In recent days, I have experienced a considerable slump in energy, so I’ve accumulated a backlog of texts. The weather outside has noticeably improved now, and I hope to shorten this queue a bit. But first, I am publishing the final version of the translation of Chapter 27 of Stephan Molinari’s “Practical Anarchy,” simply because this work required less creative effort. The chapter is devoted to describing the system of incentives that a market stateless society is capable of creating to encourage good child-rearing and, accordingly, punishment for bad parenting.
The main flaw of the text, of course, is the complete omission of the fact that children and their parents share a common budget. The greater the financial sanctions against the parents, the less money can technically reach the child. At some point, the ubiquitous representative of the PRS must appear on the doorstep of a problematic parent and announce that since the parent cannot pay the increased insurance, they can, of course, waive the policy entirely, but then neither they nor their child will be allowed to set foot in any decent place (I won’t recount it; the logic is roughly the same as in Chapter 25 regarding stateless prisons). But the parent can also sign a waiver of parental rights, and lo and behold, we have a list of people wishing to acquire such rights here; would you like to review their offers? If you do not sell your rights today, their value will be lower tomorrow, because in all the ratings, your child will be considered more and more problematic. Think about it. After which, the PRS representative vanishes in a cloud of smoke with a demonic laugh.
Of course, the PRS will be financially interested in ensuring that various marginals go bankrupt paying increased rates on contracts with the PRS, and subsequently, by hook or by crook, hand over their children to well-bred and wealthy members of society, who will not create problems for those around them, but, more importantly, will be able to further financially motivate the PRS inspector to pay particularly close attention to a specific problematic family. The more people there are wishing to acquire a child at as early an age as possible, the higher the financial incentives for the PRS to introduce the strictest possible rules, the violation of which will trigger a chain ending in the financial collapse of the family and separation from the child.
How did it happen that Molinari prefers not to write about the extortion aimed at taking children away from parents deemed problematic? Because he is a conservative, he is categorically against state juvenile justice, and for him, the raising of children by the parents themselves is a value of very high order. But market logic couldn’t care less about the values of a specific Stephan Molinari.
