to be equal to all other humans. If you consider them to be some kind of second-class human then yes, egoism breaks down. I feel that this breakdown (if allowed to occur by not classifying all humans equally) also leads to the breakdown of anarchy which depends on egoism and you are left with minarchy. At the minimum, are left with majority based laws that define who is gets treated equally and who gets treated unequally. In this example children and likely the mentally handicapped fall into the category of unequal but it could be extended however much the majority decides (all the way to red-heads if that's what the majority wants).
I agree that egoism breaks down here unless you assume children (and mentally handicapped, etc.) to be equal to all other humans. If you consider them to be some kind of second-class human then yes, egoism breaks down. I feel that this breakdown (if allowed to occur by not classifying all humans equally) also leads to the breakdown of anarchy which depends on egoism and you are left with minarchy. At the minimum, are left with majority based laws that define who is gets treated equally and who gets treated unequally.
I have no idea about anarchy or minarchy (I have no vested interest in either social outcome), but the principle of the State - special legal privileges reserved by a designated group surrounding the Prince - is not entailed by the fact that children cannot be treated as adults in a court of law. Those who get treated equally (in a court of law) are those who can speak for themselves. Those who cannot speak for themselves cannot, of course, be treated equally so these individuals require an advocate.
In this example children and likely the mentally handicapped fall into the category of unequal but it could be extended however much the majority decides (all the way to red-heads if that's what the majority wants).
No, it's not about majority, it's about who can or cannot hire an arbitrator in a free market of law.
Whether children are labeled as property or as humans is irrelevent.
trulib:How might child abuse be handled in a stateless society?
People who care to rescue the child will kick down the doors of the abuser, rescue the child and take their chances. The absuer will try to accuse the rescuers of kidnapping. The rescuers will demonstrate that they were saving the child.
In the end, the insurance company of the abuser will likely have a clause that says his protection is void if there is evidence that he abuses children. Abusers will live next door to abusers and normal people will live next door to normal people.