Most people here will say that it should not be allowed to hospitalize crazy people using force. However most people will also say that it is okay to use force against children because they don't know what is good for them. Since both crazy people and children are not rational actors, why do they receive different treatment by most libertarians?
--- because, like all issues, the market will decide what treatment different actors will receive. Rationality has little to do with it, like most other issues too.
The market can also decide that all redheads can be legitimate killed. I am not asking what other people might think in the future, I am asking what is just in your opinion.
most people will also say that it is okay to use force against children
Most people who are not in this forum? I find that this forum is quite open to independent children.
Neither "crazy people" nor "children" are homogenous groups of non-rational actors. I don't know or care what the majority of libertarians think about this, and I'm pretty sure you can't know something like that either, Eugene.
I think I've said this before, but if someone were bitten by a snake, and now they're tripping balls and in terrible, delerium-inducing pain, and they think you are the devil come to claim their soul, you should still give them the anti-venom despite their delerious protests and attempts to resist your approach. That's because they fall outside the argumentation ethic as long as they're not capable of engaging in an argument any more than a vegetable, or at best an animal. When they come back, they can affirm authority over their body, and if what you did really was necessary to bring them back, then they can hardly complain. Unless they intended to kill themselves, of course, in which case they're free to try again if they still feel so inclined.
What you're really doing is utilising someone else's property, while they're not 'around' in the full sense of the word, in a way that you hope will be ratified by them as effectively consensual when they come back. They can't give or explicitly withhold permission beforehand, because they're not in the proverbial room at the moment, and time is of the essence, but you have such a good hunch that you will have your actions ratified as consensual when they return that you go ahead and do them anyway. It's like a surgeon performing emergency invasive surgery on an unconscious patient who would likely die otherwise. Is he breaking the NAP, because if you started cutting open any old unconscious stranger you happened across in the gutter outside a tavern, it certainly would be, even if you claimed and earnestly believed that it would be good for them?
To summarise, no... Of course it's not as though children or "crazy people" are somehow excluded from the NAP. Try some empathy. You'll find it works far better on extremely frightened people than you may have been led to believe once upon a time, perhaps when you were extremely frightened...
I mean, I would argue that legally those things are NAP violations, James, but I would still encourage people to do them. No one in their right mind (when they come back to it, that is) would sue you. And if they do, then they are creating a society of callous individuals frightened of hurting each other. If this is what people want to create, let them.
@OP: Both your premises are false.
Oooh, didn't catch the first one
I just wanted to add that when I saw the thread title, I thought it would be about the Department of Education.
Or some wacky new Japanese game show
However most people will also say that it is okay to use force against children because they don't know what is good for them.
Maybe your own children, but not against other people's children.
Most people here will say that it should not be allowed to hospitalize crazy people using force.
As far as I am concerned you can forcefully hospitalize your crazy aunt, but not my crazy aunt.
She's not "your" crazy aunt.
Eugene:The market can also decide that all redheads can be legitimate killed. I am not asking what other people might think in the future, I am asking what is just in your opinion.
You think she was switched at birth?
Maybe we should ask the king to cut her in half and see how you guys react...
No, I'm saying legally there is no difference between your aunt and someone else's aunt. You can't be morally consistent in terms of NAP in saying it's ok for someone to hospitalize my aunt but not your aunt.
What is "crazy"? I would say that institutionalizing "crazy" people because they might be dangerous to others is akin to precrime and predicting the future. Obviously, if they are threatening to hurt others or do harm others then, yes, self-defense is in order.
The point is that a system that makes the most sense is the one where these kinds of decisions are made by the people who care about the person in question the most. The point is not that someone's aunt is their property, but that they care a lot more about her, than some random government judge. Some people really belong in an institution for their own protection, so families commiting their "loved ones" is fine. But have "the society" commit people and you'll have more harm than good coming out of it.
Yeah, because totalitarian inconsistencies are so much better than libertarian inconsistencies.
Some people really belong in an institution for their own protection, so families commiting their "loved ones" is fine. But have "the society" commit people and you'll have more harm than good coming out of it.
I agree with KCF. There is not much difference between "the society" and "the family." Both are convenient constructs, yet are not mandated by some natural physical force. It's not the purpose of a legal-ethics system to promote a family-centric society where your new master becomes the person who happened to be born related to you.
I don't know what you are saying.
It's not the purpose of a legal-ethics system to promote a family-centric society where your new master becomes the person who happened to be born related to you.
Whatever dude. Enjoy fighting your strawman.
Wheylous:...yet are not mandated by some natural physical force. It's not the purpose of a legal-ethics system to promote a family-centric society...
First of all, when it comes to natural physical forces, you undoubtedly were pinched out of the body of your mother. You are only alive today because somebody took control over your entire life the same way as somebody is hypothetically taking control of this crazy aunt.
Second, the fact that the natural world is governed by laws which make it so that the procreation of the species REQUIRES that everybody at some point in their lives is totally submissive to an other person, usually a relative, may be a more convincing argument in support of a family-centric system of ethics if ever there was a convincincing argument for any legal system. Leastways, for me it is.
It's pretty obvious, when a person dies, if he had written no will, his family decides how he is going to be burried, probably by trying to figure out what he would have wanted. If he ends up on life support with little if any chances of revival and he left no instructions of his own, it is again his family that makes the decision whether to unplugg him. If a person is murdered, again if he had left no instructions on how to punish the perpetrator, his family decides. Not because I said so, but because in our society, with our culture and our traditions being what they are, it is reasonable to believe that the dead/coma person would have wanted his family in charge, not some random people. Well if a person loses his mind it is exactly the same as a person on life support, in a coma. Unless he left specific instructions it is up to his family to decide whether to have him commited. Having a family in our culture is pretty much like having a contract with people that should you develop schizophrenia so severe you would not be able to tell reality from fantasy and would be a constant danger to yourself that they would restrain you in some way even if you having lost your mind objected to it. Obviously there is more to family, but these types of implicit contracts are one aspect of it. This has nothing to do with relatives mastering over you, any person is free to leave instructions that should they go mad they want to be left alone even if they have a 50/50 weekly chance they will end under a train. Any person is also free to start their own kind of culture where it will be reasonable to assume that these people don't trust their family to decide these things, but some other people, or maybe no one at all and will thus be left unmolested and free to get themselves killed.
I agree with Marko. The law should be family centric in most cases because in most cases that's what most likely in line with the wishes of the individual. If a person wants someone else to care of him, or no one at all, he can specify this in contract. Otherwise the default is being assumed.
So I think with non rational agents such as kids and crazy people, the law should do what that individual would have wanted to do in a rational state. That's how we minimize aggression and approach voluntarism. We always ask, what would that person have wanted?
Eugene: So I think with non rational agents such as kids and crazy people, the law should do what that individual would have wanted to do in a rational state. That's how we minimize aggression and approach voluntarism. We always ask, what would that person have wanted?
yeah, but you see, that's a problem with a state, where only one institution, the state, can decide "what's best" for them. Anyway, I agree with you more or less.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)