What about more intelligent beings? Let it be aliens or more plausible future robots. Why should much more intelligent and capable creatures respect you, a lower being if you yourself didn’t respect lower beings?
Animals aren’t able to understand, recognize and respect our property, but we recognize their capability of suffering and still make them suffer (zoos, circus, bull-fighting…). Can we claim moral superiority? They are less intelligent and don’t have the capability to choose, but we do, and we choose to inflict damage on them, how can claim the moral high-ground?
In the SCI-FI show Stargate Atlantis a more intelligent and powerful race feeds on humans claiming we do the same to animals.
With that case, why should another race protect us? Even robots if they truly achieve intelligence?
Edit: I did, and it has nothing to say about this, it said intellectually interesting thoughts on the flag-pole situation, but nothing related to the subject of the thread.
Really? And who is going to defend those rights? Who gets to decide what “abusing” a child is? And how is it going to be decided who gets the child instead of the parent(s)?
You have no right to the kid, you are only ‘carrying the flag’ of actual legal tuition because the kid choose you before, but he should be free to leave any moment and go live with their neighbors and you should not use force to stop it, that would be kidnapping. As I said, an easy example, Bart Simpson should be free to leave home and ask the flanders for adoption/asylum/guest/whatever you want to call it.
That may be the case. Who will pay to prosecute you? And to whom would you owe restitution? And who would pay to punish you? The only thing I can think of is that there may be some kind of insurance agency that one could hire to prosecute in case of death. But if someone does not hire such an agency before death, I cannot see why anyone would have standing to punish you. Do you? It seems to be a gray area to me that the market would have to resolve.
He may be small, he won’t be able to sign contracts, but he is not stupid, he knows more than anyone else what he wants and needs, let’s not fall into arrogance!
The courts that consumers support. It may turn out that they support your position, or not.
Either you want a society where private courts decide the law, or you don’t. If private courts decide the law, they are free to choose “unlibertarian” rulings.
Now it may turn out that any private court handing down rulings at odds with your position will not be viable on the free market, and will soon lose all market share. However, that seems a very different argument from the one I think you’re making.
And you’ll bog down in a quagmire once again my friend.
Pretty much like Global Warming (sorry, I meant Man-made Climate Change) this is a deeply emotional issue which has absolutely nothing to do with logic. People that will agree with you on many economical and political topics will jump at your throat because you say decisions regarding hunting should be left to landowners or because you say that animals should be treated like property. Also apart from a few isolated and very laudable exceptions most people will call you a monster if you eat venison or small birds but won’t give a damn if you slaughter a whole school of tunas as long as you stamp “dolphin-friendly” on the cans.
I would agree this would be the case, when a parent takes the other parent to court over child abuse issues. But that is the only case I can see this occurring.
so what? the vast majority of humanity does not recognise that animals have the same rights as humans, in so far as the majority extend rights to humans (which is not that far)
Because that is how markets work. A court that hands out unjust rulings (which is what is inferred by non-libertarian), would quickly lose customers, because it would be an unfair court. People don’t need to understand libertarian philosophy in depth when they go grocery shopping right?
This is a diversion from the thread, as I’m not talking about animal rights at all. I was merely pointing out that if we are discussing the concept of poly-centric law, as in no fixed legal code, then there is no ultimately fair or unfair court rulings. Just and unjust rulings are subjective in the market and are not defined as libertarian and non-libertarian, unless a rothbardian legal code is in effect.
And you make a dreadful over-simplification of anarchist law by comparing it to a transaction. To go shopping for a legal code should seem fishy to most people. Even Rothbard favored a monolithic legal code, which is a monopoly of law. It is the provision of law services that cometition comes into play in an anarcho-capitalist society.