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.
Dave, I don’t know how familiar you are with some of my stuff on law enforcement / pacifism, but I definitely don’t view a libertarian legal system as doling out “retributive violence.” What Adam and I were talking about was a situation where a child is imprisoned by criminally abusive parents. If an adult were literally kidnapped and held in chains in some crazy guy’s basement, do you think the libertarian legal code would merely engage in shunning? I don’t think that’s what you’re saying. I’m not even sure what Adam and I said to make you write your comment.
I think that in cases of active imprisonment, people who felt spurned into doing something about it would just do something about it, rather than seek the opinion of a judge about the matter. And then the rest of us would simply decide which party they agreed with and treat the opposing parties accordingly.
Let’s say that Alice believes that Bob has kidnapped Charlie, and she asks a judge to issue a warrant saying she can go extract Charlie. The judge says no, but Alice goes and does it anyway. What does the judge’s opinion mean, exactly? If we don’t believe in retribution, we cannot punish Alice for her behavior. Bob can go and try to get Charlie back, but he also could have done this even if the judge granted the warrant. Ultimately I’m just not sure what the judge brings to the equation other than some kind of outsourcing of how onlookers should feel about all of this.
“Ultimately I’m just not sure what the judge brings to the equation other than some kind of outsourcing of how onlookers should feel about all of this.”
Sure but that’s like saying you don’t know what car mechanics would do in a free society except keep engines running.
Maybe you think outsourcing how I should feel about accusations of child abuse to somebody else is important. I don’t.
The market will decide.
I’ll say one more thing on this in case there are onlookers: Obviously “how you should feel” about accusations of child abuse against somebody else in the world, is ultimately up to you. But the point is, you are not equipped to go personally investigate every such allegation. Even in your framework, if there are lots of people “on the ground” who occasionally take somebody’s biological kid away from them, claiming “Trust us, those parents were abusing the kid, it was intolerable and we had to act,” how is “the market” supposed to evaluate their claims? That’s the role of judges in a free society. The judges don’t have any power beyond what the community gives them voluntarily.
From a parental rights absolutist’s perspective, the desire to “help” kids other than your own is a fundamentally un-Libertarian idea, and has no place in a Free Society.
Want more happy kids in this world? Have more children of your own, and raise them to your happy values.
Similar to a free-speech absolutist, if you allow ego-driven busybodies to start carving out special exceptions, it leads to mission creep, unaccountable bureaucracy (CPS), and ideological control (see children taken away in Communist countries).
Furthermore, an enforcement agency (public or private) is effectively a collective-punishment on parents as a whole, including peaceful parents who raise their kids nicely, but now has a bureaucracy looming over their head, ready to take away their kids on the drop of a hat.
OK but couldn’t we use your same logic to show that gun owners can’t have an enforcement agency hanging over their heads, getting ready to punish them the moment they commit homicide?
Yes.
An enforcement agency is effectively a collective-punishment on gun-owners, punishing peaceful gun-owners (with an agency looming over their heads) for the violent act committed by other violent gun-owners. Such an agency, public or private, can very quickly turn into mechanisms for gun confiscations (Red Flag Laws) or ideological control (look at how watered down the 2nd amendment has become).
In addition, combined with busybodies wanting to “protect” others’ kids on flimsy pretexts, such an enforcement agency can easily turn into a nightmare.
That said, IMO, permitting an enforcement agency for self-defense reason is at least closer to Libertarianism compared to kidnapping others’ kids for ego-driven reason. You are getting an enforcement agency to protect your own family rather than meddling in other’s family.
So you can accuse me of not being a “gun-rights absolutist” if you want to 🙂