Тег: Children

Sale of harmful goods to children

According to libertarian law, the sale of alcohol and tobacco should not be prohibited by force of law (nor should it be subject to fines), including to minors, because it is a victimless crime.

Given that I am currently working as a cashier, my colleagues and I ask for IDs from everyone except those who look under 50, because those participating in sting operations are 17-year-olds who look much older than their age: young men with gray hair, thick beards and muscular builds, and girls who are tall, stout, with makeup and “first” wrinkles. Dozens of customers daily harass us, telling us “not to take it to the point of absurdity” or to stop creating “Kafkaesque” situations. The solution proposed to me by the surrounding statistes is even more of a hell—to ask everyone, to lobby for checking documents through the register as in the USA, etc. My old acquaintances and friends harass me by saying that alcohol consumption at a young age increases the risk of alcoholism many times over. Yes, I am aware. Moreover, I myself actively stood by the same prohibitory position, was an active lobbyist and advocate for control measures on alcohol and tobacco, which was sometimes a topic for discussion with these friends and acquaintances or even a reason for meeting. That is why my social networks are under tension right now. But it is inevitable. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then; I have been studying economics and history for three years, and for the last few months, I have openly considered myself a libertarian.

So, the sale of a product that sits on a store shelf for legal money is not violence. But some people believe that by selling to those under 18, I am committing violence. People tell me that advertising and propaganda force one to start drinking, and that until a certain age, a person supposedly has no freedom of choice. As if they acquire it on their 18th birthday. As if they have none at all before that. Simply, parents should handle upbringing while children live with them, not the state. This answer does not satisfy such people.

How can I clearly explain to them that the decision to sell or not sell anything should be made by the owner, and they should not be punished for selling or not selling?

Sergey Sushinsky

I would suggest approaching your argumentation from two sides.

First, you need to demonstrate that the very idea that the state does good through trade bans is a poor idea. Remind them how in the Soviet Union people were imprisoned for trading foreign currency, and in general for any entrepreneurship involving reselling (for this, a seemingly neutral economic term, “speculation,” was used as a condemnation). Later, currency trading was permitted, but no one compensated those previously imprisoned for currency operations for their losses. All over the world, the trade of marijuana is gradually being legalized, while in Russia, more people are imprisoned for the distribution of substances than for theft. And when marijuana trade is permitted in Russia, it is likely that no one will compensate the losses of all those previously convicted under Article 228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Remind them that in many Islamic countries, the sale of alcohol is illegal not only to children but to adults as well. In short, there are many restrictions on free trade that are introduced by the state and then repealed. So why did they decide that the ban on selling alcohol to children is actually necessary and will not subsequently be repealed by the same state as mistaken or even criminal? And who will then reimburse alcohol traders for their losses in fines and bribes during the period of the ban?

Secondly, point out to them that if the satisfaction of a need is pushed out of the legal field, it begins to be satisfied illegally. A child was unable to drink beer and smoke cigarettes—they have an unsatisfied need and unspent money. Tomorrow they will buy mephedrone. Maybe it would have been better to sell them beer?

They don’t ask for ID on Hydra

Who will protect children from violence (on the part of parents)? How can a child prove their agency?

Immanuel Kant

In fact, with the same justification, we could ask: “Who will protect the individual from state violence? How can a person prove their agency?”

In response to state violence, a person can resist directly, attempt to appeal to one branch of government regarding violence committed by another branch, flee to another state, or to a place where state orders do not operate. Finally, a person can resign themselves, repent, and become an exemplary citizen so that the state violence directed at them becomes more or less tolerable. None of this will help them prove their agency to the state, but it may somehow influence the severity of the violence.

As is easy to see, a child can do exactly the same in relation to their parents. They can fight with their parents and even kill them, complain to the father about the mother or to the mother about the father, run away to other people, or simply try to survive on the street. Finally, they can become an exemplary child and fulfill all parental whims. None of this helps them prove their agency within the existing orders, but it may somehow influence the severity of the violence they are subjected to.

The power of the state over its subject and the power of parents over a child are equally total in the absence of external factors. To protect human dignity from the power of the state, people organize into a civil society that directly opposes the state, both using tools provided by the state and through direct moral pressure on individual state representatives (we leave political terrorism outside the scope of this consideration, although it glares quite menacingly from the sidelines). Similarly, the family’s power over a child is limited by society, both through official channels, such as complaints to state authorities, and through direct moral pressure on the parents (methods of physical coercion glare menacingly from outside the scope of this issue).

To summarize. The power of one human over another is dangerous and undesirable in itself. Wherever possible, the “ruler-subject” relationship should be transitioned into relationships between negotiating subjects. Wherever this is not possible—for example, due to the weakly expressed agency of one of the parties—power can and must be limited through pressure from other subjects who form public opinion.

Of course, public opinion should not be idealized—it is a tool for interference in private relationships by third parties; it is not for nothing that public opinion is often called the opinion of those who weren’t asked. Libertarianism provides the principle by which the legitimacy of public opinion’s interference in private relationships can be determined: the now-clichéd NAP. The more obvious its violation within the family, the more the opinion of those who weren’t asked becomes sought after.

If new children are held by force in the community and outsiders are not allowed in as a rule, how to ensure the children’s right to get the hell out of there?

What actions can the bad side take to keep them, acting according to ancap, and what can the good side do?

анонимный вопрос

I’ll start by saying that, of course, any group of people can already go into the wilderness and live there, without any contact with outsiders. Amazonia, the Andaman Islands, Papua — there are enough places, in general. If society in some part of the world evolves into ancap, such isolated communities will be left alone even more so, on the rights of exotic fauna that can be filmed with a drone, but it’s better not to venture toward them personally.

It’s a different matter when your community has regular trade relations with the outside world. Here, you can’t pass off as exotic fauna, because let’s recall East Berlin: even very complex fortifications did not allow for the complete elimination of emigration. If there is any communication with the outside world, the isolation regime is already broken, and the more thoroughly one tries to observe it, the sweeter the forbidden fruit. People will flee your isolated community by any means necessary, and gradually the whole world will learn about the customs that prevail inside. Then, the depressurization of the community is simply a matter of time. More and more companies will refuse to deal with you as long as you restrict emigration, and you will have to make compromises, like the USSR did regarding the Jewish question. Gradually, there will be no one left to maintain your sanctuary, and it will collapse from within — too many of its residents will want access to the outside.

Of course, I do not exclude that there will be individual special operations, where in response to a plea for help from the sanctuary, a group of volunteers from the Mainland will pinpointedly rescue a couple of children. This will certainly have a PR effect, but I believe that the main mechanism for the collapse of a community with closed borders involved in trade with the outside world will still be the increase of internal contradictions.

You get the idea…

Will this be within the norm under ancap?

анонимный вопрос

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CoAlxgwXcM

In this case, the norm has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is anpcap or socialism. There is a broad global trend toward the reduction of aggression, including toward children. When you read someone like Kassil, far more brutal customs are described, both between children and between children and adults. I suspect that in those times, such an episode would not have attracted any attention at all. He didn’t kill or maim; he simply forced a fussy child to get up and led them by the hand—what’s the big deal? A hundred years have passed, and this episode is now perceived as clear coarseness of manners, though still not so egregious as to make one jump out into the yard and immediately intervene for the child instead of continuing the filming, or, say, to lean out of a window with a rifle and demand an immediate stop.

It is very difficult to predict what the norms regarding violence against children will be in the foreseeable future. The trend may continue, and then the ideas currently being promoted—for example, by the Dobroum project—will over time seem banal, or even self-evident. Or the trend may reverse, and then our era will seem to descendants as a time of softness and degeneration.

At the same time, ancap can develop within the framework of any current of this trend. If the world becomes more non-violent, the key principle in relations with children will be the principle of non-aggression. Did the child attack? No, they were just lying there and didn’t want to get up. How can they be hit? How can children be hit at all? If greater violence becomes the norm, the emphasis will shift toward legal capacity. Is the child not a legal subject? Then they are in the zone of the guardian’s responsibility. See a child being hit? Well, ask whose child it is. If the guardian is the one hitting—well, they are probably hitting for a reason. If it is not the guardian hitting, it is an attack on someone else’s property, an impropriety, and should be stopped—for example, by blowing the aggressor’s brains out.

To me, of course, the first scenario seems more natural and probable. The trend toward non-violence is accompanied by an increasing value of human life and is largely driven by this. Ancap presupposes the elimination of the state, which, among other things, is a systemic factor that reduces the value of human life (firstly, it produces violence, meaning violence becomes commonplace; secondly, it makes people poorer, thereby reducing the value of life). This means that under ancap, the value of life will increase, and there will be less violence.

But, alas, the reasons for the trend are not fully clear, and I cannot guarantee anything on this matter. After all, the softening and hardening of manners throughout world history clearly does not follow a simple linear dependency.

P.S. When the post was already ready for publication, news arrived that Anastasia Shevchenko’s daughter died in intensive care. For those who do not know: the mother was accused of membership in an undesirable organization and placed under house arrest until trial, deprived of the right to communicate with her daughter. The daughter was seriously ill and required constant care. The court, choosing the preventive measure, ignored this circumstance.

So: under ancap, this would not only not be the norm, but would become completely impossible. The state kills. It is not just a machine of violence, but also a completely irresponsible machine.

The Question of Emancipation

According to the principle of self-ownership, a person owns their body and its derivatives. Does it not follow from this that the mother (or both parents) owns their child?

анонимный вопрос

Under ancap, under what conditions does a sentient being/program that is not human cease to be property and obtain rights equal to human rights?

Dmitry

Indeed, according to the principle of self-ownership, both a child and an artificial intelligence are the property of their creators. But the very concept of property is a convention. And exactly what rights the right of ownership entails is also a convention. Some sentient beings agree to tolerate certain behavior of other sentient beings if, for some reason, they believe those others have the right to do so. Generalizing the countlessly diverse behavior of the most varied sentient beings, wise lawyers formulate legal principles which, in particular, state:

  • which set of rights is called the right of ownership
  • what constitutes a human
  • that a sentient human possesses the right of ownership over themselves
  • that since a child almost inevitably grows into a sentient human, it makes sense to recognize part of the rights of a sentient human in advance
  • how a growing child will obtain those rights that they were not yet entitled to at birth
  • how a sentient being that is not human can obtain rights equal to human rights

The conclusions of different lawyers may not coincide. Different people may share the opinions of different lawyers to varying degrees. Some people are ready to use violence for the sake of asserting their ideas about legal doctrine, while some are not.

And ancap, as applied to the issue under consideration, is simply such a legal doctrine which asserts that there is no one whose opinion on this matter is uniquely and a priori correct, and subject to imposition on all others through the unlimited application of force.

The moment you declare that ancap is the principle of self-ownership raised to an absolute, or the principle of non-aggression raised to an absolute, or the principle of freedom of contract raised to an absolute—you are deviating from the principles of ancap. Keep your absolute away from children (and other borderline legal phenomena).

Keep the absolute away from children!

Restrictions on rights

1. Imagine a situation: a local epidemic of some infection suddenly breaks out in a hospital, and the doctors forbid you from leaving the quarantine zone. But in doing so, they are restricting your right to freedom of movement. How would such situations be resolved under ancap?

2. Consider this situation: in the summer, a child is lying/sitting in a car, crying, possibly suffocating from lack of air and heat; the parents went somewhere on business and forgot about them, and a passerby sees this and wonders what to do. Can they or the police break into the car or smash a window without permission, if the car is private property (which is inviolable under ancap)?

3. Is it permissible to cause damage to a person’s property that clearly threatens other people? Examples: a car with the handbrake on starts rolling toward another car, a tower leans due to age and is about to collapse onto neighboring buildings, etc. The nuance: there is no contact with the owner of the threatening property, or there is no time for it (the car is rolling).

I decided to combine three similar anonymous questions into one to avoid writing three similar answers.

In the first case, it turns out that exercising your right to freedom of movement could lead to significant harm to third parties, so you are asked not to insist on its exercise until it can be ensured that the threat has passed. In the second and third cases, causing damage to private property prevents harm to a third party. In all cases, you are simply presented with the fact of your rights being violated.

Where do rights come from? Rights arise from the interactions of some members of society with others. Some people agree to tolerate certain behavior of other people because they believe that those people have a right to such behavior.

Doctors believe they have the right to restrict your movement; they only need to convince others of this, and for this, they can use various methods. The most obvious and correct one: when you are admitted to a hospital, you sign a contract that outlines various boundaries, including force majeure situations like quarantine. Again, to ensure quarantine, doctors usually bring in specialists specifically for enforcement. Who will pay for this? As already mentioned in the post about epidemics, the most obvious interested party is insurance companies. They are the ones interested in ensuring the epidemic is prevented and the volume of insurance claim payouts is minimized; for this purpose, they can pay both those who enforce the quarantine and those caught in the quarantine—as compensation for the inconvenience. Or the insurance company may decide that the danger is small and will not introduce restrictions—those are its risks.

A passerby believes they have the right to encroach upon your private property to save a person; they only need to convince others of this. This is quite simple: they only need to demonstrate the rescued child to other passersby, and they will join the rescuer’s sincere indignation toward the jerk who left the child in the car, and perhaps even help in searching for the car’s owner.

General principles emerge from the generalization of private practice. They work well for typical situations and allow for the saving of mental effort. When two conflicting general principles collide in one head, a mental effort must still be made. It’s nothing terrible; the ability to think is always useful.

In whose interests, besides the parents’, is it to conduct research on the genetic modification of humans to increase their abilities?

After all, these investments might not pay off by providing a skilled workforce in the future—if the person does not want to work for the company that “created” them.

анонимный вопрос

Indeed, an interesting topic. One entity invests funds and effort to create another entity, while the created entity has no debt to the creator, except perhaps a moral one. The question arises: what would compel the creator to invest resources into their creation?

At the same time, for some reason, you have no doubt that there won’t be a problem with parents; they will certainly be interested in investing in the creation of children who are more advanced from their point of view. But why, exactly?

For example, I am thinking about having a child and reading the price list for genetic modifications that can be made. Remove the predisposition to cancer and AIDS? Of course, I’ll take it; it’s much more reliable than health insurance and, if spread over a lifetime, far cheaper. We clean out hereditary diseases. Is it necessary? Of course. Tendency toward obesity? I’ll probably correct that; it will also pay off. Height? Eye color? Why bother? Well, only if these settings come in a general package, as not every parent will buy these modifications separately.

In other words, parents will primarily be interested in those modifications that save them—the parents’—expenses on raising the child. Secondly, those that in the long run could increase the child’s chances of success in life, although you can never guess what will be in market demand. Lastly, any matter of personal taste.

Why does a parent have a child and invest in them at all? For the joy of the upbringing process and satisfaction from the results of that upbringing. A child is a creative project that, if the devil doesn’t joke, might even bring commercial success.

Could such a creative project be undertaken, for example, not by a parent, but by a large company? Why not, but the motivation for the company’s founders would be the same: to get maximum satisfaction from the results of the upbringing. At the same time, in order for the free people produced by this company to also bring it some monetary profit, they must do so voluntarily. This means loyalty must be cultivated in them.

If a gene for blind love can be found, then perhaps the loyalty problem can be solved this way. But for some reason, I have a strong suspicion that this gene will turn out to be linked to genes responsible for intellectual development, meaning the overall life success of such a child would be small (especially since a child-production plant is unlikely to provide every graduate with significant starting capital).

Please leave the fantasies about growing competent specialists and subsequently keeping them in forced slavery to the communists; we are considering ancap here, and ancap is self-ownership.

So, if we are talking about market models for such enterprises, I would rather suggest looking toward existing private schools and universities. There, likewise, a gifted student can enter a school for free and even have a scholarship, while the institution is funded by an endowment fund. Former students who have succeeded in life contribute to the fund entirely voluntarily. The only difference in our case would be that gifted children are not sought out initially, but produced.

It seems to me that this is a quite pleasant future in which children are predominantly wanted, and they will be far less likely to disappoint those who invested in them.

Sweet children, but that’s not how it works under ancap

Birth rate as a reflection of the tragedy of the commons

Bitarch

Statists often say that the state helps solve the problems of the tragedy of the commons. In reality, of course, it only creates them. The most large-scale of these, capable of leading to the collapse of civilization, is the sharp decline in the birth rate. Indeed, why should a woman spend many sleepless nights changing a baby’s diapers, when it’s far more interesting to go to a club to party with friends and post photos of fashionable clothes on Insta! And what will happen in old age? Absolutely irrelevant — the beloved state will not leave her without a decent pension, and if she votes correctly, it will even provide a free caregiver.

This is a clear tragedy of the commons. For an individual woman, from a resource perspective, it is more profitable not to give birth at all (she will still receive a guaranteed pension in old age, but will not spend resources on raising children). If all the residents of a country do this, tax revenues will fall along with the population of that specific country, and the state will be forced to increase its plunder. Taxes are already at historical highs; accordingly, any further increase will guaranteedly lead to a decline in the entire economy, the departure of business both from the country and “into the shadows,” and ultimately — the collapse of the state.

For my part, I will note that the state solves this tragedy of the commons simply: by paying child benefits. In this way, the birth rate increases among those for whom the amount of the benefit matters. So, from the state’s perspective, nothing terrible is happening: childless wealthy citizens pay for the poor and fertile; justice triumphs. The state is an entire conglomerate of special interest groups, and any challenge coming from the outside world, or even just a fabricated one, can be used as a pretext to increase the size of the state: whether it be high birth rates, low birth rates, high immigration, low immigration, warming, or cooling…

How would you react?

Today I was walking with my son, who is almost 4 years old; we weren’t bothering anyone. My son started messing with the ice on the road. A boy about 7-10 years old was passing by with his parents. They walked past, but the boy suddenly turned around, approached my son, and pushed him (not very hard—my son stayed on his feet).

анонимный вопрос

I cannot guarantee that in a real-life situation I would react the way I now conceptually consider to be correct; too much would depend on various insignificant factors. How repulsive the boy would be to me personally, how adequate his parents seemed to me, how much of a hurry they were in, and, most importantly, how shocking this episode was for my son.

The more vile the kid seems to me, the more unpleasant this episode was for my son, the less his parents are rushing, and the more sane they look, the greater the likelihood that I would develop the situation toward preventing such crap in the future. That is, I would draw their attention to this crap and ask them to hold the boy’s hand, since walking aggressive children on a leash is not common practice.

If, hypothetically, the interaction is likely to be very short, then I would probably limit myself to making a scary face and making some kind of sharp, threatening gesture toward the kid. Ideally, the kid should quickly bolt or recoil and fall on his backside. The goal is for the aggressor to be humiliated without the use of direct physical force, and then I can focus on figuring out how my son is doing.

If he is indignant and wants to fight back, then the conversation will be along the lines of “we really scared him!”. If he is more surprised and trying to understand what that was, then I’ll discuss with him what that was (imagine a dog barked at you on the street; you don’t need to kill the dog, it’s enough to chase it away). If he didn’t pay much attention, then let him continue with his business; it’s good when a person has a strong psyche.

Hi! Please tell me, how can I explain libertarianism to children? :) If possible, simple “on-the-fingers” examples would be super.

анонимный вопрос

The task is indeed quite non-trivial, and here is why.

Capitalism is a social system in which the dominant relations between people are commodity-money relations. Anarcho-capitalism makes the boundary conditions stricter, specifying that the dominant commodity-money relations must also be voluntary.

Communism is a social system in which the dominant relations between people are gift relations, and reputation takes the place of money.

It is easy to see that family is communism, and usually, there is no scent of anarcho-capitalism there. Meanwhile, the task is to tell the children in the family about the values of ancap, and make it so that these values appear attractive to them.

The problem is not even just in telling them, but in the fact that in childhood, the instructions that are reinforced by personal example and are applicable to real life here and now are absorbed best.

It is worth starting with the most basic things.

Property. Indicate that this thing belongs to mom, this to dad, this to the child, and these are in the joint property of the whole family (just don’t use that terrible communist word “common”)

Exchange. Exchanging values is a quite exciting activity for children, and here it is important not only to instill a taste for exchange in the child, but also to explain that exchange must be only voluntary, and that exchange is always unequal: everyone values what they give away less than what they acquire. So if one exchanged something and then changed their mind, the second is not obliged to agree to a reverse exchange.

Contract. Get them used to, if not writing down, at least clearly articulating the terms of exchange; do not hesitate to refer to old contracts, and do not dare to go back on your own word.

Court. If you cannot reach an agreement with the child, look for someone who can arbitrate for you, provided the child also agrees to the adjudication. Let them get used to defending their position before an independent party, and then executing the verdict.

Money. The sooner a child gets their own money, the better. Do not hesitate to hire them for any work you want to get from them. But if they refuse the work, do not dare to compel them. Let them get used to saying the phrase “and what will I get out of this?”

Reputation. Avoid inducing shame in the child; it is far more important to make them understand that their reputation in such-and-such a field looks poor, and now they are not trusted in this, but in this other area, they can be fully trusted.

Compensation for costs. Again, instead of shaming, suggest they think about how they could compensate for the damage. It is useful to haggle, not agreeing to the very first offer. If you yourself have somehow betrayed their trust, also boldly offer compensation, and let them decide whether to accept the offer.

Self-defense. Everyone has the right to self-defense. Here, you may have to conflict with other adults who maintain the view that a child fundamentally has no right to fight, and can at most complain to adults. Do not hesitate to arrange a full judicial proceeding following such incidents, naturally, on a voluntary basis. If the court then decides that your child did indeed cause unlawful damage to someone, you must ensure that they pay compensation.

In general, try to start treating the child as an equal subject as early as possible. They may lack knowledge or skills, but this does not deprive them of their rights. Knowledge and skills are things that can be acquired.

A mediocre example of a contract: the service provided is not defined, and there are no termination conditions. But even such a contract is far better than its absence.