Some questions on Rothbard's parental obligations

[Truth_and_Liberty]

@The Texas Trigger

What is the parent cannot find anyone willing to take on the child? Does the parent then have the right to let it starve? I am not insinuating one way or the other, just curious. I would imagine probably not, but if not, then is the parent essentially stuck in the care of the child, thereby increasing his obligations to the child?

As Wheylous said, basically the answer is yes. If the parents have taken reasonable steps to notify other people that the child is available for homesteading, and they haven’t put any barriers up that would prevent anyone from homesteading it, and still nobody comes forward, then yes the parent has no obligation to feed the child. Sad, but what are you going to do if absolutely no one wants this child to survive? This situation is practically unthinkable however, given that people care a lot about children (hence the constant cry of ‘think of the children’) so charities helping out less fortunate children will no doubt always exist.

How can this number of “X” be arrived at other than arbitrarily, much the same way current ages to differentiate adults from children are?

It can’t be arrived at from the armchair. There is no ‘correct’ libertarian answer for what X is. It depends on the context, always. Competing courts will tend towards the value of X that is considered reasonable by most people… no court would want a reputation of having X too high or too low. So it all depends on societal customs.

The same kinds of questions are asked about the homesteading principle, all the time (e.g. gotlucky here). People want to know (want me to tell them) exactly what they must do to homestead an object. There is no answer other than ‘the courts will decide, based on custom’. That should not be surprising… as political philosophers we use words like ‘threat’ and ‘violence’ without pause, when we all know that the question ‘what exactly constitutes a threat?’ is beyond our remit. Applying the principles political philosophers talk about is the specialised task of a judge. We can but make vague guesses, and broad illustrations, about how a judge would apply the principles, based on more vague guesses about what people generally consider reasonable.

Some questions I have on this reasoning:

(1)How long must a parent be said to have abandoned a child before it can be homesteaded? In other words, what is the equivalent of “X” amount of time of the field’s abandonment for the abandonment of the child? A second? A minute? An hour? A day?

(2) how is this number not decided arbitrarily?

(3) how, then, can we equivocate a child with a field? A field can lay abandoned for years and then be used again. A child, being a living being, can only live abandoned for so long before he dies, unlike the field (in a certain sense).

1. As with the field, it will be determined by custom. Will it be a second? No, because a court wouldn’t want to be known as one that strips parents of their rights so frivolously. Will it be a week? No, because a court that took no action against parents that starved their children for 6 days would become known as a court that fails to prevent children suffering. With competition, courts will find the optimum in terms of what people in society consider reasonable.

2. I guess you could say it is arbitrary in the sense that there need not be a ‘reasoned’ argument for having it be one length of time as opposed a different length of time. But the courts are responding to consumer demands, so it is not arbitrary in the sense of being ‘plucked out of the air’. It is only arbitrary if you also consider as arbitrary the ratio of thick-sliced to medium-sliced bread at my local supermarket. There is no ‘reason’ for it to be the way it is, but it is not arbitrary because it is determined by the demand for thick-sliced bread relative to medium-sliced.

3. That’s true, but to me that’s an incidental difference, from a theoretical point of view. The point is that all property is subject to this abandonment principle: that owning something obliges the owner to not abandon it, if he wants to retain ownership. Most of the time abandonment is not a big deal, i.e. it doesn’t lead to conflicts. If I leave a newspaper on the train, or dump a half-eaten kebab in a litter bin, or leave an old TV outside my house with a sign on it, these are all customary acts of abandonment. I am signalling to the community that I am abandoning my property and making it available for others to homestead, if they want. Items that get abandoned tend to be of low value (otherwise they’d be sold), so you do not often get conflicts where the argument comes down to whether or not the property was legitimately abandoned. This is probably why, compared to The Homesteading Principle, The Abandonment Principle (it’s mirror image) is not so well developed in libertarian theory. But it suddenly becomes hugely important when the property in question is a child, or even more so, a fetus, because these are highly valued objects which one might nevertheless still want to abandon (because the obligations of owning them are more burdensome than the obligations of owning a non-sentient item of property, like a sweater).

Thanks in advance…By the way, I love your videos. They are really great. You are one of my favorite posters on the forums. Always really objective, non-emotional answers. Thanks for all you do here.

Thank you, that is very nice to hear.