Can parents commit an act of aggression against their children, or do they have full ownership rights over their child?
Is it an act of aggression against one’s child to stop feeding them, condemning them to death by starvation? Probably not, but if so, from what age to what age?
If parents have full ownership rights over a child, does this ever end, and if so, at what age does a person gain the ability to become a full member of society and sign the NAP?
Is it possible to intentionally kill one’s own child without violating the NAP?
Is selling one’s own child into sexual slavery aggression?
From what age are children allowed to work and consume alcohol/substances?
Andrey Fridges
The author of the question prefaced it with a quote from Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty about how a free market for children should be developed in a free society (I omitted this fragment), and it seems appropriate to me to supplement this deontologist with the utilitarian Friedman, who in his The Machinery of Freedom dedicated one entire chapter to the rights of children.
Now, I will express my own opinion on the specific questions asked. To start, of course, I suggest re-reading the chapter of my ancap manual that I have to refer to most often—the one on conflicts, morality, and law.
A child, being a human, possesses self-ownership from a libertarian point of view, and therefore the NAP is fully applicable to them—no one has the right to initiate violence with impunity. If a parent acts against the interests of their child, there is clearly a conflict between them. Libertarian morality dictates intervention in a conflict on the side of justice. Therefore, any third-party libertarian, driven by their own morality, will attempt to delve into the observed conflict between parent and child to determine which position is more just.
Justice, I remind you, is the feeling of proportionality between the damage caused and the value of the subject of the conflict. Therefore, a third-party adult, putting themselves in the place of the damage being caused to the child and comparing it with how valuable they perceive the subject of the conflict between the child and parent to be, may quite possibly conclude that the child should be protected.
Not feeding a child is not violence. But violence is preventing them from obtaining food, or preventing others from feeding the child.
Selling the rights to preferential guardianship over a child (that is, parental rights themselves) is not violence. If the buyer turns the child into a sexual slave, that would be violence.
Allowing a child to be hired for work or consume harmful substances is not violence. But violence is forcing them to work under a stick or imposing harmful substances upon them.
In all these cases, the guardian finds themselves in a situation where they can cause indirect harm to the child without direct violence. To what extent compensation for indirect harm can be recovered is impossible to predict under ancap conditions (decentralization of law plus the market); a unique solution may be found for every conflict, or a standard one may be consistently adopted if it generally satisfies everyone.
In short: here are the principles, and from there, decide for yourselves; books of ready-made recipes have some value, but they should not be perceived as dogma.
