Isn’t all human action aimed at relieving unease? Aside from reproductive purposes, is not the reason a large number of persons participate in sexual play (big give-a-way word right there) for the “feeling good” part?
There is a first time for everything, you seem to suggest that everytime you have a new experience (every day almost) that you are being somehow being “violated”.
Sure, the pedophile can present a case to the young person about the fun, and after acquiring more sensory information that young person decides to disengage but is forced to continue, THAT is when it is coercion.
EDIT:
Capitalist Pig, then there is no disagreement. Weirder things have happened though. =p
Look, Telpeurion, the point I’m trying to get across is that there is a large difference between somebody telling you to go watch a movie that you may or may not enjoy and telling somebody you may be interested in having sex with them that could psychologically scar you for life when you have no previous sexual experience (as in a 50 year old courting a fucking 7 year old). In an anarchist society, I’m not going to punish 13 year olds and younger who want to try it for the first time. I probably do want to see 50 year olds punished in some fashion for misleading kids. Obviously as authority figures, they have the ability to persuade children in doing things they feel uncomfortable with.
but if you offend somebody’s sensibilities to the point where their direct and immediate well-being is at stake, don’t be surprised when they take retributive action against you.
When I have suggested individuals will not take action? That is what I keep saying, is that only individuals will be able to take action. There won’t be an agency to do it for them.
If you have a person in a neighborhood that is kidnapping children and filming them for child pornography,
Kidnapping children is of course a crime. That is a crime against the parents (the child is the parents’ property). But what is the crime in parents allowing others to have sex with their children? Who can represent the interests of the child? How do we even know what the interests of the child even are?
I’d like to believe that human beings in a society will pay money for their own defense while at the same time funding the protection of children.
I am sure those that are against heroine use, paying for sex, and so called animal abuse will say the same thing.
You can see the same thing with taxation vs. charity.
Believe me, taking away a child will be very violent and dangerous. I doubt charities would be up for it.
On that note, a stateless society will have already gone a long way toward getting rid of the idea of the “authority figure”, which is a large part of the problem to begin with. If a child is considered to be a self-owner and parental roles are limited to custodianship of a child’s rights as described by Rothbard and others; and as importantly, if children are taught to have self-respect and to think for themselves at a young age (which will happen more in the absence of a compulsory Prussian-style education system); then “because daddy says so” will tend not to be a strong enough argument to get a child into a sexual situation in which they do not wish to be. It won’t solve the problem, but it will be a big step in the right direction.
MacFall, I think children have evolutionary adaptations towards listening to people who are older than them. It would take a very conceited effort to short-circuit that element.
Parents are responsible for their children and their well-being. If parents are molesting childrean, or beating them - pretty simple, there would be organizations, that deals with such things just like any other criminal act.
I don’t believe this nonsense that a child is a property of parents though. At least, not in a true meaning of property. I see parents as legitimate “supervisors”. But that doesn’t mean, that they have right to abuse children.
So child pornography, at this level, is not an issue to me. There would be private organizations that deal with. The other way is social preasure for bad parents, ostracism etc. There are many non-violent solutions.
Viewing pictures is not a crime. Though, it can be called unethical and I think society surely doesn’t/wouldn’t support child pornography and any distribution of such material would be condemned etc. I may sound idealistic, but that’s much better solutions than putting people in jails for viewing pictures of naked children. That’s ridiculous.
I personally wouldn’t like to do bussines with people, who are into child pornography, but the again, it’s called free-association. That doesn’t mean there is something wrong with such people. It’s just sexual desire and we all have desires, it’s subjective actually and I don’t call something bad just because I don’t share the same desire. I just don’t like it. Not all pedophiles are child molesters.
Well, let’s say there is an organization who tracks down and executes people for watching child pornography. In essence, a vigilante organization that issues a death sentence for viewing child pornography. I can imagine people actually contributing money to such an organization, or something close to it (naturally, humans feel very protective of their own children, so much so that they tend to project this protective instinct to the abstraction of “children, generally”.)
The question, then, is whether such an organization is committing murder or whether it is using justifiable force. I think the answer is pretty clear that it would be using unjustifiable force*, which suggests that you are right that, in a natural order society, viewing child porn would not in itself constitute a tort.
This vigilante organization targeting distributors and resellers, on the other hand, might be tolerated. If so, then distribution and resale of child pornography just might be treated as a tort.
In other words, I agree with you, but I don’t think your conclusion is self-evident.
And the consideration that really matters is that of families. In a natural order legal system, the appropriate age for sexual activity would emerge as a combination of society-wide precedents (legal conflicts between children and their parents would result in the emergence of criteria which determine whether the parent has coercive decision-making power over the child or not) and family judgment (some kids develop faster or slower than others).
I tend to agree.
Clayton -
*Meaning that no voluntary arbitrator could get the families of people killed by this organization to agree to settle the issue without damages and punitive awards against the organization, even when it is exposed that the person who was killed was consuming child pornography.
This is the problem with rationalist legal theory, IMO. You can’t derive legal rules for human behavior while ignoring the peculiarities of human nature. You can’t start with one or two axioms and logically deduce a sensible account of human rights, you have to look at our biology, our evolutionary history, our social and cultural contexts, and so on.
I think you’re right, and I think that children qua children (i.e., people who have not yet grown into their rational capacity) need adults around as guardians and mentors. No issue there at all. But the belief that children should not be permitted to exercise those rights which they are capable of exercising, and especially that they must remain children until some arbitrary age of majority, are entirely inventions of the state. Making available an evaluation of a young person’s ability to exercise his or her rights and determining thereby how much control should be permitted over them - which a private court system could easily do - would make the parent-child relationship far more consensual than it currently is. And it would make things like nonconsensual sex between children and adults (which I believe most such relationships are, by far) much more difficult for predatory adults to achieve, and harder yet to maintain.
You’re neglecting extended family in this analysis. The primary advocates of the welfare of a child over against abuse or neglect by its parents are not “the courts” or “society” but extended family.
No, that’s like saying, that if society demands something, there will be organizations, that would deal with it. (e.x. : If people need food, there would be people who sell it) It doesn’t have to be even profitable (in material sense). There can be a voluntary activists etc. Same is with other crimes. That’s what I meant.
Animal abuse is tougher issue, because at least some anarchists reject, that animals can have “rights” or that it is ok to torture animals etc. Yeah sure, I don’t have all answers for all questions. I don’t even need to. I am just one brain in world with6 billions of brains
And what’s bad about saying that there would be organizations that deals with zoophilia (I mean here those people, who rape animals etc)? If you have enough number of people who doesn’t support some abuse of animals, they surely will act and persuade abusers.
I’m not neglecting them; I’m ignoring them, because they would have no more to do with the matter in a free society than would any other concerned neigbhor, friend, relative, child welfare advocate, or professional busybody, except in the purely incidental case where their familial relationships lead them to notice problems before others do. Anyone can and should advocate for the rights of another person, child or otherwise, against an abusive relationship. I would like to think that a free society would do away with the notion that sharing a blood relation with somebody creates any form of obligation or authority that would not exist between anybody else.
@MacFall: I utterly disagree. A fundamental human right is the right for parents to exclude others from “caring” for their offspring. This right should be scaled by degree of relatedness, so that parents may exclude anyone, grandparents may exclude uncles or aunts, with genetic strangers occupying the lowest priority of all. The reason for this is that parents have the greatest (genetic) incentive to actually act in the real interests of their children, grandparents have the next greatest incentive, and so on, with strangers having the least incentive to act in the interests of the children. Parents who act against their childrens’ real interests will tend to be less successful at propagating their neglectful genes. In other words, we are the descendants of those who cared for their offspring enough to at least keep them alive to the age where they could reproduce.
Parents have rights to custodial care by default. I never disputed that. But there is no clear principle by which you can say that blood relation ought to determine the passing on of those rights. The parents can will those rights to others, but beyond that it is a matter of who can best care for the child, and that can only be fairly determined by an uninterested third party (i.e., a dispute resolution agency). And though the will of the parents by and large should be accepted, if the parents were abusive to the child, then their will in the passing on of custodial rights ought to be regarded as suspect.
A child is more likely by far to be abused by a close relative than by anyone else. Parents have custodial rights to their children only because they, in fact, “create” those children. Such rights cannot be automatically held by anyone else; others must prove capable of properly caring for the children before such rights may be transfered - because the rights in question are not the rights of the parents, but the rights of the children.
And what’s bad about saying that there would be organizations that deals with zoophilia (I mean here those people, who rape animals etc)?
I don’t know what you mean by “bad”. All I am saying is that there will be no monopoly on force. As such, it will be up to individuals to resolve disputes. If you don’t like your neighbor doing whatever it is he is doing to his animals, then it will be up to you to figure out how to stop him. You might even kill him and take your chances with market justice. The point is, it will be up to you to figure it out.
