Ep. 404 How Would a Libertarian Society Handle Children’s Rights?
Adam Haman returns to discuss perhaps the most difficult problem in libertarian legal theory: the treatment of children. The discussion then spills over onto the treatment of animals and even AI.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- The YouTube version of this conversation.
- BMS 182 which laid out the trust approach.
- Bob (and Gene Callahan)’s critique of Hans Hoppe’s argumentation ethics.
- The HamanNature substack.
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
I feel like this conversation only makes sense if you believe that a libertarian society will be one where we just reproduce the same justice system that the state has given us, but with competition. I.e. justice is dispensed by doing retributive violence to people that have been deemed to be criminals by some authority figure. When you accept that retributive violence itself is unacceptable in a libertarian society, the problem just goes away.
If somebody abuses a child and you don’t like it, you disassociate with that person. You can only use violence to stop their violence in the moment, not to punish them after the fact.