Most people here will say that it should not be allowed to hospitalize crazy people using force. However most people will also say that it is okay to use force against children because they don’t know what is good for them. Since both crazy people and children are not rational actors, why do they receive different treatment by most libertarians?
— because, like all issues, the market will decide what treatment different actors will receive. Rationality has little to do with it, like most other issues too.
The market can also decide that all redheads can be legitimate killed. I am not asking what other people might think in the future, I am asking what is just in your opinion.
most people will also say that it is okay to use force against children
Most people who are not in this forum? I find that this forum is quite open to independent children.
Neither “crazy people” nor “children” are homogenous groups of non-rational actors. I don’t know or care what the majority of libertarians think about this, and I’m pretty sure you can’t know something like that either, Eugene.
I think I’ve said this before, but if someone were bitten by a snake, and now they’re tripping balls and in terrible, delerium-inducing pain, and they think you are the devil come to claim their soul, you should still give them the anti-venom despite their delerious protests and attempts to resist your approach. That’s because they fall outside the argumentation ethic as long as they’re not capable of engaging in an argument any more than a vegetable, or at best an animal. When they come back, they can affirm authority over their body, and if what you did really was necessary to bring them back, then they can hardly complain. Unless they intended to kill themselves, of course, in which case they’re free to try again if they still feel so inclined.
What you’re really doing is utilising someone else’s property, while they’re not ‘around’ in the full sense of the word, in a way that you hope will be ratified by them as effectively consensual when they come back. They can’t give or explicitly withhold permission beforehand, because they’re not in the proverbial room at the moment, and time is of the essence, but you have such a good hunch that you will have your actions ratified as consensual when they return that you go ahead and do them anyway. It’s like a surgeon performing emergency invasive surgery on an unconscious patient who would likely die otherwise. Is he breaking the NAP, because if you started cutting open any old unconscious stranger you happened across in the gutter outside a tavern, it certainly would be, even if you claimed and earnestly believed that it would be good for them?
To summarise, no… Of course it’s not as though children or “crazy people” are somehow excluded from the NAP. Try some empathy. You’ll find it works far better on extremely frightened people than you may have been led to believe once upon a time, perhaps when you were extremely frightened…
I mean, I would argue that legally those things are NAP violations, James, but I would still encourage people to do them. No one in their right mind (when they come back to it, that is) would sue you. And if they do, then they are creating a society of callous individuals frightened of hurting each other. If this is what people want to create, let them.
@OP: Both your premises are false.
Oooh, didn’t catch the first one
I just wanted to add that when I saw the thread title, I thought it would be about the Department of Education.
Or some wacky new Japanese game show
Maybe your own children, but not against other people’s children.
As far as I am concerned you can forcefully hospitalize your crazy aunt, but not my crazy aunt.
She’s not “your” crazy aunt.
Maybe my sense of justice is letting the market decide.
You think she was switched at birth?
Maybe we should ask the king to cut her in half and see how you guys react…
You think she was switched at birth?
No, I’m saying legally there is no difference between your aunt and someone else’s aunt. You can’t be morally consistent in terms of NAP in saying it’s ok for someone to hospitalize my aunt but not your aunt.
What is “crazy”? I would say that institutionalizing “crazy” people because they might be dangerous to others is akin to precrime and predicting the future. Obviously, if they are threatening to hurt others or do harm others then, yes, self-defense is in order.
The point is that a system that makes the most sense is the one where these kinds of decisions are made by the people who care about the person in question the most. The point is not that someone’s aunt is their property, but that they care a lot more about her, than some random government judge.
Some people really belong in an institution for their own protection, so families commiting their “loved ones” is fine. But have “the society” commit people and you’ll have more harm than good coming out of it.
Yeah, because totalitarian inconsistencies are so much better than libertarian inconsistencies.