If you hit someone with a car by accident, and because of this, they are rendered unable to support themselves, are you not now obligated to support them? Even if you don’t have a contract with them? You are the cause of their dependency, and therefore, you must provide for it. The situation is the same with children. You are obligated to care for them until they can care for themselves, because their dependency is the result of your actions.
Your idea of what a PDA is seems to be is very different from what everyone else’s idea of a PDA constitutes. You seem to think that a PDA is some kind of governing organization that can make rules for how people live their lives. That is NOT what a PDA is. A PDA – Personal Defense Agency – is merely there to provide protection for their customers. They are NOT there to govern their customers lives. The PDA can make NO rules concerning how I live my life or how any of their customers live their lives. I am not going to pay money to some company just so they can tell me how to live! You so wrong on your perception of what a PDA’s purpose is it brings everything else you say under suspicion.
Please show me where I stated anything like that? But you know what, you’re right. I don’t have to take responsibility for anything I do so long as what I’m doing is not violating the property of another.
WRONG! WRONG!! WRONG!!! PDA’s are only concerned with the wishes of their customers! They have no business in anything the customer does not what them to be involved with. A PDA cannot set rules for how anyone lives their life!
If an independent has sex with a member of a PDA then they simply have sex with a member of a PDA. You are trying to legislate the behaviors of willing consensual actors. You are, therefore, attempting to establish a pseudo-State which can legislate morality.
How do you suppose that? How could I EVER come on the “rules governing the PDA client” if I did not subscribe to a PDA’s services? A PDA cannot set “rules” for their clients. We continue to see in your comments your misguided belief that by signing up for a particular service someone offers I can give up my free will and self-determination, that I can voluntarily give up my liberty, that I can place over me some master that can set “rules” on how I can live my life. Not only can a PDA NOT do that a PDA cannot FORCE any person to live under their rules for any reasons!
For what? If they child isn’t harmed then how can I be subject to any retaliation? Parenthood is not something that can be forced on someone. You are either willing to care for a child or not. There is a big difference between walking out and leaving the care of a child to one parent compared to both parents or even one of them taking a new born baby and leaving it in the trash can. In the former I would have committed no crime since I have no violated anyones liberty. The later could be the crime of murder if the baby should die.
How is that? Refusing to be burdened for the rest of my life because a parasite was born that steals my liberty and my wealth doesn’t mean I would go out and just murder, rape, steal or otherwise. What proof, what EVIDENCE, do you have that shows that because someone does not what to accept the responsibility of raising a child (which is not a crime) they are more apt to go out and commit all manner of crimes as you have suggested?
What you believe to be moral is no more correct than what I would believe to be moral. Morality is subjective and rest entirely upon the individual moral code of the person in question. There are some acts that transcend morality such as murder, rape and theft because you have now violated the liberty and property of another person. You have initiated coercive violence against another which denies them their single greatest property – their life and liberty.
I think you’d find more people that would agree with you on a Marxist message board. I don’t think you have any place here. You believe you can rule over people, even people who voluntarily accept the DEFENSE services of a company.
Correct. I am only obligated to pay insurance. Driving is a risk.
Of course in a free market, road companies would probably instate driver obligations to keep their roads safe.
If I deliberately hit someone with a car, that is an act of aggression. I’ve denied them a right, and in turn they can do the same.
Someone invests their life savings in my company. My company goes under despite benign intent (not fraud). I made no promise or contract to return them their money, so do I owe them their money? I may have caused them to depend on some outside entity for sustinance, but both they and I were making an investment with risks involved. Driving on a road is quite similar. I am taking a risk, and hopefully I’ve insured myself to cover that risk, or I’m using a road with adequate safety regulations.
Of course, this is supposing your analogy is correct. But the fact is, it can be argued that you’ve done something to impare the situation of the other driver, you’ve aggressed upon them. This is not the case for the child. All you have done is supplement it’s creation. Simliarly, a drug seller suplements his customers addiction. They may be dependant on the drug, but they do not have a right to take that drug away from the seller. That would be theft.
A child developes itself off siphoning it’s mother’s nutrients. If the mother allows that to happen, so be it. The child has no right making the mother continue her practice of giving it care. Conception isn’t an act of aggression so the child has not been violated into it’s dependancy.
It isn’t? Did you ask it first, if it wanted to exist? No, you forced it to by your actions (rape is an exception to this case, but Block’s evictionism should go into effect in that case). Admittedly, this is a gray area. To remove the “driving is a risk” bit, let’s say you, by accident, run off the road and crash into someone’s house, injuring them and causing their dependency. They did not take a risk, you did (unless you want to say that building your house anywhere near a road is also a risk that disqualifies them from compensation beyond insurance); you took an action that carried a risk, a liability to anyone who might become dependent as a result of your actions.
This is why it is hard to get hot chicks into libertarianism.
Aggression implies a prior owner. For instance, if someone agresses against me by taking MY car, that implies I OWNED the car, if I don’t own the car, it’s not aggression against me, and if I don’t exist, I can’t own anything.
The baby didn’t exist prior to its conception, therefore it posessed no rights (since things that don’t exist obviously can’t act). It would be foolhardy to say you can proform acts of aggression against things that don’t exist. Existance precludes rights.
And IF conception IS aggression, how could someone who is agains’t aggression uphold conception? Wouldn’t, then, conception be an unlibertarian enterprise?
The nature of this scenario is fairly ambiguous, but i’ll try to respond as best I can. By driving off the road purely out of my own negligance I would have proformed aggression upon someone. Whether I intended to or not, was aware of it or not, it was aggression. I denied someone the private use of their property. However, we’re supposing the home owner made no prior contract with the road owner and that the actions causing the “accident” can be relegated 100% to me and were not some flaw in the road or car.
I don’t exactly see how that correlates to conceiving babies though.
Alright, I sign up for a private defense agency, and agree that I will fulfill any financial burden my children may cost. Fair enough.
So an independent will be required to pay for a child even if they aren’t a subscriber? Or are you saying the PDA will cover the cost of a non-member?
Basically, “if you don’t pay for your child, I’m going to hurl bricks at you.” What type of economic retaliation? Ruin the dead-beat dad’s credit?
I fail to see how smashing a car through someones house and having a child are the same thing? Smashing a car through a house is aggressive because I have violated the property of another. What property am I violating by leaving a child to the care of its mother? Certainly I’m not violating the property or the liberty of the child nor could I possibly be violating the property or liberty of the mother who has already accepted the roll of guardian over this child. If I smash into someone and cripple them the most likely scenario is that I will compensate them monetarily for the pain, suffering, etc. I highly doubt I would be someone placed in involuntary servitude to this person for the rest of their life nor would they want me around them all the time. The only way I could be held responsible for the care and upbringing of a child is if I somehow violated its liberty – if I committed some form of aggression against it. Fathering a child who was in a state of non-existence does not constitute aggression. Neither does leaving it to the care of another who would do a far better and loving job than I would.
You guys have a pretty weird definition of aggression. Most people do not think that you can aggress without intent. Accidents are, by definition, unintended.
As for the injured party, if you ruined their kidneys with the accident, and the only way to keep them alive (in a hypothetical world without dialysis) was to filter their blood through someone else’s kidneys every other day, shouldn’t that someone be you? You are the cause of their dependency. You did not intend to cause the dependency, but it is the direct result of your actions nonetheless.
I shot him, but I didn’t intend to kill him your honor!
Aggression is the act of violating someone’s free use of property (that isn’t used aggressively). Intent has nothing to do with it.
I do not think your equivalency is accurate. You are equating the kidney injury to a pregnancy.
Ostracism – the failsafe “punishment” in a libertarian world.
However, you could make giving up his blood a term and condition for entrance onto your property.
If enough people actually cared about family values, dead-beat dads would be banished.
Not if both parents die.
Slow down.
First of all, what do you mean exactly by “help” for them? That is a completely subjective concept. Each person would have a different opinion. Therefore, negotiation is the only solution.
Second, aside from the fact that it is not even an actionable agent, the “free market” really does not have an obligation to supply any help.
[ If a meteor landed on Earth, would we expect the “free market” to be able to help? I would not. I see disruptions to the family unit to be of such severity as to make it equivalent to the damage produced by a meteor. Not everything can be fixed. ]
Everybody has heard of them but not many people have them. Maybe the extra legal fees are not worth it – who knows? There is no way to extrapolate into an anti-state situation because the current legal structure is artifically influenced by the state. For all we know, without the state, lawyers may make as much money as street cleaners or maybe even less!
That happens all of the time: parents die.
To be honest, without government or the state, I do not believe this was much of an issue in the least because I believe communities were smaller – it was difficult for a man to knock up a woman and escape.
That is an interesting possibility. However, marriage and divorce seem like incredibly messy things no matter what the social system happens to be. My suspicion is that without a monopolized legal system, most insurers would not be interested in having anything to do with marriage because arbitrating disputes would be incredibly arduous and risky – it would probably just be a luxury service for movie stars and rich people. The concept of copyright law comes to mind too.
Well, it’s not precise, anyway. There is nothing precisely like it. What else can we possibly compare it to? It is a unique circumstance. I come down on the side that it is comparable, and that you are always liable for the situations your choices created. You, apparently, think that only “aggression” creates this obligation, and that this “aggression” includes any act that causes injury, whether intended or not (your gunshot example was a little weak; you certainly intended to shoot, and there are few uses for shooting; driving your car is more appropriate).
Banished where?
By “help” I simply meant financial aid. I never said that the free market had an obligation to supply an help, that doesn’t mean it can’t.
So if a father walks out on his family, your might as well consider him dead, minus the government assistance and the possibility of life insurance.
Basically, all I can gather, is that in a stateless society people should just be more careful - which is definately good. However, there really won’t be any type of safety net (private or otherwise) for the unfortunate, besides possible charities and abortion clinics.
Angurse,
When an independent has sex with a client of the PDA he becomes bound by the public policies that the PDA has regarding it’s clients. So independent’s would be wise to either negotiate a separate agreement with the other person regarding this or have sex only with those individuals upon which they either agree with the rules of the PDA or who are independents. This is similar to when you enter a store to buy something and they have a sign posted no shirt/no service. By entering you implicitly agree to the rules of the store and it is reasonable for them to enforce their own rules. It is important to note that in a free society you have control over who you interact with so there is no burden on you, it is your own actions and with whom that will determine what obligations you have.
Secondly, regarding contracts in a free society like the Liberty Colony. Contracts are the essential element to any society and individuals or groups of individuals can and will make contracts for virtually any activity. It is reasonable that these contracts describe the agreement, describe remedies for the violations of the agreement, and outline appropriate methods of enforcement for violations of the agreement. These types of contracts, contrary to what Kingmonkey and some others on this forum may think are not remotely close to the idea of communism. Contracts are the essential element to free societies.
You keep pushing this idea that a PDA has some contractual right to deny me any of my liberty? Further, how can a PDA enforce “public policies” when they are a private entity? They can only enforce THEIR polices on those that SUBSCRIBE TO THEIR SERVICES. I cannot be held liable for any infraction of any policy a PDA might set if I am not a subscriber to their service. Screwing people who belong to a PDA does not mean the PDA can run my life neither does the PDA have the right to run the lives of any of its clients. What you are proposing is nothing more than a pseudo-state in which I sign a contract with a PDA only to sign away my life and liberty to the whims of the company CEO. And what happens if you try to enforce your polices and I cancel my services? Are you still going to pursue me?
That’s illigitimate.
The US government could be like, “Oh yeah, about you anarchists saying we don’t own you, well you see, you’ve interacted with some of our voluntary tax payers (clients) so yeah, you’re under our jurisdiction now”.
You cant enforce a policy on people who did not make a contract or assume control over a certain aspect of their property. That’s what illigitimacy is all about.
No, All you have THE RIGHT to do in that situation is punish your own client. They’re the one that agreed to your rules.
No it’s not.
First off, they have a right to have that policy because they OWN the store. Now in this liberty colony are the PDAs asserting OWNERSHIP over their customers? If that’s true, this colony is just another scourge upon the principle of liberty.
Second, “No Shirt, No Service” MEANS “No Shirt, No Service”. If I don’t have a shirt, the store owners/cashiers may not service me. And if a cashier does, THEY ARE LIABLE TO THE STORE. IT IS NOT “No Shirt, We Own You”.
Third, There is a sign saying this, it’s an agreement. Is the PDA going to tatoo every one of it’s customers saying “If you have sex with me, you’re agreeing to someone elses rules”? I can’t own a store and then when someone enters say “By entering this door you have agreed to give me your right arm!”
So, by entering the woman’s vagina, I am now under the domain of her PDA? What if I was never properly informed? Are all PDA members required to wear badges displaying their defense providers?
I could see this being applied to, oh say, a brothel. In which, by entering the property, I agree to the house rules.
I think it’s pretty simple - contractual agreements. If a woman expecting child support gets into a relationship with a man who refuses to agree beforehand to support a child resulting from the marriage, it’s her fault. On the other hand, a man who wants a long-term relationship should expect such an agreement to take place. Caveat emptor.
A man does not even have a provable obligation to himself, nevermind any other party. My father left my mother homeless and pregnant, and he had every right to do so. Was it a nice thing to do? Not really. He did this a few times, with different women. Should he be punished for it? Not at all. There are no such things as positive obligations. Obviously, his reputation preceded him, did it deter several women?
Conception is not aggression and creates no responsibility for the mother, father or otherwise. The child, being unable to sign contracts, is not a customer of any PDA, and therefore cannot avail itself of any defense services. I personally would not purchase the defense package that made me liable for conceiving children. Remember there would be competition, and with that, different products.
With a free market, there wouldn’t be a surplus, because all children would be potentially for sale. The market would make prices, and sellers would respond appropriately – our very biology may find this offensive, and our cultural obsession with family may judge it unnatural, but I think it’s probably going to be present in the next major step of human development.
Children for sale? That sounds useful for organ harvesting. 