Bill Gates wealth is a result of a state granted monopoly (patent). There is no reason to believe anyone could accumulate the wealth of Bill Gates, comparative to the rest of the population, in a stateless society.
I see no reason to believe there would be PDAs. Governments need massive protection. Not individuals.
As I have already explained, PDAs, if they even existed, would not enforce children’s rights against their own customers.
Yes, common law would exist. But it would not really be “law”, but a guideline. It would give a pretty good indication to people how disputes would be resolved by an arbitrator. Since children do not have the ability to pay or make a claim, there would be no dispute, and therefore no law.
Again, good luck getting them to punish their own customers.
The loophole here is, while it’s great that you signed up with PDA_A in which you agree to not have any domestic violence within your premise. This neighber could decide not to hire that PDA or hire a different PDA that turns a blind eye to such activity. Now this may not be the case in all situations. What we may actually see instead is HOA’s making the PDA provisions and purchases so that all community members are a member of said PDA regardless. They would pay for it in their HOA fee’s and home owners would have to comply. They would have to agree to the contract at the purchase of their home. If they later on wanted to change PDA’s they would have to do it through their local HOA.
However such a situation where neighbor’s had different PDA’s is definitely going to be the case in rural area’s and it’s unclear as to whether or not the HOA model would exist in an anarchist society, though I have no idea why not. In a situation where your neighbor may have not signed a PDA contract (A criminal isn’t going to sign up for anti-criminal services) I think the best thing you can do is create public awareness of the behavior and force the culprit to publicly defend himself.
One could speculate that a community that subscribes to a certain private court may take the following scenario as action. The court would judge that the individual is guilty based on obvious standards, beyond a shadow of a doubt blah blah blah ect(Lets say someone took pictures and submitted it)… Then the court would mandate that he would be in effect be excommunicated from the community. From here there are several options. He would be marked as a known community criminal.
Having a jail would may be completely un-necessary. The community who subscribes to X PDA services and Y Court Justice services who is also partnered with X PDA will have a set of standards required of subscribers. A store owner for example wanting to remain in compliance with their PDA and court contractors may be required to no longer sell goods or participate in any exchanges with the known criminal. The community as a whole will do this effectively removing that man from any community involvement, primarily trade. The man will face the following options.
Commit further criminal crimes, which will ultimately get him killed or arrested. (Like stealing for food)
move out of his home to another location at which case the community no longer has to deal with him
Or make it up to the community in some fashion. The judge may state that for starters the man must give up his child to foster care or whatever institution. Perhaps he will be required to sell his home, maybe he’s not fit to be a responsible homeowner. We could only guess as to what methods could be used but there are many I am sure.
Notice that this criminal is effectively dealt with without ever violating his property in the first place. The only real bad side to this is if he chooses to starve the child. I think this would be highly unlikely though. Remember that all the utility companies will likely shut off their services to him in order to be in compliance with the PDA and court system. If they do not community members may opt out of their service for collaborating with a known criminal. It would be bad for business.
On the flip side, if the PDA’s and whatever Court Contractors get carried away and start feeling power happy, people can abolish them and adopt competitors.
Either way I think the whole violent situation could be handled without violating the culprits property rights amazingly enough.
I think we can assume children’s charities would exist in a free society.
If I knew (or even suspected) that you were molesting your child, I would inform such a charity about it. They would no doubt then investigate the situation, and if they can prove you have been molesting your child, they would use coercion against you to seize the child. If you dispute this, you can go to an arbitrator to see who has the best claim to the child - you or the charity.
Assuming it’s true, the arbitrator would no doubt rule that by acting this way, you have neglected in your duty* to homestead the child (or properly abandon it), so you have given up your rights to bring up the child. Rights to the child would be awarded to the charity, who will re-home the child with parents who will take proper care of it.
My concern about this method is who dictates what the correct way to homestead property is? Obviously in this case child molestation is clearly wrong, but it seems like a slippery slope for dictating to others what they should and should not do with their property. Also it uses the notion that children can be owned by people. A view not universally accepted even for libertarians. I know my points may be contradictory but it is something to consider.
Who decides what the correct way to homestead any property is? The arbitrator resolving the dispute. The arbitrators compete with each other over who makes the fairest, wisest, most honest decisions. It’s only a slippery slope when one agency has a monopoly on arbitration, i.e. a government.
On the notion of children being owned, please read the Kinsella article.
I don’t see this as relevant except in terms of retroactive claims. He’s not asking a question about the kids, but what anyone else besides the parents can do to stop a molestation. Whether or not the kid is a potential moral agent has no practical impact except if that kid, once emancipated, takes action to defend themselves or get payback some how.
That’s nice. What would they do? How would they enforce such a law?
For one, why is it a crime? I know why I think it’s a crime, but why is it a crime in an anarchist society? The parent(s) are the goto people for consent until the kid is emancipated, and the kid is default property of the parent(s). The fact that the kid is a potential moral agent may put moral and ethical limits on what parents can properly consent to in their stead, however what he’s talking about is the potential legal action that can be taken if the parents violate those moral and ethical norms. And while an existing contract which says “If you want a good rating from us…” or “If you want to live in this neighborhood…” then, “you can’t molest any children,” is all fine and dandy. But what if no such contract is in place? It’s ludicrous to think existing contracts will cover every possible eventuality, and I’ll be damned but in all the pontificating about contracts in a purely free society it never occurred to me or anyone else I know to say, 'Oh, and by the way, don’t bugger any kids or we’re through!" Plus, how does someone show up in a court of law in a stateless society and say, “I want out of my dealings with so and so because of the damages he did to someone else.”?
What action could be taken, other than things I’ve already listed? I see no basis for taking the kid away legally, though a judge/community may go easy on me if I did. Like it or not, under a state you can legally go in and do something about the situation. I’m not saying the state is good at or it’s desirable or there aren’t other trade offs. But if some prick is buggering his kid under the state I don’t have to give a damn about consent or property rights. I call the cops and, all goes well, the molester is finished.
Really? The standards would be “obvious”? So it is obviously wrong to feed your children fast food right? Will this supposed court throw the parents in jail for 90 days for feeding their children fast food? My point being, nothing is “obvious”. And lastly, I come back to, who would pay a court that would judge how the customer would treat his or her children? I know I would not hire a court that would think it has any say as to how I can raise my children.
As to HMOs, given how limited they are today, and given that many of them are propped up by government, I see no convincing reason to believe they would be very popular in a stateless society.
In your example an arbitrator could be nothing more then an angry mob who believes in witches and therefore found a fallacious way to justify the burning down of the witches home. What gives the arbitrator the ethical justification for practicing coercion against someone’s property, especially someone who chose not to support that specific arbitrator? Your method involves violating property rights. Mine involves voluntaryism.
I think this is kind of what Spidey is getting at. What right do you have to initiate force against someone who did not directly initiate force against you. The only thing that person really has done at this point is offended you. You cannot justify initiation of force on behalf of another without their explicit consent, as that fallacy is the fundamental defense for american imperialism.
Furthermore, if an arbitrator makes a bad decision and ultimately runs out of business, the damage they cause may be permanent. Also, since your method involves violence and we know that the individual involved is a known criminal he is more likely to use drastic measures of defense to protect his property. You may be signing up your local PDA for a suicide attempt to seize this mans property.
I have read Stephen’s article a while ago and while I agree with much of what he generally says. He still faces the problem that the theory he advocates is still opinion based and that many Christian leaning libertarian’s would rather take the viewpoint that the child is the rightful owner of his/her body. The parent is only a caretaker. The parent can choose to voluntarily stop being the caretaker. Adoption services are available specifically for that reason.
The other problem in the idea of children as property is that the man molesting his child has then done nothing morally wrong. All he is arguably guilty of is being a poor property owner. But that’ the same as someone who skips an oil change in their car. Poor car owner maybe but not morally wrong. What you have proposed is that now society dictates whats morally right and wrong based on cultural beliefs which are subject to change and which may not be shared with all participants.
Another clear example of this problem is old adults. What happens to adults who have clearly taken ownership of themselves but later on become mentally incapacitated? What happens when they get old and get dementia? Your argument brings up the ability to homestead that person as they are not fit for owning their own persons. My argument would be to act as a caretaker of that property, but not take the property for my own.
The point is you will have differences of opinion even in a libertarian society. My biggest argument however is that two wrongs don’t make a right and violating the criminals property rights makes you only different then him to a degree.
This is why I mentioned the semantics problem with “ethics” and “morals”. Libertarianism is, at its heart, purely a system of punishment. Its only task is to determine criminality, not whether things like drug use or prostitution are ethical/moral goods or bads. You are now falling into Spideynw’s fallacious line of thinking which is patently incompatible with libertarianism. Please just have some patience with me and I will give a comprehensive response to all of these complaints.
And how is libertarian philosophy going to determine what actions should be ‘punished’ ? You know, a legal system deals with something called justice. Once you remove ethics/morality from the equation, how do you know what is just ?
Not to mention that a libertarian legal system doesn’t even deal with punishment, but with restitution.
Funny. I would have thought that any libertarian leaning & sensible person would realize that children are no different from adults when it comes to non-aggression. I don’t see how christianity enters the picture.
You must either not be a parent or you are never around children. I use aggression on my daughter all the time. I had to carry her screaming and kicking from the zoo just the other day. I would never do that to an adult. Sometimes, I have to force her into the bathtub to give her a bath and make her stay in it, even though she is screaming at me. Sometimes I take things from her, that I think are too dangerous for her to carry around, and she throws a fit. As I see it, she is my daughter, not yours, and I would like to see you try to do anything about how I raise her.
And in a stateless society, there would be no one, except for yourself, to enforce your dictates on me. Which is why I ask you, what are you going to do about it?
My method is not an initiation of force. If a child is young enough to not be a self-owner, someone else must own his body. If a parent is molesting it, that means the parent is not the owner of it (according to Kinsella’s definition of what it means to homestead a child). The child is unowned, so the act of taking the child from his parent is not stealing the parent’s property. It is claiming an unowned resource.
Maybe. But then this could happen in any system. The only question is - should it be a monopoly (monocentric law) or competitive (polycentric law)? Government arbitrators make bad decisions all the time - and continue operating!!!
This is why I would call a professional organization to take the child, and not take it myself. The local PDA (or charity) will be trained for this sort of thing, and will only act if they are positive that they can prove the child is being mistreated.
It’s an understandable viewpoint, but the fact is a baby does not truly own it’s body. To homestead means to “bring into productive use”. Since a baby cannot look after itself in any sense, it cannot be said that the baby has homesteaded it’s body yet. Childhood can be seen as a gradual transfer of ownership of the body from the parent to the child, as the child’s will asserts itself.
Adoption services would probably play a much bigger role in a free society, because adoption agencies would no longer have to suffer price controls and government regulations.
If by society you mean the individuals in society, yes that’s true. But then its true of any society. Again, the question is - should we have a monopoly on law (where one individual or group dictates what’s morally right and wrong), or competitive law (where all individuals have a say in deciding what’s right and wrong)?
A mentally incapacitated person’s body could be homesteaded. If that person recovers, they can reclaim their body the same way a child claims its body.
Really? Let’s see you try to take someone’s child away from them. And then let’s see what society says about the parent shooting you in the head and taking him or her back.
And this is why I would call another professional organization to protect me from your professional organization. Oh wait, what organization would be stupid enough to try to enforce the dictates of someone on someone else? None.
Probably. But abortion and child molestation would still occur as well.
I’m going to ignore the points where you use opinion as fact and focus on the actual topic of the post.
Your arguing against a monopoly but forget the very key factor whch allows that monopoly to exist in the first place. The use of coersion. Without the allowed use of coercion the so-called monopoly would break and competitors would move in. Your system however introduces coercion back into the system. You either did not read my post earlier about the angry mob or diliberately chose to ignore it. As such I will repeat myself.
In effect you have fabricated a system which advocates mob rule. A group of individuals could arbitrarily decide that it dislikes the way their neighbor uses their land and feels that they could make more productive use of it. They believe that it’s justified to violate their neighbors private property rights simply based on an opinion that it was not homesteaded to their standards. Of coarse to the landowners opinion he has things exactly as he wants it. They could then hire a PDA to seize that land and basically steal it from the original owner. In other words simply because it was of their opinion that he did not adequately homestead his land he looses it to the masses.
You have effectively described an aged old witch hunt. Where a mob of individuals believes one of the village citizen’s are a witch and they proceed to that persons house to kill them and burn their house down. This line of thinking also falls back to the majority rules fallacy. A system of beliefs that practices coercion simply based on opinion is exactly the system we have today. It is not enough to simply be of the opinion that a neighbor is ill-treating his property. He must be brought to justice without violating his own property rights. Any other method is simple hypocrisy and lays the foundational framework for a new phsuedo-government where citizen’s wish to enforce their beliefs via coercion on others.
On a side note, What happens when you break into that mans house and find out that the child is in fact not a child at all, but that she is a midget who is married to that man who also particularly likes kinky loud sex? The man ofcoarse liked midgets? The whole thing ends up being one big miscommunication. Lets say the man is scared and ends up shooting 3 of your PDA’s officers as they break in to seize the supposed child before being shot himself by remainding officers. In the wife’s grief what course of action could she take to seek justice against such an intrusion? It’s obvious that their rights have clearly been violated.
When I said two wrongs don’t make a right, I was correct. You cannot protect private property rights by violating private property rights.
I have posted twice now two separate examples of a system which doesn’t actively break the private property rights of the known criminal. Neither of them are pacifistic. I’ll quote myself incase you missed it.
I am not removing justice from the equation. I am defining the language for the purpose of discussion. It is possible that I don’t fully understand the proper use of the words “morals” and “ethics” at times, but it is clear that their use causes errors around here quite often.
I don’t believe that drug use or prostitution are criminal acts. That is a clear statement, and so is that I believe drug use or prostitution to be immoral or ethically wrong. Libertarianism leads to the clear conclusion that drug use or prostitution themselves are not punishable offenses, yet has nothing to say about their morality or ethical rightness or wrongness. Capiche?
Your last statement is incorrect, but I am sorry that I will not elaborate much because it is off topic. Plauche and Rothbard (I believe this is their positions) agree with you. Kinsella explained the primacy of punishment over restitution in a thread on here about 6 months back, and it would be nice if someone dug it out. Of course the preference for restitution over punishment is well founded. It is one reason why there is an impetus for both the victim and the criminal to agree on a venue for arbitration.
BTW, I agree that christianity, atheism, whatever religion are entirely irrelevant.
I am referring to your return to the contention that “children have no rights.” In another thread you backed away from this partially, but we will eventually lay it to rest here. I understand where you are confused and the theory can get a bit complicated. Let’s keep the focus on pre-rational infants and toddlers for now. I agree with Truth and Liberty’s last post almost fully, but still need more time to catch up with previous ones.
Again, ‘guardianship’ is, in my opinion, an acceptable term for the subset of ‘ownership’ referring to a parent-child relationship. Hospital-invalid relationships would fall under ‘guardianship’ as well, but have different guidelines. Infants are not golf balls or blow-up dolls. These inanimate objects are not potential moral agents. Inanimate objects are traditionally referred to as ‘real property’, or res. The differences in the nature of individual types of res guide us in determining what we will call generally ‘ownership’.
Simply ask yourself, “Does this action of a parent aid a child in becoming a moral agent?” Quite clearly, feeding a child would and raping one would not. Libertarianism has no opinion on whether you feed the child peas or carrots, teach them English or Spanish, or raise them as Jews or Jesuits.