February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
When properly handled, this is the kind of juicy, philosophical question that can be fun to deal with, although it can easily become absurd.
nibbler491:As for the original question, no, I don't think watching child porn would be "illegal"(remember, this is a free society, so nothing is "illegal"). The person who films/engages in child porn would of course be aggressing, and would therefore be prosecuted for it, but we're getting into the realm of thought crimes if you can be prosecuted for simply viewing something. The viewing of child porn is a victimless "crime," no one is hurt by it. Of course, there would be various ramifications if people found out you were watching child porn, namely social ostracism, although I could definitely see the situation escalating if parents felt their children were being threatened by you. And besides, as the drug war illustrates, making something "illegal" does nothing to stop people from partaking in it anyways.
I agree with this and with the Mary Ruwart quotes. Like drug use or prostitution, the actual viewing of child porn (as opposed to the creation of child porn) should not be illegal, but may well be extremely frowned upon by civil society. This distinction is ever more important to make, because "child porn" has sometimes been broadly defined to include prose fiction and drawings, where obviously no real child was ever involved in the creation of the material, and thus no real crime had been committed. And with ever improving CGI techniques, it will be possilbe to create realistic CGI animation of child porn, but again, without using a real child to create the materials.
Reputation and social pressure are, in fact, much stronger without the force of law behind them, which is one reason that the vices flourish when made illegal, instead of diminishing. A pet theory of mine, but difficult to prove, is that the moral fabric of society has weakened as more and more laws have been created to outlaw consenting behaviors and control individual actions.
But I'll beat up the first person who takes my comments out of context and says that I support child porn!
Do you think that it violates the non aggression axiom if citizens and parents arm themselves and attack people who merely viewed an immoral act such as child pornography? Because a certain behavior is unpopular does it give the majority the right to use force to stop them from engaging in that behavior? Do not the viewers of child pornography have rights too? Much the same as the drug dealer, pimp, prostitute have rights even though they are involved in disreputable behavior. I disagree that a society which tolerates child pornography will become overwhelmingly populated with people who are perverts. Many countries in Europe have legalized drugs and prostitution but the majority of their citizens are not drug addicts or sexual deviants.
Both the producer and purchaser of child pornogrophy have violated the rights of the child by using coersion and possibly force on the child. The child (the victim) has a right to get full redress including damages from the criminals. The purchaser has more limited responsibility than the producer but it is not zero.
I am assuming that technicalities like the purchaser intended to purchase child pornography and not something else are not factors.
billott1:Both the producer and purchaser of child pornogrophy have violated the rights of the child by using coersion and possibly force on the child.
And what about the cases I mentioned, prose, drawings or animation, where no actual child was involved in the making of the child porn?
What is your basis for the belief that rights have to be purchased? Does an impecunious person therefore not have as many rights as a wealthy person. Does a person with essentially no purchasing power have any rights at all since they have to be purchased. There is nothing saying that a person who views child pornography or engages in any other immoral act cannot be a productive citizen and thus have purchasing power. If the person was productive and excluded from exchange because of a bias towards their behavior there would be a strong profit motive for someone to hire them.
What makes you think that a society that tolerates child pornography both the production and viewing of it will not be populated. Also people who produce and view child pornography could be from all ages, gender, and ethnicities. It is also possible to keep this behavior hidden from the general public. Also just because people disapprove of a behavior does not mean that they can form their own societies where they are completely free from it. Unless it is very small communities of people. If it is outlawed in a society as large as a State or Country wouldnt it create a black market for child pornography because there is a demand for it.
This is The Toxic Topic. Do not discuss it ever!
scineram: This is The Toxic Topic. Do not discuss it ever!
Given some of the topics with long threads devoted to them in this forum, I don't think this is very Toxic compared to many of the topics discussed here. Here it seems, there are no sacred cows.
I am an eklektarchist not an anarchist.
Educational Pamphlet Mises Group
Byzantine,
Also, you are saying that people who value child pornography will be ostracized by society and that they will all be forced to live in seclusion until they all die off. This will not happen. First, new people are born all the time who will value child pornography so you will constantly have demand for it in that way. Second, people's value scales change all the time. One moment a person may value a good higher or lower in relation to all other goods. There will be people in all societies whose value scales will change and will come to value child pornography or any other good that is considered as vice such as alcohol, cigarettes, drugs. The people who use drugs, prostitutes, have cancer, or have brown hair are not all separated into their own society because they have different physical or mental qualities or they have differing value scales.
Someone does not have a right to burn my house down. If I do not agree with your behavior, or religion, ethnicity, or whatever I do not have a right to harm you just because of my dislike for you. If I do not commit an act of aggression against you specifically then you do not have a right to aggress against me or damage my property. I have the right to pay for protection, but it will be against the people who take the law into their own hands and do violence against others for the only reason that they disagree with their behavior.
'How many successful, functioning families do you know where the members view child pornography? How many women do you know who would be willing to have a pedophile father their children?"
A family does not have to be successful and functioning in order to reproduce. There are many dysfunctional families where one or both parents are adulterous, addicted to drugs or alcohol, or physically abusive. These unfavorable behavioral traits do not necessarily mean that the people are not productive wage earners or are unable to find partners to reproduce with.
I understand that those who value child pornography will most likely always be in a minority. But the rights of a minority should still be protected from aggression from others. I believe that the VIEWING of child pornography is not a crime against anyone, however immoral it may be. The original producer of the pornographic product is another story.
"Byzantine,
There is no amount of money you could pay me to defend your right to view child porn."
Yes, but you cannot speak for the millions of other consumers in society. You do not know what their value scales are. There are many people who would not be a mafia hitman for any amount of money. But, we know that there are some who would.
Spideynw: nibbler491:Absolute nonsense. If this were the case than parents could beat, rape, and sell their children with no legal repercussions. No, it is not "nonsense". For example, who are you to say that beating a child to teach them obedience is wrong? Parents should definitely be able to sell their children. They are their children. As to child sex, I would be interested to see what would happen in a stateless society, whether it would be legal or illegal.
nibbler491:Absolute nonsense. If this were the case than parents could beat, rape, and sell their children with no legal repercussions.
No, it is not "nonsense". For example, who are you to say that beating a child to teach them obedience is wrong?
Parents should definitely be able to sell their children. They are their children.
As to child sex, I would be interested to see what would happen in a stateless society, whether it would be legal or illegal.
You definitely "could" beat your child, the extent to which you do so will of course have various repercussions. If you're just giving your 5 year old a spanking for disobeying you, that would obviously be viewed as a legitimate punishment. I could punch your right in the mouth because I felt you were disrespecting me or something similar, that does not mean I own you.
Ridiculous. You can't own another human being. Can parents rape their children? After all, they are their children.
nibbler491: You definitely "could" beat your child, the extent to which you do so will of course have various repercussions. If you're just giving your 5 year old a spanking for disobeying you, that would obviously be viewed as a legitimate punishment. I could punch your right in the mouth because I felt you were disrespecting me or something similar, that does not mean I own you. Ridiculous. You can't own another human being. Can parents rape their children? After all, they are their children.
You obviously do not understand rights and law. Rights are derived from our ability to reason. As such, you have no right to punch me in the face, unless I consented to it. A child does not have the ability to consent, at least for the first couple of years.
As to could parents legally rape their children, probably. But it would be interesting to see what would happen in a stateless society.
At most, I think only 5% of the adult population would need to stop cooperating to have real change.
Spideynw:
I also know that children do not have rights until they have enough mental capacity to be able to reason.
Define children for me, then. Because it seems that you must be using it in some way other than to mean some range of ages, given that individuals develop their rational capacities at different rates. If "children" is defined as "humans who lack sufficient rational faculty to make contracts," I'm sure you'll find no disagreement over the illegitimacy of child pornography given the lack of genuine consent involved. However, your definition would include everything from toddlers to mentally handicapped to drunks. But you can't just choose an arbitrary age and imagine that everyone beneath that age is automatically unqualified to make contracts.
Byzantine:
In a free society, rights will have to be purchased just like everything else.
A potential problem with your theory: When something is homesteaded, who exactly are you "purchasing" from and how did they get ownership of this object which lacks an owner?
It might be more correct to say, "In a free society, the protection of rights must be purchased." But then, it would seem your latter commentary is somewhat irrelevant to the issue of legality.
Byzantine: Those people will never be more than a very small percentage of the population nor are they going to be very successful breeders except where they are propped up by government welfare, and able to breed with extremely low status females. Without welfare, the dysfunctional British and American underclasses would go extinct in pretty short order. You seem to think that ideology trumps biology.
Those people will never be more than a very small percentage of the population nor are they going to be very successful breeders except where they are propped up by government welfare, and able to breed with extremely low status females. Without welfare, the dysfunctional British and American underclasses would go extinct in pretty short order. You seem to think that ideology trumps biology.
That's extremely short-sighted. Are people who watch staged raping porn movies rapists? And if I remember correctly, a few studies do indicate that some proportion of those who watch child porn are in fact children (teenagers) looking for similarity in age. Look at this article on Wikipedia for example.
And perhaps we should make the distinction between simple child pornography and child pornography containing sexual intercourse. If we don't, we may end up banning naked infant photos as well, such as those from medical magazines for instance.
In my mind, sexual intercourse with children is a way more useful topic to debate. Chances are no one would be mentally hurt if you took a photo of your 5 years old daughter naked, but having sex with her certainly raises issues.
Parents merely have custodial rights over children, not ownership. If they harm the child by rape (which is by definition nonconsentual), they're no different to any common criminal.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Some of the conservative commentary in this thread baffles me.
Jon Irenicus:Parents merely have custodial rights over children, not ownership. If they harm the child by rape (which is by definition nonconsentual), they're no different to any common criminal.
Do you agree that parents should be able to sell their children?
No. They can sell their custodial rights, though.
Byzantine:In a free society, rights will have to be purchased just like everything else. What will be tolerated will be whatever has the most purchasing power.
The great thing about a free market is that there are plenty of opportunities for niche marketing--you don't have to be in a majority to get a broad variety of goods and services. A producer of an uncommon or limited-popularity good only has to make some amount of profit to continue to make said items, regardless of his total share of the market.
And I guess I'm still waiting for a definition of "child porn" from someone. Is it the actual depiction of sex with a child on film? Or is it the description of sex with a child in prose text? What about a drawing or animation of sex with a child? A picture of a naked child but no sex?
These distinctions are important in determining what should be considered a crime and what isn't.
Byzantine:The costs he must first cover in order to make that profit include defense of his marginal activity from violent action.
You keep saying that violence will be used against these people, but I fail to understand why this should the normal case, and not the exception. If you're talking about actual sex with a child, this is understandable to a degree, but if we ARE in fact talking about prose, drawings, or animation, it makes much less sense. As long as the "general question" is the only one under discussion, then more specific answers are impossible.
I wasn't aware that you're a matchmaker...
Byzantine:Children cannot be sexualized because they are incapable of sexual reproduction. They have to go thru puberty first. There may be some books you can read on this process but mises.org doesn't have a section on basic reproductive biology that I know of.
Jon Irenicus:No. They can sell their custodial rights, though.
What is the difference, besides semantics?
Byzantine: I'm just wondering how the glorious anarchist future is going to sustain itself with a bunch of single 20-something men fretting over a right to view child pornography.
I'm just wondering how the glorious anarchist future is going to sustain itself with a bunch of single 20-something men fretting over a right to view child pornography.
We're more "fretting over" the consistent application of the non-aggression principle, which I've been led to believe is rather important.