I explicitly addressed this and I don’t see the justification in doing so.
Actually, I’ve argued elsewhere that the state is illegimate for more reasons than just that it is not voluntary.
The rest of the above-quoted argument assumes that children ought to have the same legal status as adults. It hasn’t been established that they should.
When do you consider children who acquire this ability? Two year olds can challenge their parents’ authority. You’ve heard of the terrible two’s, I take it? Many children go through a ‘no’ stage. Does this constitute challenging their authority? If not, how is it that our views differ? And what do you mean by ‘coercively imposing decisions upon the child’ exactly? Adding non-voluntarily in parentheses doesn’t really help to clarify the matter because we’re not talking about competent adults here. Could you give a few examples of what you would consider coercive and what you wouldn’t? It’s not clear to me we wouldn’t object to the same things.
Whoa…okay. I should have finished reading before writing my previous comments. I can’t get on board with this and I don’t see how it is unlibertarian to object to it. How can a two year old possibly be developed enough to make a legally competent decision to enter into prostitution? Not to mention how can any two year old be physically developed enough?
But if their two year old throws a temper tantrum and runs off down the street, the parents don’t have a right to go get him and return him to their house? This would constitute aggression in your view?
But if children don’t have the same legal status as adults, if they are self-owners, i.e., have rights, but don’t legally have full exercise of their rights, because the parents have a temporary and limited right to exercise their rights on their behalf for the purpose of educating them to be competent adults, then it wouldn’t necessarily be aggression.
Paternalism, btw, is by definition treating adults as if they were children.
What? You’re seriously equating parenthood with state-run schools? Give me a break. The state public education system violates the rights of the parents (and the children by proxy) by not allowing free competition in education, by taxing them to pay for publice edcuation, etc.
The way parents ‘educate’ their children is not that different from the way public schools do. I would suggest the majority of parents are rather happy with public schooling. I would also suggest that the family is a conservative institution, not a libertarian one.
There is something to be said about what Stefan Molyneux calls “the cult of the family” and the general idea that familial tyranny or abuse plants the seeds for more large-scale manifestations of authoritarianism such as the state or that people’s ideological support for the state stems from their emotional attachment to their parents and unchosen positive obligations to their parents or family members, driven by feelings of fear and guilt. There most certainly can be some very authoritarian aspects to families. And I agree with the proposition that it is irrational to think that one has unchosen positive obligations to other people merely because they are related to you. But I would not go so far as to consider all families inherently abusive or overtly tyrannical. They vary. The criticism of the family goes too far when it becomes a sort of Fruedian obcession that attributes literally all human problems to the familial or the sexual, one’s childhood experiences and emotional attachment to their parents. That’s rather fatalistic.
Yes. The idea that children should have the same legal status as adults is not a standard one in libertarianism, left or right, to my knowledge. Nor is the family a conservative and unlibertarian institution. It can be, but it need not be. I’m certainly not advocating abusing children and it would be irresponsible to interpret me as doing so without unequivocal evidence.
Government is not the state. I dont see how it could possibly be illigitimate to allow someone else to decide things for you, and only you. Perhapse you explain why in that essay, I don’t have time to read it tonight though.
I reject the theory of children, then. There is no reason age should be a peramiter for the establishment of class.
If my future child has enough volition to abandon my authority and persue their own ambitions, reguardless of age, It would be unjust of me to stop them. I think a two year old would get a better lesson by spending a night on the street than having me spank them anyways.
I would say that “coercively” would be to impose a force (such as spanking) as a consequence but not allow the child the decision to avoid that retaliatory measure by leaving your home.
I dont see how one’s bodily (be it physical or mental) developement entails rights or justifies the ability to practice ones rights.
Yes. If it were me I would simply attempt to protect them as best I could. When I was little there were several occasions that I was determined to run away. I lasted about a block. I think most of the time children dont mean much by their determination for independance.
If the child was forced into the situation, then, yes. I could say I’m teaching my child to be tough by beating them each night, If I restrict their ability to leave, I am practicing an illigitimate parentage.
Where would you draw a distinction between the two?
Should, then, a child have the ability to shop for parents? Suppose I run an organization that offers room and board to children who will come work for me, and the environment my business provides is less restrictive than a particular childs home. Through libertarian ethics it follows that you do not impose the monopoly of a family upon the child, and allow the child to persue a better condition than the parent has provided. Else, their rights are violated just as a parents options in schooling are in the advent of a state run system.
This topic is so difficult… I remain undecided on a lot of issues regarding childrens’ natural rights. I agree with things like children being able to run away and choose alternative guardians but I’m not so sure about the 2 year old prostitute scenario. A question for Juan and Banned: do you agree with Benjamin Tucker that until a child is able to assert his rights he is the property of his mother; and thus a mother who throws her child into a fire is not an aggressor, but is merely exercising just control over her property?
Sorry about my lack of academic manners, but, what drugs was Tucker taking when he said that ?
As to two-years-old acting as adults, I do think it’s a bit extreme, but I imagine that less extreme cases are quite possible and can’t be easily disregarded.
Yeah it’s a pretty crazy statement-- but logically consistent. So maybe what it suggests is that children can’t be put into the category of property or self owner (though one could still say they are self owners as soon as they can assert their self ownership).
I’d go so far as to say that an individual owns themselves at conception, although that’s my personal faith and morality speaking in defining the being created at conception as an individual. As far as a new born is conserned, until it is capable of will against the actions its parent takes in preserving its life, it has no say in how it is provided for, and as long as its physicality isn’t damaged, there’s nothing wrong with that.
I’m inclined to agree with Geoffrey and Danny on this. A child has barely developed its rational faculty - how on Earth is it supposed to make important decisions such as these before it reaches adulthood? And if one attempts the reductio ad absurdum, that some adults are like children (mentally debilitated ones, perhaps), then I’d say the logic applies to them too if in fact their rational faculty is sufficiently impaired such that it is analogous to that of a child.
With regards to adults, I’d agree provided by “rational faulty being sufficiently impaired” you mean a biological/genetic defect like severe mental retardation rather than just being uneducated or making poor decisions.
It’s not and I believe I explicitly stated that children are self-owners, i.e., possess individual rights (although I tend to favor around 6 months in the womb as the point in which they acquire this status because that is around the time at which, if I am not mistaken, the biological basis for their rational capacity fully develops: the cerebral cortex). So pointing out that children have rights doesn’t address the point that it is not a standard view in libertarianism that children should have the same legal status as adults. The parent-adult relationship is quite clearly different than that of adult-adult relationships. For many years the rational capacity of children is diminished (in relation to its potential); it takes time to develop. And I’m here distinguishing the capacity from how well one uses what capacity one has. It is the former that is relevant here. If you base rights on the latter, then you would indeed be opening a door to state paternalism, but I’m not suggesting that we should.