@Papirus
I don’t necessarily hold strongly to the construction of Natural Property rights. The “right to liberty” and “right to not be physically attacked” don’t necessarily flow from facts of reality, unless one provides some logical chain of reasoning. The fact that people do attack others and that sometimes we deem it legitimate means that there is nothing specific to reality itself (outside of the social realm and thus purposeful human action) that can give one true statements.
I will start with a true statement however, so that we can understand the root of the concept of ownership, and might help us interpret self-ownership.
I direct my body. I think a thought and muscles move. If the mind of David, is David, i.e. is me, then I act only directly through my body. There is no effect my purposeful mind can generate in reality that is perceptible to another human being without starting it as a thought that triggers signals to the muscles that move my body. On the otherhand, no other human being on earth can do those same things with my body. To make my body do a thing they must override my will directly, or change my perception and interpretation of real conditions such that I choose actions that they wish for me to take.
This is the “use of matter in reality” as the source of phenomena over which man may have conflict. This potential for conflicts over the use of matter is the source of the idea of property. If one reforms the property concept in this sense, then the question is what constitutes a legitimate claim to the use of some specific intersection of matter, space, and time.
The reason a concept of self-ownership arises is because of the direct use phenomena. Another human being must interact with my mind in order to get my body to do something, or they must override my mind through brute force whether it’s physical restraint, or through incapacitation/death. There are no if, ands, or buts about that relationship between mind and body.
All other matter is used indirectly. I cannot directly mentally control other matter in this world, except through first using my physical body. That would necessarily constitute a second class of use. We divide betwee alienable and inalienable at this point. If someone wants to use those words to mean something else, then I’ll have to come up with other words to represent this distinction between matter used directly by the mind, and thus bound specifically and only to my mind, and other matter which is not bound to a mind, and must be directed through they use of my mind.
Now, I for one, believe the NAP is a neat abstraction, but that it naively glosses over the social nature of all rights constructions. Not having an adult discussion about the real world that sits underneath such social constructions is the achilles heel of this movement.
In the end, the social norms of a group are what they agree to as an emergent phenomena of the individual values and standards. You see groups divide over divergent world views, and you see them coalesce and combine over convergent worldviews. But in the end, the norms and laws are going to be elaborated, enforced, and evolved through some social institutions (formal or informal). That’s how it will be. That is not a normative statement, it’s a true statement. Define a social group, and watch the behaviors there are norms and rules and there are processes by which these arise, evolve and are enforced.
So the social norms about children will be subject to such social pressure. There will be norms about what’s acceptable and unacceptable, it will evolve, get written down, be enforced. We find a variety of knowledge, theory, institutions, norms, etc. that operate in every country on earth around this specific set of social interaction.
We would all agree that a baby fresh from the womb is not sufficiently capable either in knowledge or in physical capacity to meet his own needs. Left to himself he will die. In order for the child to survive someone must care for him, meet his needs through direct action. At some point in the future the expectation is that this child will no longer require such care and the adult providing such care will cease providing that care. Everything else is about arguing about how this process is achieved.
Can we know the “right” answers?
For example, take the example of preventing a child from running in front of a car. If I tackle the kid, and prevent his death, he may not understand. He may be rightly angry about the physical harm I’ve caused to him. If I performed the same behavior with an adult, and tackled them to prevent an obvious accident. They may initially be angry, but upon reflection it’s very likely that they would see the harm I’d prevented and would become grateful for my action. If instead they sued me in court, it’s very likely that a reasonable jury would find that I’d prevented a much greater injury and/or death and throw out any claim for damages.
As an adult who was a child, and who now has two boys, I struggle with understanding this line. Between coercion via false consequences, and letting them suffer directly from the consequences of their behaviors. In hindsight, looking back at my parents I have a newfound respect for the sheer magnitude of the responsibility of caring for what will one day be an adult human being who will form their own opinion of your actions as a parent. It’s humbling, there are no easy answers. I struggle with finding ways to help my boys grow and learn without seeming to be harsh or cruel.
So, what’s the right answer? Let’s stop looking for easy answers to complex problems. This conversion of a dependent non-adult human mind into an independent adult human mind is not an easy problem nor can we say that there are absolute and universally applicaple methods and techniques. Just like we’ve identified different learning styles, there are very likely different techniques parents can use which will have different effects on children with different personalities.