Whether children are labeled as property or as humans is irrelevent. trulib:How might child abuse be handled in a stateless society? Easy. 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.
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.
Ugh. This is a complete failure to recognize that human nature is antecedent to human action. Part of human nature is the fact that we must be born helpless and at the mercy of parents whom Nature has programmed (at least, 99.999% of them) to genuinely care about our welfare and survival since we happen to be carrying 50% of their DNA. In line with the Misesean principle of action, we must recognize as aggression any person who prohibits another from acting and the person who kicks down the parents' door is preventing the parent from acting as a parent. If a parent has abused his or her child in the past it does not automatically follow that any interference is justified and interference from a more genetically distant individual may be aggression against the principle of action of closer genetic relatives. As a human being, I have an interest in seeing that all individuals are permitted to act without interference (because I want humanity to flourish since my children happen to be human beings, as their children will also be). That means I have an interest in seeing that all interference in the action of parenting stopped.
Clayton -
How Would An Anarchist Society Handle Child Abuse?
Here is a series of letters between me and Michael Fleischer, concerning the propriety, viability, justice of the anarchist system, mainly as put forth by Murray N. Rothbard. I have slightly edited both his and my own contributions to this correspondence. If you are too busy to view the YouTube video he mentions in his first letter to me, or, have civilized sensibilities and do not want to view a cruel case of child abuse, do not look at it. I myself only viewed it for a few seconds, and then stopped in disgust. But, this description ought to put you into the picture as to what the two of us are talking about... ...
http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block167.html
My Blog: http://www.anarchico.net/
Production is 'anarchistic' - Ludwig von Mises
@Izzy: The only reservations I have with the Blockite view is that I don't think he's answered the situation where there are no contracts and I also think he hasn't acknowledged the hierarchy of interests betwee genetic relatives and strangers in a child's welfare, an extremely important point that is largely ignored in our legal system today and which libertarians should dutifully exposit.
When there is no contract between people (and, most of the time, there is not), then the issue falls back to social norms and what sort of behavior can be "reasonably expected" by another. A thorough fleshing out of what behavior is reasonably expected in any particular situation is precisely what courts of law should be about and they should be doing this by applying case law and the best human reasoning to the problem. A free market in law would select out arbitrators who fail to employ precedent or employ shoddy reasoning and reward those who base their decisions on sound precedent and clear, incontrovertible reasoning. Legal disputants demand someone who can bring a resolution to their dispute which is more acceptable to each party than deciding the matter through violent conflict would be.
In the case of the child abuse shown, the first advocates for the child should be its closest relatives... not a charity and certainly not the State. Child abuse - like divorce and other family law issues - used to be handled almost exclusively in the realm of the Church and I think things were done this way for a reason... because the law is a blunt instrument which is meant for the resolution of disputes that would otherwise turn into violent conflict... but families usually have less expensive and emotionally traumatizing (to the children) methods available to resolve matters. Nature has programmed us to be sensitive to family pressures and this sensitivity is what is leveraged by families - perhaps with the assistance of some external community members to bring the element of shame to bear - to push an abusive parent out of lazy parenting (it is my view that the majority of abuse by natural parents is the result of laziness not malice, yet another point which is completely missed in today's courts and reinforced by videos of the most gut-wrenching cases of malicious abuse like that in Block's correspondence). By forcing every instance of abuse into a court of law to be handled with the presumption of malice and punished by the blunt instrument of removal of child custody (which is usually also traumatizing to the child), we are actually systematizing child abuse.
But no one gives a shit until they're on the receiving end of it (just to be clear, my custody issues are divorce-related, not child-abuse related, but it's all part of the same human grist mill).
trulib:Ugh. This is a complete failure to recognize that human nature is antecedent to human action.
Ugh. This is a complete failure to recognize that human nature is antecedent to human action. No. I just do not think your perception of human nature matters when it comes to analyzing how a stateless society will deal with abusers. Regardless, if I kick down the door of the abuser, what are you going to do about it? Call up your lawyer?
Ugh. This is a complete failure to recognize that human nature is antecedent to human action.
Regardless, if I kick down the door of the abuser, what are you going to do about it? Call up your lawyer?
If it's my door you're kicking down, I'll shoot you and I'll be justified.
Ultimately, if I choose to act as a vigilante child rescuer, then we are stuck with professional arguers and insurance companies who are potentially putting themselves out there defending an alleged child abuser.
How will you fund this vigilantism? After all, you need to eat. I don't think people will pay money to vigilantes who kick down anyone's door for which they have "suspicions" of child abuse.
All I need is proof that the abuse took place.
But if you're wrong, you're kidnapping, in which case, I'll be justified to kick down your door.
I reckon that the lawyers and the insurance companies will drop their child-abusing client for fear of me going after them. You may think otherwise.
Yeah, I do, because lots of parents get accused of abuse who are innocent and even many of those who are guilty of it should not have their child(ren) taken away for the many reasons I've given above. The "public relations battle" logic you're using is precisely the logic the State uses to justify its cynical war on parents which is not motivated by any desire to help children but simply because they can. Child abuse is extremely odious but it does not justify just any response.
Abused children are more likely to become criminals as adults. Insurance companies would want to prevent this, therefore they would have regular inspections of parents and may remove children from an abusive environment.
Can you point to any society with a legal system that is more privatized than modern legal systems (pretty much any society) where something even remotely like this has been the case?? Britain's courts have implemented something very much like you're describing but I hardly think the British legal system is a model of anarcho-capitalist PDAs and aggression insurance networks or any sort of libertarian legal system. This is the end-point of a long trajectory of State invasion of home life, hardly a model of free society.
Clayton:Britain's courts have implemented something...
Wha? I am British born and bred and don't ever remember anything like THIS happening (unless Big Brother has erased my memory).
It can't be true. I'd have heard about it. There'd have been a huge uproar...
@ESF: Well, I misspoke slightly... it's not the courts, it's one of Britain's child protection agencies and it looks like it was just a proposal and has not yet been implemented. But it sounded to me when I read the news articles at the time that it was a done deal and would be implemented soon.
This free market legal system: isn't it just democracy without limits on what can be voted for? Isn't that what we want to avoid? Being at the whim of the masses? I mean, how do we limit what the court can decide. And where's Bob's consent in participating in this court in the first place? Maybe he doesn't want to participate in these other people's laws they ahve just spuriously created? Maybe he's absolutely innocent, and has never abused his child. How are the innocent protected? That's the purpose of justice, to protect the innocent and to defend THEIR rights. If Bob's rights are violated in an act of aggression by the court, then so is his daughter, and they will both be horribly harmed by the removal of a child from their loving parent. By the way I don't preclude whatsoever that government is the only alternative, or even viable in any sense. It's just as bad.
Perhaps child abuse is a crime, and like any crime it should be proven beyond reasonable doubt in a jury court before any action can be taken, excepting provable immediate danger, or reasonable probable cause with strict penalties for abuses of power. In other words, if you are going to have a society of consent, the only ones who should be sufferable under any aggression without consent are those who use aggression against others. Therefore laws can only be enacted against a parent when aggression / violence is proven. If it is the court, or any agency that has instead aggressed with false charges / accusations or the like, then it is those parties that should be open to suit for damages.
The British have secret child abduction courts, and the child protective services there make money from abducting and moving children from loving, normal homes where no abuse occurred, and it is a systemic conscious abuse of power by those working in the agency (not all of course).
Just seach articles from the daily mail, the guardian, and many other sources.
"Orphanage" is a word that's rarely used in discussions like these. I think it's a much more specific word than "charity" and much easier for people to conceptualize.
As Professor Block writes on page 280 (8/14) of http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/block-children.pdf :
"Were the parents to...abuse their child, this would not at all be compatible with homesteading it. If so, they would lose all rights to continue to keep the child," (Emphasis added).
Let's say an orphanage receives a report that a parent is abusing a child in some way. (Debate over what constitutes abuse will have to be postponed for now.) Therefore, the orphanage can claim the child to have illegitimate parents, thus being unowned, and thus, an orphan.
The orphanage can then "homestead" the child. Perhaps the parent(s) will not want to give up the child, in which case, this dispute could be resolved by an arbitration agency. From there, laws regarding children's rights, what constitutes abuse, etc., will emerge. The orphanage can then provide all the services it provides today for orphan children.
To answer one of the original questions of the post, it seems to me that this would be a much better way of keeping kids safe. The private arbitration agency that makes the decision as to the rightful parents of children suspected of being abused will likely be far fairer than government courts often are. I'm sure you can think of plenty of examples of public institutions established to defend childrens' rights that wrongfully take children from their parents.
As per the concern about funding of organizations like these, I would, as others have on this thread, point to the significant amount of voluntary charity given by those in wealthy nations like the US. Inductively we can conclude that this trend would continue: as wealth increases, also would the amount given to charities like private orphanages.