I eagerly await your thoughts E.R. How can the court go further?
I’m not really interested in Spidey’s “theory” anymore. I think he lost the debate when he said that a man has a right to rape his daughter.
It is defined no where, accept by you, arbitrarily, that if an object thinks critically than the object stops becoming yours. This is in conflict with your own reasoning and I’ll explain why later.
By arbitrary I mean you just randomly made this up without reason. You made it up out of fear that someone would be able to dictate to you how to raise a child.
So lets recap your new definition of property.
Property is property untill it starts critiically thinkgin. Here are hte problems you have to reconcile now.
- If a child is owned at birth they are susesptable to contracts agreed to by the owner. In other words I could consent to a contract on behalf of the child without the childs consent. This is in direct conflict with the libertarian argument against social contract or non-consentual contracts.
- As long as I kill my child before they critically think I have not done anything wrong. Therefore I should procreate but kill my property before it steals itself from me. Your system condones infanticide.
- Your concept of “critically thinking” is also arbitrary and extremely difficult to measure. Many children forms of critical thinking before the age of 5. They will do formal critically thinking problems in school before the age of 10. With your definition you would actually arbitrarily lose your property when the child reached the age of 13ish or so. You will need to define better when this arbitrary change of being a slave and not being a slave changes.
And for the record your system is children being born into slavery. You cannot deny that unless you alter the definition of slavery. But you seem to be on a roll of making up your own definitions and distinctions.
How do you reconcile the fact that I could kill my child before it ‘critically thinks’ and be justified?
I can reply nothing to this except that your concept of family relations is utterly twisted and nonsensical.
Yeah, and that half of the population that thinks abortion should be legal, I guess they would be shit out of luck too right? Or do you think majority will rule over minority in anarchy? Wait, we have that today! Why do we want anarchy again?
Given that abortion is worse than child molestation, and given that half the population thinks that abortion should be legal, yeah, I do.
The rest of your post stands on the sandy foundation that there will be PDA’s to enforce your every whim. Get over it, there won’t be.
Maybe someday you will be intellectually honest and try to answer the question. Yet again though, you don’t.
Me eh? I’m not the one arguing that children are property and can be murderd and raiped before they can ‘critically think’. That is your position my friend.
Axiom 1 should be re-worded to - “every sentient being is a self-owner, having absolute jurisdiction over his own body”. It makes no sense to apply it to children, since they cannot act intelligently. It also makes no sense to exclude non-humans, that may be able to act intelligently.
That is a fact, not an argument. Children obtain protection from their parents because the parents have the right to exclude strangers, i.e. they own the children.
Whether or not parents should be murdering their children is a moral argument that is irrelevant to a principle of universal law. If they do murder their children, it is a matter of internal family law and does not concern you.
I never said murder is not a subset of killing. And I did not ask you if killing is always murder. But you still have as yet to answer the question.
You would compare a car to a human child?
You think a car sitting in the street for a long time and appropriating it because it is on your property is the same as coming into my home and taking my child?
Again, how is it going to be decided who gets to take my child?
Good point.
Which includes sperm and eggs and a fetus. So, are you going to address that or not?
Alas, Mr. Rothbard will be unable to make your suggested changes.
The use of the term “man” has been interchangeable with the term “human” in the English language, which includes male and female humans of any age. You have set an unnecessary restriction to support your argument rather than work from established facts, axioms or principles. It is now upon you to prove why such a restriction should exist. So far, I don’t buy the argument. If you want to expand the term to include potential nonhuman sentient beings, then that is your doing. The axiom as written declares that man (which includes children) is a self-owner, having absolute jurisdiction over his own body. Assertions on the requirements of consciousness, critical thinking, consent, etc. are again your own construct that remains to be unproven, and definitely not self-evident.
So, having sex with a child without the child’s consent is wrong because the parent did not get the child’s consent. And children never consent to anything a parent does to him. Which would mean everything a parent does to a child is wrong. Do I got it right now?
I am certainly no minarchist. I am claiming that children own themselves. I am most certainly not claiming that the state should “have the power to invade the household and reallocate children to new households at will.” Not even a little bit. The anarchist, not minarchist, position is that everyone (even children) have the absolute right to be free from aggression (even from their parents). Further, the fact that preventing and/or punishing and/or seeking restitution from a particular rights violation is “utterly implausible” in no way lessens the violation. Parents initiating violence against their child is a violation of the child’s rights. It doesn’t matter if no one can prevent it. It doesn’t matter if no one can punish it. It is still a rights violation.
This may seem like an appeal to authority, but I believe it’s apt to refute your claim. Try and guess the author. I’m sure no one would confuse him with a minarchist, especially at this point in his writing career,
In present law, children may be seized from their parents by outside adults (almost always, the State) for a variety of reasons. Two reasons, physical abuse by the parent and voluntary abandonment, are plausible, since in the former case the parent aggressed against the child, and in the latter the parent voluntarily abandoned custody. Two points, however, should be mentioned: (a) that, until recent years, the parents were rendered immune by court decisions from ordinary tort liability in physically aggressing against their children—fortunately, this is now being remedied;[15] and (b) despite the publicity being given to the “battered child syndrome,” it has been estimated that only 5 percent of “child abuse” cases involve physical aggression by the parents.[16]
That is a rather unsubstantiated (and easily refuted, as “always” is a rather high bar) assertion. Do you honestly believe that? An abused child will “always” side with the parents, no matter how severe the abuse? Care to back that up with any facts?
Having sex with anyone without consent is wrong. How you make the jump from rape to “everything” is quite beyond me. You do not have the right to initiate violence upon anyone, including your children. You do, on the other hand, have the right to create and enforce rules for living on your property. You have the right to forgive or expel from your property anyone who violates your rules.
Perhaps it is, but it is a rights violation that has no consequences for the justice system. Perhaps the child, upon reaching adulthood, will want to pursue justice from his parents. That is of no concern to you. But then again what is a child owed by his parents? Nothing at all, in fact children live at the expense of their parents until the moment they reach maturity. Their life is a gift.
This is yet another case where a single counter-example could refute my claim, yet no amount of repeated instances could prove it true.
We have been seeing a lot of these fallacies lately.
I answered this a few pages ago. Including a fetus, but not including sperm and unfertilized eggs. A fetus is a potential moral agent. Neither sperm nor unfertilized eggs are.
Interested in the argument since it is not self-evident. Is potential human sufficient to be declared as human with respect to rights?
Both sides seem to be arguing to the extremes of what Rothbard identified. While there may be some validity in those arguments, I have yet to see it.
Do you think imprisoning someone without consent is wrong? Well, I imprison my child in her room every night, without her consent. Do you think forcing someone onto the floor and pulling off their pants and underwear and putting on new pants and underwear is wrong? Well guess what, I do that to my child every time I change her diaper. Do you think kidnapping someone and forcing them into your car without her consent is wrong? Well guess what, I do that to my child every time I take her home from daycare.
So, your only criteria as to why it is wrong for a father to have sex with his child is that the child did not want it. Again, when was the last time a child consented to anything? Given that children never consent to anything, and given that doing anything to an adult without consent is wrong, using your logic, everything a parent does to a child is wrong. If not, then you are just arbitrarily deciding how you think parent’s should treat their children.
Then you have no interest in truth, just in making yourself feel better.
Not thoroughly. Your argument hinges on the fact that an egg and sperm dies without the other. Well, a fetus will die without the mother, and a child will die without the parents. But as long as they all have the other, then they all have potential. As such, using your logic, letting a sperm or egg die is murder, because it is a potential moral agent.
Awesome point.