Do my wife and I own our children? After all, We’ve created them. Can we treat them as we see fit?
If you do not own your children, then anyone can come and do anything they want with them.
unless the children own themselves.
the children have a lot to do with it.[:)]
No, you don’t own them and you ‘should’ treat them as rational moral agents.
But isn’t it a thesis in libertarianism that you own what you create?
Yes that’s true with respect to physical property, but humans (children in this case) are not physical property.
Also, saying that you created your children is more of a metaphor than a fact. Nobody knows how to ‘build’ a human. Living forms are basically self-assembling.
Not necessarily. For example, many who are against IP are against them because they see ideas as being “not scarce” once they are publicaly known. When it comes to children, no one can own children beause they are people.
A lot of things are created in industry using natural self-assembly.
What I meant by that is that living forms grow according to self-directed biological mechanisms - they are not manufactured/created. What sort of self-assembling is used in industry ? Regardless, that’s more of a secondary point - the main issue is that human beings are self-owners, they are not owned by anyone.
Molecular self-assembly.
What ? Chemistry ? =P
If it is I’m not aware of it. At work today I “created” several word documents, spreadsheets, e-mails and along with the help of others a computer network within an office building. I do not claim ownership over any of these things even though I helped to create them. Instead being the self-owner that I am sold my labor to the company I work for, therefore everything I “created” or helped to “create” on their time is their property. If you walk into a strangers house and make a sandwich does that make the sandwich your property?
The central thesis of libertarianism is NAP which states that everyone is an owner of their person and property. Any violation of a persons property rights is criminal and is therefore not libertarian.
If you do not own your neighbours, then anyone can come and do anything they want with them.
Your neighbors are capable of protecting themselves. Children are not.
Yes, to the first question, until they reach an age where they can claim themselves. And yes to the second question, as long as you do not fear that someone will harm you for how you treat them. How one should treat his or her own children is debatable. I think most here would agree, myself included, that hitting your children so hard that they are bruised, is too hard.
I myself never hit my child, but if someone else were to spank his or her child, that is his or her choice, imo.