Let me ask you this, if I may: were such a situation to happen in the real world today, how would child abuse be prevented there without some form of intervention?
There’s no way to prevent child abuse. No amount of government intervention can change that fact.
Usually people who have been abused tend to not abuse others and move on. The best thing you can do is educate people.
Note that child abuse is already the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of parents are good parents. Geographical location is not important to the legal problem since the extended family should have legal power to intervene no matter where they are located. My point is that the nosy neighbor or the State should not have power to interfere with the natural parents except in the most extreme circumstances since it is almost certainly the case that the natural parents care more for the welfare of their children than either the nosy neighbor or the State, even if they’ve hit the child in a fit of rage. The issue is procedural… the extended family should have right of first refusal in legal action against the parents. The State should not be able to directly act against parents without first giving the natural extended family an opportunity to intervene either through non-legal means or legally.
Clayton -
My answer is that the state would and should damn well intervene! And the answer I want to hear is that under AnCap someone would intervene.
Ok, as an example, when I was educated at home (and I was never at any risk, might I add) the government occasionally sent inspectors around to check my work and make sure I was learning from the correct syllabus and so forth. Now, I am just as much against a national curriculum as anyone else on the thread, but I think it would have been totally correct, morally and ethically speaking, for a coercive (not aggressive) body to “save my soul” if I was being taught how to be an extremist Christian and receiving floggings each day for my sins.
Also is a world where education is not obligatory going to be one where (a) all the kids go off to read books off their own back, (b) one where they would prefer to play video games or (c) one where their parents would prefer to have them work on the farm? If they don’t get the proper education, the economy will suffer.
There was a case a few years back of a British island which the Britsh government didn’t really intervene in and their turned out to have been a whole history of child abuse.
Ok that is a good answer and the kind of answer I wanted to hear, thanks.
“Pity we poor people who wander into a Newbie forum here without having conformed to your church’s prefabricated definitions. I think it ironic that a clique of you on a website think you have the authority to dictate the meaning of words for voluntarism.”
Come on, Herodotus, that’s nonsense. You are certainly free to define your terms however you want. But what you should not do is point out that coercion-as-you-define-it is sometimes justified and then claim to have shown that coercion-in-the-voluntarist-sense is sometimes justified. At least you have to admit that your argument against voluntarism applies only to a certain version of voluntarism.
In colloquial English, words are often somewhat vague. Therefore, in philosophy, it is sometimes convenient to use words in a technical meaning (preferably one that is not too far removed from the colloquial one). There’s nothing cultish or “positively Orwellian” about this.
I’ve figured out why some of the earlier responses in this thread did not appeal to me (and felt a bit utopian); it was because most were purely market based whereas I was looking (subconsciously) for sociological features, like the extended family, which would help to minimise certain social issues in a free market society, cheers.
It’s not a double standard if you are engaging in cognitive dissonance.
I think most people would agree that certain degree of coercion is legitimate when dealing with those persons who clearly have too little information to act in their own interest (if they can even comprehend their interests). This includes children and mentally handicapped. What that degree is, who qualifies as a child or mentally handicapped, and similar questions can vary by time and place. I don’t think any of this betrays a general respect for liberty and the primacy of voluntary interaction.
As others have said, intervention in this instance may very well be warranted. But you have to make sure that the medicine is not worse than the disease. The more discretion afforded to the interveners, the greater the risk of enforcement error. The more independent the interveners (e.g. less reliant on consumer satisfaction), the greater the risk of broader intervention and self-interested policies (e.g. the standards for determining “abuse” become less rigorous, calling for more money and power for the interveners).
I’m very glad to hear that you’ve moved away from socialism and recognize the efficacy of markets, and I applaud you for admitting that you still have a lot to learn about anarcho-capitalism, but you’ve also been making sweeping generalizations and condemnations of ancap theory. I assume you’re more familiar with some strains of libertarian ethics than the economic and legal theories regarding anarchism. It is not “another silly ideology that thinks society would run just smoothly purely on greed and axiomatic self-interest.” It is about a decentralized power structure. Gustave de Molinari’s The Production of Security, considered the first argument for anarcho-capitalism, did not talk about rights or ethics, but checks and balances. Simply put, if a monopolized industry is prone to poor service and high/exploitative prices, shouldn’t we expect the state to provide poor service at a high cost in administering justice, security and public goods? It has always been grounded in reality, acknowledging the problems of power and the limitations and fallibility of human beings. It is about extending James Madison’s sentiment that men are not angels and will act in their own interest, and as such no one group/faction/institution must be capable of wielding too much power.
In AnCapistan, there may exist privately funded institutions which go around scooping up abused children and punishing abusive parents. This may (or may not) mean that AnCapistan is not a (Rothbardian) libertarian society, but it is still stateless. And many of us would prefer that to the strictly Rothbardian society.
Ok, perhaps not. My point was the risk in attempting to implement such a radically different society that could (potentially) be overestimating the ability of society to function purely on individualist market structures, communitarian projects and so forth.
Also, I’m not quite as economically illiterate as people (who don’t know me) are trying to make me out to be; if you check out some of my earlier posts you will see this. I am just making some simple points at the moment because there are some fairly simple errors that I don’t think people have quite considered fully; either that or they just think market systems can cover for some of the ‘finer details’ of human society that are actually more complicated than that.
Also, you support coercion in certain instances which is good but others seem to be going along more of an ‘ostracisation’ route.
Actually, I sort of already understood the basics of private protection (at least as much as you have explained); I just have a hard time, mentally, swallowing it up, especially given the lack of empirical evidence for such a system 
Also what do you mean by ‘anarcho-capistan’ as opposed to ‘anarcho-capitalism’?
We cannot empirically prove the social sciences.
You must give up Utopianism unless you want to stay in tail chasing mode.
“Society functioning” is an incredibly vague term. What is a functioning society? Can you define it? Does society function now?
Ok, if you promise not to bite my head off for making mistakes, I will have another chance at discussion with you.
What I mean is that you cannot prove or disprove a theory using empirical evidence if it has not been tested (this goes without saying) however I believe you can if it has been tested.
‘Anarchy’ (if you want to call it that) has been succesful to a large degree in Somalia, at least compared to the brutal tyrannical regime before hand. However this does not prove that anarchy is universally preferable to tyranny as Peter Leeson notes in ‘Better Off Stateless’ rather that government is not universally preferably to anarchy. So, by this logic, I would prefer anarchy in Britain over a fascistic military dictatorship but there is no evidence of an anarchy that has had better living standards or greater economic growth than Britain, hence by attempting to implement anarchy in Britain there is the risk factor that living standards would decrease.
Also, by my logic, there has been no large scale free market protection agency scheme that was also preferable to the evil British government run policing system, hence there is the risk factor of trying to implement radical schemes that have not been tried yet. I do not mind experimenting with schemes as long as they are not too radical (I have no definition of what is ‘too radical’ so you will have to bear with me).
I gave up Utopianism when I gave up political extremes like communism, anarcho-capitalism, etc. 
In all seriousness, though, how are we defining ‘Utopianism’? The perfect society? If so, ironically this is why I am tending to stray away from AnCap at the moment, precisely because it seems utopian (at least at the moment). Come on, do you never seriously think to yourself Hmm I wonder if this would actually work… I know I used to have these doubts all the time in pursuing my wacko far-left ideology 
I meant in terms of economic and social progress; would life be ‘better’ or ‘worse’ following on from anarchy. If better, how do you know? What if there is major economic and social collapse? Anarchy may be perfect in theory but would you go for the risk, not knowing for sure whether it would work in practice?
Cheers.
It seems that this thread is really suffering heavily from vocabulary problems. Even people on the same side of the fence aren’t agreeing on the vocabulary. Because there is so much disagreement it seems the best course of action is to define voluntaryism and the non-aggression principle without using any of the loaded words (coercion and aggression).
Since voluntaryism is based on the non-aggression principle let’s start by defining the non-aggression principle without the use of the above words:
Non-aggression principle (based on Wikipedia’s definition): Not initiating physical force against persons or property, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property.
Voluntaryism: A philosophy according to which all forms of human association should be voluntary. An association is considered involuntary if one party initiates physical force against persons or property, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property.
Now the question becomes, can one effectively raise a child while adhering to the non-aggression principle? Personally, I believe that the answer is yes, it is possible to raise a child while adhering to the non-aggression principle. While you can’t physically force the child to do anything you can still persuade them through non-aggressive means. An example of this would be to leverage your own assets that are provided to them against them. It’s your food they eat, you can deny them of this. It’s your toys they play with, you can deny them of this. It’s your bed they sleep on, you can deny them of this. If they try to force themselves on your food, toys or bed they have initiated force and you are able to respond in kind with force.
Another issue that seems to be coming up are things like disruptive students, students who fight, etc. In a voluntyrist society you can still use force to repsond to someone who has broken a contract. For example, a requirement of being allowed into a classroom may be a certain adherence to a predefined set of rules and a mutually agreed upon set of punishments. If a child disobeys one of these rules the teacher has the right to use force to remove the child from the classroom/school because they are the ones who initiated aggression (the fraud clause in this case). Similarly, the teacher is allowed to utilize the agreed upon form of punishment against the child, so long as the child initiated the aggression (fraud).
The same goes for a parent’s rules for a child living in their home. As long as the child has the right to leave the home at any time the parents can utilize force against the child to get them to do what they want (usually this is through an informal agreement between the child and the parent regarding what the child is allowing the parent to do in exchange for the parents financial support).
Looking at it from an adult’s perspective, if I enter someone’s property under the prior agreement that they are allowed to hit me if they so please then it would not be aggressive on their part to hit me since I am voluntarily entering such an arrangement and I can voluntarily leave such an arrangement at any time.
On a personal note, I am a big fan of hard-lined rules. I find that arbitrary rules tend to get moved with time and lead to disputes. Hard lined rules do tend to have some casualties along the way but I find this preferable to fuzzy rules that are easily bent. In the case of children I think that since there is no objective way to define the difference between a child and an adult they should therefore all be treated the same as far as rules and rights go, regardless of age.
Except that precisely this kind of perspective becomes ‘hazy’ when we consider the fact that the situations involved are really and truly not always as black and white as that:
(a) it might not be voluntary at all if the parents are physically detaining their child
and
(b) the child might be too young to think rationally and therefore perform purposeful action. We cannot say that on this level the child is at fault, thereby if he ‘decides’ not to leave an abusive household.
Mises discusses this (yes! I am considering the points raised by AE):
'Man is the being that lives under these conditions. He is not only homo sapiens, but no less homo agens. Beings of human descent who either from birth or from acquired defects are unchangeably unfit for any action (in the strict sense of the term and not merely in the legal sense) are practically not human. Although the statutes and biology consider them to be men, they lack the essential feature of humanity. The newborn child too is not an acting being. It has not yet gone the whole way from conception to the full development of its human qualities. But at the end of this evolution it becomes an acting being.’
Where do you draw the line? I don’t know. But you must surely recognise why people see the need for an objective standard?
The difference is that this standard need not be created top down in a tyrannic fashion(prone to error), but instead bottom up in an organic fashion. Such examples do not justify the existence of the state.
You cannot fight fire with fire, in this case.
While I generally agree with what Clayton said, I’d like to present some other ways of looking at it.
First off, just because you think that the state would and should intervene doesn’t mean it will intervene (in the time period you desire). Remember the Fritzl case? That man abused his daughter for decades before anyone intervened. And this happened despite the existence of a state where it happened (Austria). The reason I bring this up is because, based on your posts in this thread, you seem to be arguing from a presumption of certainty on the part of the state. However, the existence of the state in no way brings about certainty. Crimes are obviously still commited. What the state does is (try to) provide an illusion of certainty - the better to maintain its legitimacy.
Second, in an anarcho-capitalist society, there would be no laws for compulsory public schooling, and no laws against child labor, so it would be far easier for a child being abused by his parents to simply run away from home. Of course, that in no way guarantees that any/all such children necessarily will do that. Then again, a quote from the Wikipedia article on the Fritzl case is rather revealing:
Third, it seems highly (if not extremely) unlikely for both parents to want to conduct (the exact same kind of) systematic child abuse. As repugnant as it may sound, the logistics of raising one child, let alone more than one, simply to be an object of abuse seems daunting at best and next to impossible at worst. With more and more time passing, the likelihood of someone becoming suspicious is only going to increase, perhaps at an accelerating rate.
Fourth, in the likely (IMO) event that someone does intervene, it may well be an aggressive manner - breaking into the house to rescue the child, for example. This raises the question of what happens when the suspicions turn out to be wrong. In a free-market society, I think the intervener/aggressor would most likely be held liable for the damages he caused, should the parents choose to press charges.
Let’s say you were getting flogged each day for your sins in a free-market society. If there was an anti-religious-extremism or anti-child-abuse organization that was committed to its cause deeply enough, it could offer to buy custody of you from your parents. Or it could perhaps even sue for that custody. Of course, there’s no guarantee that it will get it.
What do you mean by “the economy will suffer”?
There’s also the risk factor that living standards would decrease without attempting to implement anarchy in Britain. How do you know which risk factor is bigger?
Keep in mind that at least part of the reason that there’s been no “large scale free market protection agency scheme…” is because the British government has actively prevented them from arising. However, one could consider various instances of “common law” to be rather close to such a scheme in pre-modern times.
“Economic and social progress” under whose idea of “progress”?
Otherwise, what if there is major economic and social collapse despite the existence of the state - as has happened throughout history?
it could offer to buy custody of you from your parents
This is not an argument against your conclusion but rather against one of your premises. This presumes that parents “own” their children as porperty. I personally disagree with this assertion equate it with slavery (ownership of another human).
By “objective standard” do you really mean “universal standard”? That is, are you talking about a standard that applies to everyone? I ask because I don’t think you can arrive at any standard empirically here.
@Micah: Are you a parent? No way can you raise a child - consider a pre-verbal child, for example - without the use of actions that would land you in jail if used against a peer adult. For example, if my pre-verbal child started running toward a busy street, I would physically manhandle him and throw him back away from the street, if necessary. If I did that to you, it would be felonious assault but its use towards my child is almost certainly legitimate. Or, let’s take the case of performing a forcible enema on your dehydrated child (perhaps as a result of diarrhea). The child will scream and cry and object but so what? The child cannot possibly know what is best and the parent certainly has a legitimate interest in doing what is in his child’s best interests no matter what his child thinks about it.
There’s no way you can consistently apply NAP to the parent-child relationship.
Clayton -