If I know that person A is going to murder person B and I don’t tell the police, should I be able? According to the libertarian theory I assume the answer is not, since an omission to act is never illegal. Now what if I know that my wife is going to kill my child and I don’t report to the police, am I liable? I am not sure about this, it seems to me that since I am the custodian of the child, I have to see that no harm is done to him/her. What do you think?
I don’t see any liability on any case, be it even for the children. In no way have you taken over any positive obligation towards a children by merely choosing to have them. Now, in practice if you did that, i.e. let your wife murder you kids, than good luck having any insure vouched for you. You’ll never be able to set foot outside again.
That depends on the interraction of persons A, B and yourself. If you guess that A might murder B then you I would say the probability of being found liable to B would be low. It would be zero if there was no proof you had such knowledge. If A said they would kill B in the near future and you did nothing to stop it then you would be liable to some degree. If B tells you he thinks A will murder them and you do nothing, now you have some sort of an implicit contract with B to get help and you could be held criminally liable for that or even be held as a conspirator.
There is no duty to snitch in private law societies. However, the (likely maternal) grandparents of the child might want to take action against a father who fails to notify someone that his wife was about to kill her child. I don’t hold pure Rothbardian abandonment theory, I think that parents have a presumptive duty to care for their child (the grandparents and other relatives are the ones doing the presuming, not “society”, however) but they can relinquish that duty by taking some appropriate steps. Just abandoning the child in the forest is not an appropriate way to divest oneself of this duty and should be actionable as murder.
Clayton -
Interestingly enough, this was posted just a week ago…
I think this and a lot of issues similar to it would be addressed by the indifferent person being viewed as a tool by the rest of the community. Ranging from people being less than willing to engage in economic and personal interactions to the individual being ostracized from the community. Morally inappropriate behavior isn´t always criminal, but that doesn’t mean people have to treat you like a great guy after you’ve shown complete indifference to your fellow man.