[T]he parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die. The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive. (Again, whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.)
It seems that he differentiates between morality and natural rights–based morality (in general and in this case).
My questions are:
Where, according to him (and other libertarians) do morality concepts “come from”, especially the cases of morality that are outside of the realm of natural rights? (I.e., in the cases when something should not be illegal but is immoral.)
In the case of child neglect, would libertarians agree that it is immoral to leave one’s 1-day old baby alone at home (without anyone watching/taking care of him) while going on vacation, effectively killing the baby? (I assume that most libertarians would not think that it is a violation of anyone’s rights.)
Why shouldn’t the minirchist government/society (i.e., even an anarchist society) enforce those things that can be figured out as immoral, but that are not violations of property rights?
Rothbard was not talking about natural rights-based morality in that case. He specifically stated:
Libertarians do not all agree as to where morality comes from.
I’m sure most libertarians would agree that it is immoral. Most libertarians would probably also agree that it would constitute abandonning the child. Other people would be free to adopt the child.
Well, I am not interested so much in discussing minirchism vs. anarchy. I am interested in asking: why shouldn’t law (anarchist or minirchist) uphold morality? Why is it the function of the law only to uphold violation of natural rights?
For instance, many people here criticize Lincoln for invading the South. And yes, sure, I agree: state rights, militarism, the only Western country to end slavery through a bloody conflict, slavery was on its way out, etc., etc. But, I’ve heard someone say: that is precisely the job of the government – to protect people’s rights. So, Southerners were violating other people’s rights. Why was it not the job of the law to uphold those people’s rights?
Imagine if anarchist society exists right next to a statist slave society. Would it be illegal (in terms of the natural law) for some volunteers to arm themselves and liberate the slaves? (For that matter, to liberate the people from the slavery of the government?)
I think that morality ultimately has an instinctual basis. That is, nearly everyone is born with certain moral instincts.
I think it’s immoral because I think it’s a violation of someone’s rights - namely the child’s rights. As you note, if it effectively kills the child, then it constitutes aggression against the child’s life.
It depends on what you mean by “enforce” and “immoral”. I personally don’t consider morality" to simply concern behavior that one does not approve of. That view of morality leads to things such as prostitution and drug use being illegal, even though the people who engage in those activities harm no one else (despite the twisted logic that prohibitionists engage in).
The links I provide don’t really go into minarchism vs anarchism. I know some of them are long, but they do provide the framework to answer your question. When two people have a dispute (over anything), there are only two outcomes - violent resolution and non-violent resolution. Non-violent resolution becomes law through precedent (so it can change).
I bolded your last question there. The function of law is not to protect against violations of natural rights. As the links I provided stated, the function of law is to resolve disputes non-violently.
I can’t remember who made this point, but cannot this argument be made against the American Revolution? The colonies had slaves and England did not. Yet when we look back upon the American Revolution, it’s all about the right to secede and self-rule. Why does this not apply to the Civil War? If we are going to be consistent, shouldn’t we say that the American Revolution was unjustified and that England had every right to refuse to let the colonies secede?
I believe they would be justified in helping to liberate. It is not possible to predict the future, so I think it would be rather presumptuous of the anarchist society to think they are necessarily making the slaves in the statist society better off. I’m sure the slaves would rather be free, but they may prefer the sureness of life instead of the possibility of death through war. They may also not want to see casualties in the coming conflict. They may prefer to be slaves than see their children killed or maimed in war. So I think it would be fine to help any slave resistance or revolution.
Rothbard is pretty quiet about moral theory outside of the scope of natural law, but I would say that he believed all moral behavior could be ascertained through a reasoned examination of man’s nature. It’s extremely unlikely that he held any sort of positivist, subjectivist, or nihilistic view on morality not covered in political theory.
Libertarians don’t agree on anything, remember that. But pretty much any reasonable would say that this is incredibly immoral by most standards. The issue for libertarians and political philsophers in general is whether or not such behavior should be illegal.
My two cents: regardless of whether or not it ought to be illegal, it will always be de facto illegal. If the official law doesn’t punish parents who leave their children home to die, mobs will.
One good answer is that the costs associated with legally prohibiting all immoral behavior are astronomically high. Another is that sometimes the steps taken to prohibt immoral behavior are incredibly unjust. If I tell a lie and refuse to apologize, what should the law do about it? Should it use force to make me apologize, and how much? This isn’t to say that libertarianism is perfectly just, but it probably does a better job than most other political philosophies.
If the official law doesn’t punish parents who leave their children home to die, mobs will.
Well, in that case, shouldn’t the law protect the parents from the mob?
For example, in Jewish law, the parents would not be punished due to inaction (since the law cannot punish someone for not doing something), but they would likely be excommunicated, which means people would voluntarily refuse doing any business or interaction with them, effectively punishing them to starvation or exile. (There is also a category of “crimes” for which it is said, “law does not punish him, but G-d will”; i.e., it is not the role of the law to punish someone for doing that, but it is still immoral.)
Returning to libertarianism, I guess the bottom line is that the function of the law is not to create/restore morality, but to resolve conflicts.
I will read the provided links when I have a little more time. Thanks.
I would say that the Rothbard quote says more about natural rights than it does about responsibility. A person that is willing to leave their child in such a way should not have children. Of course such an action is reprehensible, but if the government gets involved in such an issue, it will only make it worse. Society needs to naturally sort out the problems of child neglect through education and cultural responsibility. These sorts of problems of child neglect exist in spite of all the attempts of government to prevent them.
FYI. Those type of events did happen leading up to the Civil War.
My reply is as follows. My observations on the order of the universe are thus:
Natural Law
Economic Law
Laws of Men
The concept that it is ok for one indivudal asserting force against another individual only exists in the realm of #3, Laws of Men. If Economic Law is superior to Laws of Men why advocate force against individuals?
Let me rephrase with a question…
I will take your baby abandonment scenario. Let’s say an Amish person does it and for arguments sake lets say the Amish excommunicate and socially ostracise the person(s) deemed morally responsible.
My questions are…
Would it be illegal for everyone in a community of people who exercised non-violent economic discrimination, by refusing to sell food to an individual deemed immoral, even if it meant the person would die because they could not obtain food?
Is there a moral or legal difference between using force against an indivudal by incarcerating them for life until they die or not using force by refusing to sell them food until they die?
@OP: I think gross negligence of children has never been considered the “right” of the parents and I think Rothbard generates more heat than light by examining this subject in that language. The principles that I think are operative in law are as follows:
All else equal, it is presumed that parents have the interests of their children at heart more than anyone else. There are good, genetic reasons why this should be the case
If the parents abuse or neglect the child, the next of kin should step in to rectify the situation. Before 100 years ago, I think this only extremely rarely involved the law.
I was talking about the situation of punishment by a law agency after the fact of neglect.
It doesn’t have to be babies. It could be any kind of neglect.
For instance, my wife and I were discussing whether my uncle’s family has (natural) rights to sue the doctors who led to my uncle’s death in Israel due to negligence. Also, for instance, cases of neglect of the elderly (who don’t have relatives) in the nursing homes.
Could one say that when one is abandoning a child, he is breaking a(n implicit) promise that he has made to the child, which would be similar to breaking a contract?
I.e., if I promise to paint your house in exchange for money, you give me money, and I don’t paint the house, I have violated your rights, correct? But isn’t a contract just an exchange of promises?
So, imagine someone has a heart attack, his family calls 911, and I, an owner of a private ambulance, come to pick the person up. Then, in the ambulance, I decide not to help him because I have racial prejudice against the person, and as a result, he dies. I don’t charge the family for anything.
Can we not make an argument that I have violated his rights? Wouldn’t his family be able to sue me on his behalf? Or, we could say, for simplicity’s sake, that because I don’t help the person, he suffers some long-term damage to his body and then decides to sue me. Could he not sue me for the damage, because I promised to take care of him (thus excluding other helpers’ access to him)?
Another somewhat unrelated question. Premably, in an anarchist society, there should be a mechanism for protecting the defenseless – i.e., those who cannot protect themselves. That includes children and the elderly (for instance, those who have dementia). If a nursing home attendant kills an elderly person, what would be the mechanism through which he would be prevented from doing so again? Could someone sue him on the person’s behalf?
What is justification for someone to take a neglected child away from the parents? The argument that I heard from Walter Block is that by neglecting or abusing the child, the parents give up their homesteading rights to be the child’s sole caretakers.
But could this argument be used about any other case of ownership? Could I say: “You haven’t changed oil in your car (or, haven’t driven your car) in months, so clearly, you gave up your rights to it” or “You bought this field but just left it empty for seven years, so I can just take it from you”?
A side note: instincts do not always lead to the best outcomes, as Malcolm Gladwell noted in Blink.
I don’t understand Stefan Molyneux’s concepts of morality particularly well, but I agree with him that morality is nothing more than “universally-preferrable behavior” amongst human beings, of which only two principles have so far acclaimed such a status; don’t initiate physical force, don’t take property without the consent of the owner.
You said it’s: “a violation of someone’s rights”
“if [abandoning the child] effectively kills the child, then it constitutes aggression against the child’s life” [i.e. a violation of someone’s rights].
That depends on what you consider to be “best”. But I wasn’t claiming that instincts necessarily lead to the “best” outcomes.
There are a relative few human beings, such as serial murderers, who intentionally don’t follow the alleged maxims of “universally preferable behavior”. Hence, I see no reason to consider such maxims to be universally preferable (i.e. preferable by all people without qualification).
I don’t see how it’s circular reasoning. Could you please explain?
My two cents: regardless of whether or not it ought to be illegal, it will always be de facto illegal. If the official law doesn’t punish parents who leave their children home to die, mobs will.
Likewise, regardless of whether black male-white female relationships ought to be illegal, it will always be de facto illegal. If official law doesn’t punish black males for entering into relationships with white women, mobs will.
Would it be illegal for everyone in a community of people who exercised non-violent economic discrimination, by refusing to sell food to an individual deemed immoral, even if it meant the person would die because they could not obtain food?
Whether or not it is technically “illegal” would depend on consumer demand within the community, which means it would probably be legal in this case.
Is there a moral or legal difference between using force against an indivudal by incarcerating them for life until they die or not using force by refusing to sell them food until they die?
I think we should differentiate based on the use of physical force (or threat thereof) that is inherent in laws, but which is absent in excommunication.
Is there a “moral” difference? If by moral, you mean roughly “universally-preferrable behavior”, then no, since the community’s actions are voluntary and respectful of property rights.
All else equal, it is presumed that parents have the interests of their children at heart more than anyone else. There are good, genetic reasons why this should be the case
If the parents abuse or neglect the child, the next of kin should step in to rectify the situation. Before 100 years ago, I think this only extremely rarely involved the law.
How does genetics have relevance when managing human conflicts? We need something that applies to equally to all individuals; whereas everyone has their own unique genetic makeup. If I have a genetic predisposition towards doing X, does that entail an “obligation” to do X?
If you look at the history of the middle ages, child physical/sexual abuse and infanticide was rampant.
I would disagree with this. First, just because I have certain instincts about what is wrong and right, why should I force my unique physiology and psychology on others? Plenty of people “instinctively feel” that eating meat is immoral. Some people think spanking children is immoral. Some don’t. I instinctively find eating cockroaches disgusting. Therefore what?
Second (and this is addressing what Voluntaryist72 wrote vis-a-vis Molenaux), I would say that your instinctive feelings of what makes something murder differ from those of Aztecs, Vikings, Japanese, etc. Your instinctive feelings about whether taxation is theft also differ from those of the majority of the population.
Third, even if an instict is universal, therefore what? How is this an intelligent way of deriving whether something is wrong or right – from your gut feeling? Most people share instinctive tendency to optical illusions…
In the case of child neglect, would libertarians agree that it is immoral to leave one’s 1-day old baby alone at home (without anyone watching/taking care of him) while going on vacation, effectively killing the baby? (I assume that most libertarians would not think that it is a violation of anyone’s rights.)
I think generally speaking, such parents would have the obligation of abandoning the baby in a ‘public’ place, because there is an implicit contract with others in the community that the parents will look after the baby. Whereas if they don’t, they are breaking that implicit contract. However, I don’t think there are any “obligations” of the parents that require them to be forced to feed anyone else; the dilemnas surrounding this are best solved by social pressures; excommunication and consumer demand affecting protection agency contracts.
The practical advantage of there being no rights or responsibilities of either party is freedom of association and contract; parents and children will be paired together through the market mechanism, thus boosting their opportunities. Remember that it is almost universally accepted that monopolies under any circumstances are terrible for the recipients. By removing the parental monopoly and creating competition in the provision of care, children will receive a higher quality of service at a lower price (e.g. chores, pension contributions). Both parties would be regulated by an external third party, a family rating agency, which could make the process as simple as choosing 4 stars over 3.
Hence, I see no reason to consider such maxims to be universally preferable (i.e. preferable by all people without qualification).
Universal in the sense of being accepted by all societies or perhaps 99.9% of societies. In any case, this is why I’m starting to like the argument from morality less and less.
I don’t see how it’s circular reasoning. Could you please explain?
You said: I think it’s immoral because I think it’s a violation of someone’s rights
Your explanation of why this was the case, was a restatement of the conclusion.
[abandoning the child] is [a violation of someone’s rights]
