Тег: Tort

Libertarianism, children and tort

An article was published on the website of the Libertarian Party of Russia by Karl Franco, known for the sharpness of his views, concerning children. The author is a member of the LPR and the lead of the Telegram channel No Compromises, a name that already quite well characterizes this thinker inclined toward dogmatism. In short, he claims to outline how libertarians should approach the issue of dealing with children based on strictly libertarian principles of law, namely the principle of self-ownership, which every child possesses from the moment of conception.

I have also had to write repeatedly on the subject of children, which can be seen via the “children” tag, so you likely have an idea of my position on many specific issues related to children, and perhaps in general. In short, I view law as a spontaneous order for resolving conflicts (and morality as a spontaneous order for entering conflicts), and I consider the principle of self-ownership to be nothing more than a characteristic of a libertarian society, showing that the right to dispose of oneself is respected significantly more than a claimant to self-ownership could achieve by force, but it is still not elevated to an absolute, just as many other useful principles, such as regular tooth brushing, are not elevated to an absolute.

But today we are not talking about my position, but about the position of the article. Its key premise is the assertion that by the very act of conceiving a child, parents commit a tort against the child, because the consequence of conception is the plunging of a self-owning subject of law into a state of complete helplessness. From this, parental duties, principles of upbringing, and other such beauties are derived. And they are derived, of course, completely incorrectly, because such a rigid premise leads to conclusions entirely different from those Karl makes.

You have been raped. This is a tort committed by the rapist against you. The judge obliges the rapist, as restitution for damages, to live with you and care for you for a certain fixed term. Would you not tell such a judge to get lost with such sentences? The first and most important thing you need is to be completely out of reach of the rapist, and only then can you think about the amount of compensation. If conceiving a child is a tort against the child, then the first thing that must be done after birth is to take the child away from the criminals and give the child to truly worthy people who have certainly never encroached upon the birth of any children. Ideally, they should even be incapable of it. For example, those who have undergone sterilization. After all, people get vaccinated to prevent accidental torts against uninvolved bystanders whom they might infect. The same principle applies here: get sterilized, and you will protect children from the danger of being conceived.

From time to time, people are hit by cars on the road. These are tragedies that stir the public, and the public seeks ways to reduce accident mortality, ideally to zero. Additionally, people from time to time conceive children. If conception is a tort, then such tragedies should also stir the public, and then the public should seek ways to reduce the birth rate, ideally to zero. At least accidental conceptions. Again, whose behavior is more responsible: a driver who was driving in their lane while observing the speed limit, but a pedestrian who suddenly jumped under the wheels gave them no chance to avoid the collision—or a driver who consciously rams a pedestrian on the sidewalk? The same goes for childbearing: if conception is a tort, then the behavior of those who manage to get pregnant despite all efforts at contraception should be recognized as more responsible and perhaps even exempt them from paying serious compensation to the child for this accident. And those who consciously practice unprotected sex, pursuing the criminal intent to conceive a child, should be recognized as malicious thugs and punished exemplarily more severely, should they not?

Why did Karl Franco enter into a conspiracy with a girl and cohabit with her without first undergoing a vasectomy? Was it not with the aim of plunging a self-owning being into a state of helplessness by conceiving them into the world? Should we not lynch this hypocrite, who discourses on torts while himself craftily making preparations for one?

Of course, all of this is nonsense. When we live to see the invention of fully autonomous, self-developing embryos, within the framework of a creative free search, downloading info from the internet and self-modifying their bodies, assimilating necessary resources from a dispersed state—then we can talk about archaic procreation being a terrible tort. For now, humanity proceeds from different premises, and the acceptance of the notion of conception as a tort (real acceptance, not hypocritical intellectual constructs that have no connection to reality) makes the systematic extinction of humanity a moral duty, until the last happy childless old man leaves this former abode of sin.

Don’t twist things, Karl. It won’t help children’s rights, Karl.

How would juvenile justice work under libertarianism?

For example, Vasya Pupkin from grade 3 “b”, as a joke, reported a bomb planted in the school, which was later not found during the inspection. Or he beat up a classmate until they ended up in intensive care. Or he stole and then broke someone else’s bicycle.
Suppose he was detained. What happens next? If parents, according to libertarianism, are not responsible for their children’s actions, then how will the young hooligan be punished? Suppose neither he nor his parents have the money to compensate for the damage. Will he be put in prison or forced to work and pay for the damages?

Vopros999 (question accompanied by a donation of 0.00008510 BTC)

The claim that a child possesses self-ownership means that other people recognize their right to dispose of themselves to a greater extent than they could achieve by force. Nevertheless, just as the right of private property over things rarely means the freedom to use them to harm others, a child’s self-ownership does not mean complete freedom to cause harm to those around them.

In addition to the child’s self-ownership, people usually recognize someone’s right of guardianship over them. This right typically includes priority in instilling moral norms, but it is inevitably offset by the right of others to recover damages caused by the child from the guardian. It does not matter who provides the guardianship—parents, the school, just random people contracted for the job—or if all of them distribute these rights among themselves in some way. Either way, the right of guardianship is followed by responsibility for the damage caused to others by the actions of the ward.

Parents take the child for a walk, the child breaks someone else’s toy—the parents are responsible. A grandmother is left with the child—the grandmother is responsible for the broken toy. The child goes to school—the school bears responsibility for the damage they cause to others during school hours. The child goes to school and from there sends an email from a phone reporting a bomb threat—this is the school’s problem, as the child was within its zone of responsibility at that time.

Perhaps the risk of damage from a child’s actions could be insured, similar to how the civil liability of car owners is insured. Now, as we know, car owners are reluctant to insure their liability, which often prompts states to make such contracts mandatory. So I am not sure that in a stateless society, guardianship liability will always be insured. Most likely, schools—especially those in the medium and high price segments—will insure their guardianship liability; firstly, they will have more funds for this, and secondly, it can be assumed that students of expensive schools will, on average, cause damage in smaller amounts (not a fact, I don’t dare to predict exactly).

Another factor that is unlikely to allow guardianship liability insurance to become a panacea for parents is that with every wrongful act committed by the child, the insurance premium will increase; that is, damage from the least socialized children will likely be too expensive to insure.

Further, the imagination of AnCap critics paints all sorts of Dickensian scenarios, with workhouses and the like. I strongly doubt that such things would be in demand in a humane and wealthy society, however, it is obvious that the rights of guardians who find themselves unable to bear responsibility for the actions of their wards will be rejected or, at least, severely restricted. In whose favor? I believe, in favor of charitable organizations whose statutory goal would be precisely the socialization of such children. As an option—in favor of wealthier citizens who agree to cover the debts from lawsuits against the child’s previous guardians, after which they themselves assume further responsibility for this child. I do not dare predict which model will be more in demand in the market, but both are ethically permissible.

Socialization of difficult children two centuries ago—the dark past of AnCap