Children and Libertarian Property Theory

Art Carden's essay at Mises.com on child labor reminded me of the discussion a couple friends and I had the other day. One of them proposed that children be the sole property of their parents until the age of ten, from which time each child be considered a completely sovereign adult.

Sounds like a good idea, sorta. So long as the kid is completely dependent on the parents, it makes sense that housing, healthcare, and educational decisions be made by the parents on the kid's behalf. It would be better that these decisions be made by someone who likely has an instinct to look out for the child, than that these decisions be made by an agency that is bound to treat the child like another number. But I don't think "property" is the right word to describe the rights that parents have over their children.

Property implies the right to deface or destroy. If children are their parents' property, then the parent has the right not just to curse and beat the child, but also to brand his forehead with a swastika and to harvest organs from him.

My friend did add that the child should be considered not just the parents' property, but the parents' body, and the rights over the child are limited in the same way an adult's rights over his own body are limited. Since we don't have a right to sell ourselves into slavery, we shouldn't have the right to make such drastic and permanent changes to our kids' bodies.

Though I accept that we shouldn't be allowed to sell ourselves into slavery, it isn't clear to me why this implies a prohibition against harvesting your own organs. And I definitely don't think your duties to your own body forbid you from modifying it. Your right to own yourself doesn't translate into a prohibition against getting a piercing or a tattoo. So if your kid is legally part of your own body, it seems you still have the right to brand your kids' face.

There's the other issue of emancipation. If a child is his parent's property, then the parent has the right to hide and lock away the child. So even if your kid wants to leave your house, you have every right to confine him and subject him to whatever treatment he was trying to flee. And since he is your property, you have the right to exclude others' use of him. No one would have the right to take your kid from you, even if you are obviously abusing him.

This holds even if your kid is legally part of your body, and not just your property. Other people's right to rescue your child cannot be translated from your duty to take care of your own body. If your duties to yourself excuse violent intervention into your life from others on your behalf, then other people have the right to kidnap you and force feed you if you go on a hunger strike. I doubt this is the implication we want. Your rights and responsibilities over your own body do not mean other people's right to force you to take care of yourself. If your kid is part of your body, then other people still don't have the right to protect your kid (who is your body) from your "self"-destructive actions.

Parental rights have to be different from property rights. Our traditional notion of parental rights are in the right direction: You have the right to do what you want for your kid, so long as your actions meet certain standards that outline the child's best interest. Property rights don't embody this. Property rights allow you to treat an object according to your interest, not the "object's" interest. How we discern these standards is a real big can of worms that I'll pry open in a future post.

Sex and Right, Part 1

I was a sophomore in college when I first heard the opinion that anal sex between a married man and woman is an abomination. Mind you, I was raised a fundamental Baptist. And I was a fundamentalist among fundamentalists. I was well versed in all the rules against sexual deviancy -- no porn, no pre-marital sex, no adultery, no raping, no entertainment of lascivious thoughts, no guys and girls sitting alone in a car, no looking at a woman below the neck, etc. Three things that were never preached against, though, were (1) masturbation, (2) contraception, and (3) anal sex between a married man and woman.

There seems to have been a three-shelf hierarchy of rules and prohibitions:

A. At the top were those things that should be preached against, condemned, and prohibited or regulated by law, like homicide, abortion, drug and alcohol abuse, psychoactive drugs in general, homosexuality, lewd behavior, etc.;

B. Next were those things that should be preached against and condemned, but not banned by law, like unBiblical religions (including those based on versions of the Bible that aren't faithful translations of the Textus Receptus), sending your kids to a public school, or lying naked around the house; and at the bottom,

C. Those things that should be left entirely up to the parents, like how many times a kid should be spanked for using foul language, whether the kids should be homeschooled or sent to a Christian school, whether it's appropriate to see musicals, whether there should be a TV in the home, whether the girls should be allowed to wear pajama pants around the house or whether they should wear ankle-length night gowns, and whether the parents may dance alone together behind closed doors.

In other words, as a fundamentalist, I had the liberal notion that some parts of my life are other people's business and other parts are "between me and God". I wasn't the only one who had this idea. After one particular man's wife had their eighth or ninth live birth (live birth, that is!) the pastor of the church congratulated them from the pulpit and plainly said that how many kids that couple wants is entirely their own business. (It is rumored that the man wanted twelve children, and from what I hear his wife has reached his goal.)

Of course, different people have different ideas of what things should go into which shelf. And they have different ways to go about placing things into the different shelves. This is why I'm writing this series -- to examine how people place different things into different shelves.

One way some people do it is teleology. They look at what an act tends to bring, and infer that it is meant to bring that, that it's designed for that function, and that performing that act in a way that goes against that purpose is an abuse of the act. What does sex bring about? Babies! And so, an essential purpose of sex is to make babies, and "any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin." According to the Catholic Church, married people are perfectly entitled to enjoy sex, so long as they're making babies while they're at it.

Since anal sex goes against the procreational purpose of sex (a woman can't get pregnant from it), it is a sexual perversion, and -- according to the Catholic Church -- belongs either in shelf A or B. Other sexual acts which go against the procreational purpose are masturbation and sex with contraception. Yes, according to the Catholic Church, using a condom, pill, or shot is sexually immoral, even if you're married.

The only passage of the Bible that comes anywhere close to mentioning the procreational purpose rule is the story of Onan. But God struck Onan dead, not because he released somewhere other than a woman's vagina, but because he rejected his God-given duty to beget children with his dead brother's widow.

The lesson to take home for now is this: if we want to use theological and scriptural reasons to place something in shelf A or B and not C, then we have to at least understand that there are different kinds of theological and scriptural reasons, and that more than one of them are wrong.

Correction

In my post Animals and Libertarian Property Theory, I wrote that one conventionally libertarian way to limit someone's ownership over their animal (assuming animals can be owned as property) is to include a prohibition against abuse into a lease for a house, condo, or whatnot. If there is such a condition, and the tenant abuses his animal, the landlord can evict the abusing tenant. But if there is no such condition, I wrote, then in a conventional libertarian framework, the tenant can do whatever he wants to his animal, without fear of eviction.

This actually isn't true. A very popular theory among libertarians is the title transfer theory of contract. This theory, shared by Rothbard, Kinsella, Long, brainpolice2, and me, states that the obligations in a contract exist only as conditions for receiving something. They do not hold by virtue of a mere promise. If A wants x from B, he has to do y. And if B wants y from A, he has to do x. If A doesn't want to do y, fine. But he then isn't entitled to anything from B. B can then refuse to do x for A, but he can't force A to do y.

If I am a landlord and you are my tenant, you are entitled to part of my property only by my permission. You can get that permission by paying me rent, and keeping certain obligations that are laid out in a contract that both of us agree to. But that isn't the only way you keep my permission.

If our contract happens to not forbid loud parties, and you have a few loud parties, I have no obligation to put up with your noise. I can kick you off my property even if you didn't agree to not have loud parties. If it's my property, I can decide who uses it, for what purpose, and on what grounds. Saying otherwise is to say that my permission isn't necessary for other people to be entitled to my services.

If our contract happens to not forbid animal abuse, and I find you abusing your animal on my property, I have no obligation to be polite. I can kick you off my property even if you didn't agree to not abuse animals on it. If it's my property, I can decide who uses it and who doesn't, etc.

If I convert to some leftist religion which dictates that families of the same race should not live adjacent to each other, I have every right to demand that the tenants switch up their places, and to kick out those who refuse to. If it's my property...

By acting that whimsically, though, I might be forfeiting my coverage with my defence agency and my dispute resolution organization. I am only entitled to their services on the condition that I follow the rules they lay down. If following a certain eviction procedure is a condition of my coverage, and I bypass that procedure, then my insurance providers have every right to drop my coverage. But they don't have the right to force me to accomodate the people I don't want on my property.

So no, a landlord theoretically doesn't need a provision against animal abuse written into the lease in order to have the right to evict animal abusers.

Land of the *Economically* Free

The economically freest country, according to the Index of Economic Freedom and the Economic Freedom of the World reports, is Hong Kong. The second freest country in economic terms is Singapore. Jim Rogers has stated on several occasions that he moved to Singapore to take advantage of the greater freedom that can be enjoyed there.

We all know that economic freedom isn't the only kind of freedom there is. The GOP's always been lambasted for advocating economic freedom (though it really doesn't) while ignoring all sorts of personal freedoms. Now, if the GOP actually did stand for economic freedom, by advocating the abolition of legal tender and of all involuntary taxation and calling for increasing the number of HB1 visas to meet demand, and yet continued to defend the War on [Some] Drugs, the War [of] Terror, the exclusion of homosexuals, and the death penalty, then it would still be opposing freedom. The most crucial freedoms are those with your own body. If taxes are abolished (or greatly reduced), then fine - no one's legally robbing you (or they're legally stealing less). But they could still be legally kidnapping you for doing things that don't harm anyone else, and they could still legally beat, maim, and even murder you. Those are the things that happen in the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and the death penalty.

Now, Singapore is the second-freest country when it comes to freedom of the purse. But is it a free country? If you can be hanged in Singapore for drug trafficking, then it doesn't matter how free you are with your purse. You could be free with your money and your land, but you aren't even free with your own body. Note this: in Singapore, if you're caught with more than a certain amount of the offending substance, you are presumed guilty of trafficking until proven innocent. If a bag of more than 500 g of cannabis or 15 g of heroin is found on your property, the burden of proof is on you, and what a burden it is. If you can't prove that someone else hid it there without your permission, then you hang.

Chain Gangs, Animal Shelters, and Sheriff Arpaio

I recently received an email report by Constantine Tsimpris on Sheriff Arpaio and felt moved to write a little about it. It defends some of the controversial things the Arizona sheriff does, such as housing inmates in tents in the desert where the temperature exceeds 110F, and starting chain gangs for the inmates.

First, I'd like to address keeping prisoners in harsh conditions. If a man commits a crime against person or property without killing anyone, then his punishment may justly include imprisonment, but not death. If any of the prisoners at Maricopa County, AZ die from heat stroke, then they suffer unjust punishment, and Sheriff Arpaio and those under him who assist in keeping prisoners in extreme heat are guilty of murder, or at least manslaughter.

Next, I'd like to address chain gangs. There is nothing wrong with involuntary servitude when it is to pay restitution for criminal wrongdoing. The whole purpose of criminal justice is to give back what is wrongly taken. If someone steals from you, you have the right to steal back what they stole (and you don't necessarily need permission from any official to take back what's yours). Taking without consent is itself an act of enslavement, since those who do it profit off of the labor of others without those others' consent. So making someone give back what they stole is itself an act of enslavement (but a just one). Theoretically, there's nothing wrong with forcing offenders to work. If the damage they did amounts to $4,000, then you have the right to (a) take $4,000 worth of goods from them, (b) garnish $4,000 from their wages if they're not that rich yet, or - if they don't look stable enough to ever accumulate $4,000 worth of anything - (c) compel them to work a given job until they produce a net worth of $4,000.

Sheriff Arpaio's programs in Maricopa County are a little step towards option (c). His county's inmates run the local animal shelter. "They feed and care for the strays. Every animal in his care is taken out and walked twice daily. He now has prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who'd like to adopt an animal. He has literally taken stray dogs off the street". The prisoners are paid $0.28 an hour, from the fees collected for animal adoptions. In other words, they produce a net amount of wealth. In a free penal market the inmates' wages might be higher, and they might more realistically be able pay for their offenses. But this does look like a step forward. Though Arpaio's other things are notably repulsive, this one thing merits some praise. It's good to hear that prisoners are put to something more useful to themselves and others than sitting in a cell all day.

Of course, it would be much better to hear about the decriminalization of all drugs and all other victimless "crimes".

Animals and Libertarian Property Theory

Reading this post linked at LRC reminded me of the dire need to address this shortcoming of contemporary libertarianism. Libertarians, and especially "right-libertarians", typically defend the subjugation of animals. Animals are our property, they say, and since we have the right to do whatever we want with our property, we have the right to do whatever we want to our animals. If we follow the implications of this "animals are property" view, we would find some things that should abhore us (assuming we have half a conscience).

I should say, right off the bat, that I don't advocate any mandatory licensing program for animals. We shouldn't be required to get a license to keep animals just as we shouldn't be required to get a license to raise children. I don't even believe in government drivers' licenses. (Now, road owners have the right to demand that the driver prove his or her competence before allowing him or her to drive on their roads, and that may lead to some system that's functionally the same as licensing. But it would differ from conventional licensing in that individual road owners would have the freedom to experiment with different standards of proof, and would have the freedom to not demand proof in the first place.) Animal licensing implies that all animals are owned ultimately by government. Libertarians are right to oppose this. My problem with "animals are property"-ists isn't that they oppose government ownership of all animals; my problem with them is that they insist that animals can be property.

When an object is your property, it is yours to withhold, to give for free, to give on whatever condition you demand (so long as the condition doesn't violate individual sovereignty), and to destroy. If animals are property, then the owner of an animal has the right to do whatever he wants with it, including killing it for meat, rubbing shampoo into its eyes, sacrificing it to St. Michael, infecting it with a lethal virus, and other things that are commonly done. But these common abuses aren't all that are excused by "animals are property". If an animal is your property, it is yours to beat with a 2x4, yours to rape with a kitchen knife, yours to blind with a screw driver, yours to strangle with a bungee cord, etc. It's yours to inflict all sorts of elaborate violence onto, because it's just an object, and deserves no more consideration than a pencil sharpener.

Granted, there would be some limits to this property ownership. If the person you bought the animal from sold it to you on the condition that you not abuse it, then your animal is yours, but not yours to abuse. If the person who sold it to you finds out that you're beating your animal, then they have the right to make you buy them another animal like it, or to steal the animal back from you. But if there was no such condition, then you could treat your animal however cruelly you want to. Another limit could be in the condition on a lease. A landlord could demand that all tenants who keep animals on the property treat their animals well. If a landlady who has that condition in her lease finds that a tenant is abusing his animal, she can rightfully demand that he either give up the animal or move out. But if there is no such condition, the tenant can do whatever he likes to his animal without fear of eviction.

Neither of these limits are strong or broad enough to condemn gratuitous animal abuse in an "animals are property" framework. In this framework, so long as a man doesn't use his animal to hurt other humans or damage their property without their consent, he could do to it whatever he wants. But it doesn't stop there. If a man owns his animal as property, he can rightfully use force against people who forcefully try to stop him from abusing his animal. If you stand in front of and try to restrain a man who's beating his dog, then he has the right to beat you too, since you're forcefully violating his rights to person and property. That's what's implied by the whole idea of rights. If it's a man's right, then it's his right not just to do, but also to defend.

Consider this scenario: a married man is the sole owner of his dog, and there are no limits to his ownership of it like those mentioned above. His wife finds him beating his dog with a baseball bat, and she intervenes with an identical bat. The fight escalates, and ends when the wife dies of her wounds. Within the "animals are property" framework, the man is not guilty of murder or any domestic violence. He was just defending himself against a forceful invasion of his property rights.

If you think there's something wrong with this picture (and I hope you do), then you should start re-examining the whole idea of animal ownership. If you're disturbed by a man killing someone who violently tries to stop him from beating his dog, then either you doubt proportional and discriminate defense, or you doubt that animals can be property to be disposed of however the owner desires. If you sense that a man can rightfully defend a dog, then you view animals as beings more precious than objects, and you reject the idea that animals can be owned as property.

The logical consequences of "animals as property"-ism are frankly absurd. If an animal is property, then no one has the right to intervene for the animal's own sake. There is another absurd consequence -- a rend between individual sovereignty and individual will. If animals are property and nothing more, then having an individual will isn't good enough to be sovereign over oneself. What's one to do? Prove that one's will for oneself is worth respecting? Should the animals, the disabled, and the fetuses walk to Rothbard's desk and sign a contract just to win that dear right to not be meddled with? What's individual sovereignty, if it has to be earned? And if not by Rothbard, then by whom shall the conditions for the right to live be set? The standards to define the life worth living are to be set by oneself, and only by oneself. This is a central tenet of libertarianism. I cringe every time I read a self-proclaimed libertarian demand that the animals prove they have rights. I'm sorry the animals can't rise to your standard of rights-worthiness. I just hope that my friends enslaved to their baser instincts can.

Consent of the Governed

When my brother called me this morning and said "Happy Secession Day, I'm expecting a blog post from you," I had no choice but to accept my writing assignment with joy. And it wasn't as if I could pretend that I didn't know what he wanted me to write about. Today is that day when we all celebrate a secession without calling it a secession. Believe it or not, the signing of the Declaration of Independence was an act by which some people seceded from a Union.

Yes, it was a secession in every respect. A bunch of radical liberals decided that the taxes imposed on them were so burdensome and that the government over them was so despotic, that neither the taxes nor the government that inflicted them were binding. "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," they reasoned, and since the Crown's intrusions lacked their consent, the Crown and its intrusions had no right over them. But had our forbears more principle, and had they drunk a few more pints of that American spirit, they would have demanded a little more (or, shall we say, a lot less) than "Free and Independent States".

Now is that all-American holiday when we celebrate the "birth of a nation," and in the spirit of this season we're supposed to observe everything American, including the beers and burgers which we selected from among a variety of beers and burgers for best fulfilling our needs and desires, and which we bought from a store that we selected from among a variety of stores for best fulfilling our needs and desires. We all know that to be free is to be free to choose. And deep down inside we all know that this includes the freedom to shop at Whole Foods if you don't like Safeway, and to shop at Kohl's if you can't afford or simply don't like the selections at Gap, and also to not shop at all when you simply don't want to shop.

Freedom, as it's best understood, is being allowed to choose one and not another, or none at all. This kind of freedom is the highest expression of Western values, and the extent to which we honor it is the degree of America's beauty. This freedom to choose something else protects us from the stagnant and mundane.

In my freshman year of college I became concerned about the treatment of animals, and about the environmental effects of factory farming, and I started to reduce the amount of meat that I eat. Today I am a vegan -- I don't eat any food derived from an animal, not even milk, cheese, or eggs. Thanks to the freedom to choose one and not another, I am able to choose meat substitutes instead of meat. Thanks to freedom of conscience, I can mold my life according to my own chosen values, so long as I allow others the same freedom. Thanks to supply and demand, suppliers have recognized the convictions I choose to live by, and now produce and distribute goods that accord with the values I embrace. Aren't freedom of conscience and capitalism such lovely things?

But I'm not free to live entirely by my own values. Money is taken by force from people who share my convictions, and given to factory farmers, animal experimenters, abortionists, and war profiteers. If I were truly free, I would be free to not fund any of those things. Not only that -- if I were truly free, I would be free to choose which government, if any, to pay taxes to and obey. If we believe in a free market in clothing and food -- if we believe we should be free to shop in one store and not another, without having to move -- then why don't we also believe in a free market in government? If I were free in the truest sense of the word, as I should be, then I would be free to buy protection from one goverment and not another, without being forced out of my home. If consent of the governed is such a big deal, then why do the California and U.S. governments lay claim to my body and my pocketbook without my consent?