[Rothbardian]

If I throw a ball through a window, I am liable because I have violated the property rights of the window owner. In other words, I have initiated force against them.

If I created a child but then decline to support that child, I may well be acting immorally. But since I am not violating any other person's property rights, the NAP doesn't allow other members of society to use that as an excuse to initiate force against me (though they are welcome to boycott or shun me, of course). When other members of society may do, under those circumstances, is take the child from me.

If you agree that people are responsible for their actions I don't know how you can argue that people who create children aren't responsible for their well being. It's a violation of the child's property rights by violating their very lives. Children get no say in whether or not they're brought in this world, no say in who raises them or how they're raised, and their experiences as children shape them for the rest of their lives.

I just don't see how you can acknowledge that and say people who create children aren't obligated to them. If not to care for the child themselves, then to find someone who can.

[Eran]

People are responsible for their action in a moral sense.

In a legal sense, people are responsible for those actions that violate other people's property rights.

Children have property rights in their bodies, but those property rights, like all property rights, are negative, not positive. Children have the right not to be physically harmed through an active action of another person.

They do not have a positive right to the property of others, not even their parents.

Children had no say in being brought into the world - agreed. Yet with the possible exception of SecretSquirrel, nobody seriously considers bringing children into the world per-se to be a criminal act.

Having been brought into the world, children rightly own their own body. While they function as children, they are temporarily unable to exercise that ownership. Society addresses the problem by assigning guardians (typically the biological parents) who act as temporary trustees on behalf of the children.

Being a guardian encompasses both rights and duties, and the two go hand-in-hand. The implicit contract stipulates that the guardian has broad rights to make decisions on behalf of the child, provided that those decisions are in the interests of the child. The guardian risks losing his guardianship rights if he fails to act in the interests of the child (or, more broadly, if being under the guardianship of that guardian is no longer reasonably deemed to be in the child's best interest).

This is all a long way of saying that a parent is obligated to take care of the child as long as that parent claims to be the child's guardian. However, the parent may relinquish both his rights and his responsibilities as a guardian, at which point another person may step in as a substitute guardian.

The role of the courts is to ensure that any person acting as a guardian (i.e. as a trustee for the child's self-ownership rights) does so in the interests of the child. The court does so by trying to ascertain which decision (regarding identity of guardian) the child would most likely make IF the child possessed the experience and maturity required to make that decision independently.

Luckily, allowing parents to relinquish their rights in raising their children is highly unlikely to be problematic, especially if we allow free transfer of guardianship rights from those parents who are unwilling or unable to dispense those responsibilities to responsible adults (or dedicated organisations) who are so willing.

[Rothbardian]

People are responsible for their action in a moral sense.

Let's stop there and rather than get into morality and legality, just stick to logic. This is your post, right? You're responsible for it. That's not a moral argument and no law can possibly change that. It's just a logically consistent observable truth. You are responsible for what you do, and what you create.

[Suska]

You are responsible for what you do, and what you create.

The degree to which we accept responsibility in bad times is the degree to which we can lay claim to responsibility in good times. The alternative is to be - to oneself and/or others - embarrassing or conceited, or in the extreme: unnatural and unreal.

The problems of society are also problems of psyche.

[Eran]

What does "responsible" mean, to your mind?

If my post caused a disenchanted socialist to commit suicide, am I guilty of murder?

If I open a store which drives your less efficient operation out of business, am I not similarly "responsible"? What would be the implications of that responsibility?

If parents are responsible for their children, why does that responsibility magically end when the children become adults? After all, the causal link between parental action and the child doesn't end there.

[Suska]

There is a problem with the thinking that things all fit in a category of either right or wrong. The problem is compounded in law - that effort to condition wrongness out of the world - that leads to the thinking that one's responsibility ought to have clear limits.

I'll put it another way; The limits we recognize on our legal responsibility are a function of what a legal system can practically achieve - including our limited capacity to understand what does what or where things come from, or even what agency is.

Before you can have law you need right and wrong. Before you can have right and wrong you must have an opinion of what the world ought to be and must not be. Nature has such opinions expressed as suffering and joy, culture is fundamentally a set of ideas about what brings these about, and responsibility is the measure of how much a part of that culture we are.

[Rothbardian]

What does "responsible" mean, to your mind?

If my post caused a disenchanted socialist to commit suicide, am I guilty of murder?

If I open a store which drives your less efficient operation out of business, am I not similarly "responsible"? What would be the implications of that responsibility?

If parents are responsible for their children, why does that responsibility magically end when the children become adults? After all, the causal link between parental action and the child doesn't end there.

Responsible: You own the effects of your actions.

No, you're not responsible. You're not putting me out of business, consumers are putting me out of business by no longer interacting with me.

The reason parents are responsible for their children is because until they become adults, their cognitive functions are not developed. You cannot create a helpless child and then absolve yourself of it's well being.

Do you disagree that people own the effects of their actions? Can I put a gun in my hand, point it at someone and pull the trigger, and have someone else take ownership of the bullet hole that results? Or simply argue that no one is at fault?

[Eran]

People "own the effects of their action" in a broad moral sense.

However, only those actions which violate other people's property rights (i.e. which can be conceived of as initiation of force against other people or their justly-acquired property) can be countered by force (e.g. punished by law, as opposed to social sanction).



The key question for determine whether the response to a parent who refuses to support his child is legal or voluntary is whether the child's property rights have been violated. As they haven't (the child doesn't magically acquire property rights in the body, labour or other property of the parents), the formal justice system (or, equivalently, the use of force) isn't an appropriate tool.

Rather, society can (1) mitigate the effects of the parental neglect by removing the child from the custody of his parents, and substituting responsible adults who are both willing and able to care for the child), and (2) applying social pressure, sanction, boycott, ostracism or other voluntary forms of expressing moral disapproval.

You're not putting me out of business, consumers are putting me out of business by no longer interacting with me.

Consider a situation in which consumer demand caused me to open the business in the first place. The consumers, by expressing their enthusiasm for my products, have, in their action, caused by shop to be opened.

Can I now sue them for neglecting to shop at my store, after a competitor opened a better business next door? Don't the consumers need to "own their actions"?


I realise the analogy isn't perfect - I wasn't literally forced to open the store - I acted on my (reasonable) forecast of what the consequences of opening the store are likely to be given the information (both explicit and implicit) I obtained from potential customers.

But the key similarity is that neither I, vis-a-vi my consumers, nor the child, vis-a-vi the parents, acquired property rights merely because of a history of and reasonable expectation of continued interaction.

[Rothbardian]

People "own the effects of their action" in a broad moral sense.

However, only those actions which violate other people's property rights (i.e. which can be conceived of as initiation of force against other people or their justly-acquired property) can be countered by force (e.g. punished by law, as opposed to social sanction).



The key question for determine whether the response to a parent who refuses to support his child is legal or voluntary is whether the child's property rights have been violated. As they haven't (the child doesn't magically acquire property rights in the body, labour or other property of the parents), the formal justice system (or, equivalently, the use of force) isn't an appropriate tool.

Rather, society can (1) mitigate the effects of the parental neglect by removing the child from the custody of his parents, and substituting responsible adults who are both willing and able to care for the child), and (2) applying social pressure, sanction, boycott, ostracism or other voluntary forms of expressing moral disapproval.

You can't apply the same concepts to children because they are biologically different, and undeveloped. If you bring a child into the world you are responsible for their care, either by yourself or by contracting someone else to do it for you. If you want to stay within the realm of rights then children at the very least have the right to self ownership, and since they can't care for that themselves it is the responsibility of the parent to maintain it.

Consider a situation in which consumer demand caused me to open the business in the first place. The consumers, by expressing their enthusiasm for my products, have, in their action, caused by shop to be opened.

Can I now sue them for neglecting to shop at my store, after a competitor opened a better business next door? Don't the consumers need to "own their actions"?


I realise the analogy isn't perfect - I wasn't literally forced to open the store - I acted on my (reasonable) forecast of what the consequences of opening the store are likely to be given the information (both explicit and implicit) I obtained from potential customers.

But the key similarity is that neither I, vis-a-vi my consumers, nor the child, vis-a-vi the parents, acquired property rights merely because of a history of and reasonable expectation of continued interaction.

Did your customers agree to do continue to do business with you for a set amount of time? If not then I don't see what could be sued for or what claim to damages you could make.

[Eran]

If you bring a child into the world you are responsible for their care, either by yourself or by contracting someone else to do it for you.

I realize that's what you believe, but beyond repeating yourself, you have not suggested any argument, in particular not one within the Rothbardian analysis framework, to support that assertion.

If you want to stay within the realm of rights then children at the very least have the right to self ownership, and since they can't care for that themselves it is the responsibility of the parent to maintain it.

Now that you put it that way, how is my son different from a handicapped middle-aged woman living in India? Neither one, for the purpose of this argument, can care of themselves, and both have a right of self ownership. Does that mean that the Indian woman have a right over my property?

Np, it doesn't. Self ownership means you can prohibit others from messing with your body. It doesn't mean you can force others to keep you alive.

Did your customers agree to do continue to do business with you for a set amount of time? If not then I don't see what could be sued for or what claim to damages you could make.

Precisely. And the same logic applies to my relationship with my child. I have not agreed to continue and support the child (or, at least, I haven't automatically made such an agreement merely by virtue of bringing the child into the world; such agreement may well be part of my marriage contract, but that's a different matter altogether).