An anarchist's position on the rights of children and animals

On a recent podcast, Tom Woods challenged his audience to put our position on the rights of animals and children into words.  I phrase it that way because almost every libertarian/anarchist I have met instinctually knows that respecting children and animals IS part of who we are, but finds it difficult to work their rights within the framework of the NAP.

The argument is essentially that parents and let owners are under no obligation under the NAP to provide for their dependents.  I know of two ways in which we can overcome this hurdle.  The first revolves around social contract whereas the second drives at the very heart of libertarian values.  Naturally, I will start with the former.

Social Contract theory of child rearing and pet owning:
     If you're new to libertarianism, chances are you are not a fan of the theory of social contracts.  I get it; you think if you concede that social contracts exist then all hope is lost and you will be obligated to accept the state.  This is wrong of course.  The most basic of all social contracts basically states "you don't hurt me, i won't hurt you."  Even statists would agree to this one, it's so simple.  As it applies to children and animals... Well, if you as an adult choose to bear children, the social contract is: i chose to have a child.  I know children cannot provide for themselves, therefore, i am agreeing to provide for this child.  This would make any negligence in parental duties a coercive act against a child, as you are not holding up to your end of the contract. (I say "your end" but since the child in question either doesn't exist or is a bit young for contracts, there is only one end so far).  The same can be said for owning a pet.  By freely choosing to have an animal in your home, you are agreeing to fulfill the pet's needs.

Now to the main argument.  I'm gonna say something here that I have yet to hear another libertarian say.  Unless i saw or read this argument somewhere and forgot, I do believe I have worked this out through my own process.

Libertarianism revolves everything around property rights... But what we need to recognize is that using property rights as the basis for our arguments is merely a tool for communicating a much larger idea.  The heart of Libertarianism is not property rights; the heart is a LOVE for LIFE.

We want our rights over the things we own and we argue that we own our bodies so that we can LIVE!  Everything you have ever owned, you customized to fit your needs; to live your life as you see fit.  Your car has your radio stations programmed, your seat is where you like it, your mirrors are setup for you to see...  The fans in your home are where you want them...  And when people take your things or come tell you the new standard for your property, what they are doing is erasing that part of your personality...  They are interfering with your right to live your life as you wish.  How does this apply to children and animals?  Come on... The heart of what we believe in is a love of LIFE.  Children are brand new to life; it is 100% impossible to love life and allow a child to starve for no apparent reason.  In a libertarian society, if you had children and mistreated them and didn't feed them, maybe someone or some group would come remove that child from your custody.  The purpose of property is life, that is why we cherish it so much.  Any person capable of starving a child has no love for life.

The same can be said for animals.  We care about them and don't want to harm them unless we have to because they are living beings...

14 Hard Questions for Statists.

Since statists, here defined as those who believe a State (monopoly of violence or a government) have posed a list of 14 questions to libertarians, I feel it prudent to return the favor.  Here is a list of 14 tough questions for anyone who believes governments are legit.

14.  If governments are legit, why do they have to force people to comply with their laws?

13.  How can someone you have never met accurately "represent" you?

12.  If governments rule only through the consent of the governed, how do you explain such low approval ratings?

11.  If people have no right to use force against each other, how did they delegate this power to politicians?

10.  If it is protection from people who want to do us harm that we seek,  why are governments defended? as it is governments who go to war, attempt genocide, develop nuclear weapons, and consider innocent deaths an acceptable circumstance to war, lock people up who haven't harmed anyone, etc?

9.  If we need protection from monopolies forming in our economy, as monopolists get out of control and abuse their power, why should we want a monopoly on violence?

8.  If theft, killing, kidnappings, extortion, and so on are completely immoral, why should it be legal for anyone to do it?

7.  If government economic programs are really wanted by people, why does it have to be a matter of law? Why don't politicians take their ideas to the market to test whether or not people are willing to buy what they are selling?

6.  Isn't the thought of the government as a necessary evil the same as saying evil is necessary?  And if evil is necessary, are we not saying the absence of evil would be a bad thing?

5.  If governments are formed to protect rights, does it not follow that rules precede governments, as well as rights, and we can have both rules and rights without governments?

4.  When statists discuss the possibility of a legit war, it is in the context of a government defending people from another government; does this not mean it is still the existence of governments that is responsible for starting wars?

5.  The United States Government is made up of a few hundred people; where do they get the information they need to effectively control hundreds of millions of people? 

4.  Every time you walk by a store and refuse to go in, or you go in and refuse to buy an item, an economic decision has been made.  How can such a small group of people account for these kinds of decisions made by hundreds of millions of people?

3.  An anarchist would not stop anyone from giving money or following who they wish; why do statists insist anyone who refuses to give money to the people they wish to follow should be thrown in jail?

2.  If all politicians are human beings, and no human being has the right to use force against another, why does calling it law change the morality of what is being done?

1.  If murder and theft and the like are truly immoral, why should we want a society based on such actions?

Questions or comments, feel free to discuss!

Common Sense

Common Sense is a phrase that gets thrown around daily, usually by people who are annoyed with other people.  It is something that everyone is expected to have in order to make rational judgments about every day situations.  For example, if it is cold outside, it only takes a shred of common sense to know you will need a coat to keep warm.  If you are thirsty, the idea of getting a drink quickly comes to mind.  But what exactly is common sense?

According to dictionary.com, common sense is defined as:

 Sound judgment not based on specialized knowledge.

For our purposes, we will define common sense as "judgment based on every day experiences."

The problem here is not hard to spot... in fact, anyone with common sense could do it.  Every day experiences differ from person to person, although we do share the same struggle living in a world based on scarcity, weather, and so on.  So what differences do people have which would actually cause problems?  Here a few that I can think of.

1.  Some people are religious, some are not.

2.  Some people are disciplined differently than others as children.

3.  Value ratings often change from person to person.

Religion.  Suppose two people were considering walking into a Casino to gamble.  A religious person may say "no, duh, God hates gambling so I'm not going in there."  whereas a non-religious, or atheist, may say something like "what harm can come from gambling, as long as you control yourself."  

Both people in this scenario are applying what they view as common sense and each has arrived at a different conclusion.

How about people who were disciplined differently as children?  As parents they may say something like "if your child gets out of control, threaten or issue a spanken, that'll straighten them right out."  However, someone who was not spanked may say something like "I wonder why _____ is acting up.  If I spank, it will increase the overall amount of aggression _____ is used to and may actually cause more aggression."  Again, both people applying common sense.

Value Ratings:  This is the most essential, fundamental difference in humanity.  Without differences in how things are valued, there would be no economy and no civilization.  If I am extremely thirsty, I may pay $5.00 for a bottle of water at a movie theater.  That may be common sense to me at the time, even if I do feel a bit ripped off.  However, the owner of the movie theater may say "Oh my god, these people are paying through the nose for this stuff!"

So what does all this say about common sense?  First, common sense, as defined above, does not exist.  It is just another way of saying bias.  Before it was discovered that the Earth was round, religion, along with a bit of common sense, determined it was flat.  For the religious text said the earth is flat and that is the way our interactions with the world appear at first, especially when there are not cars, planes, trains, satellites, etc.  

When I first became a parent, I asked a few people for advice...  What I basically heard was "use common sense."  If you guessed that I asked a family member, you are correct!  All this meant was "apply our family values/biases to your parenting."  I know this because I have broken with some of those biases and have been ridiculed for it.  

I am doing my best to parent peacefully because I believe it is scientifically and morally correct.  Scientifically, aggressive parenting pushes the kid into fight or flight and interferes with the ability to reason, and in the end creates robots out of human flesh... but peaceful parenting allows freedom for kids to be themselves, does NOT hamper the ability to reason and does not teach aggression.  But this information did not come to me from "common sense", it came from various people spreading the peaceful parenting message and the science behind it.  In other words, those with specialized knowledge.

How often to we find that specialized knowledge trumps biases?  The Earth is round, not flat.  The God of War did not start that war, your leaders, or their's, did.  When two people make an exchange in goods and services, it is because each values that which they gain more than that which they give up, not because one is necessarily a moron and the other brilliant.  Governments can commit crimes too (Nuremberg).  Cutting a sick person so they can bleed out their infection is dangerous!  Racism, well, do we need to go there?  The idea that a person is good or bad based on their skin color is common sense to a small percentage of people... and the depth of their cognitive dissonance is evidence in how strong these biases are.

So what do we do about biases?  We introduce philosophy.  We challenge our biases.  Some will take longer than others.  Do I really need a coat to be warm is a question that should take about 5 seconds in the right conditions.  Is spanking good or bad for kids?  That is one that should be visited by everyone, regardless of what your bias makes you lean towards.  We go to people with specialized knowledge and find out, we acquire our own knowledge and study the methods of gaining knowledge, called epistemology....  To me, this is what education is, particularly in a world where information is instantaneously delivered to our screens.  Educate ourselves in logic, and so on...  

Who in their right mind hires someone for a job and says "eh, just use common sense."  NOBODY.  I work at a Casino since I started, have gained quite a bit of knowledge in Table Games.  Someone without any knowledge may see two hands:  2, 3, 4, 5, 6 for one and 6, J, Q, K A as the other.  Someone who does not understand hand rankings, applying common sense, may guess that the second hand wins because of the Ace... not seeing the pattern of the straight in the first hand.  

My first job was as a bus-boy a friend got me at his family's restaurant.  That is a pretty simple job.  People come in and eat, and when they leave, you clean and reset the table.  Still nobody said to just go out there and apply common sense.  Even then the dishes had to be set a certain way for the washing machine to work properly, my customer relations skills had to be tested, etc.

If we define common sense as an ability to learn and use reason to be a functional member of society, parent, etc. then all we are doing is re-defining the term to mean someone who knows their limitations and acquires necessary knowledge to be effective at whatever task they are to perform, which is a way of saying philosophy. 

Granted, we may not look at what experts are saying about every detail of everything we do, but in that case, we have to be ready to be wrong on some points.  I am at a loss on how to sew a pair of boxers.  I did it once in high school and the end product came out as something, idk what it was...  I probably used a little too much common sense and failed to gain enough specialized knowledge though.  See the issue I am bringing up here?

Against the phrase 'anarco-capitalism'

Before you leave a comment saying my argument is purely semantic, please reread the title of this post.  The nature is semantics, but I do believe the argument is one worth writing about.

First, let's define our terms.

Anarchy~  a state of disorder due to lack of authority;
Absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual.

•  I think most people agree on the basic idea "absence of government"

Capitalism~ private ownership of the means of production for profit.

• in my experience when people think of capitalism they think of business.

The business aspect is what troubles me.  When anarco-capitalists use the phrase, so far as I can tell, what they are getting at is the non aggression principle.  I know this because whenever I myself am confronted with the obvious questions people ask about a free society, what will the poor do, I revert to answers involving community and charity. 

The definition and examples of charity need not be discussed here, basically, people give stuff or money to the poor with no expectation of anything in return.

Community is a little bit more tricky. I see community as organizations in which people participate based on location with no expectation of monetary compensation.  An example is a neighborhood watch program (minus the public police involvement of course). Or perhaps your neighbor goes on vacation and you collect their mail and keep an eye on their house while they are away. 

These two examples, community and charity, by definition are not capitalist ventures as there is no monetary expectation involved, yet we use both when we answer questions about how a free society could work.  For this reason, I believe the phrase anarco-capitalist should not be used by advocates of freedom.  Especially in today's world of wall street bankers using state power to rip everyone else off...  The term may do more harm than good when naming our views. 

As for me, I simply say anarchist or anarchy. The absence of "legitimate" coercion is really what we strive for.

Please comment and share your thoughts.

You may be propagandized if....

1)  You see 6 mafia-men jump a man and take his money, but when you see the police lock someone in a cage for not giving the government tax dollars, you identify the same victim as a criminal.

2)  You gloss over every piece of evidence that says maybe your government isn't the greatest thing in the world and dismiss it as anti-american propaganda.

3)  You see a counterfeiter get arrested and quickly say "good thing they caught that guy.  Counterfeiters reduce the value of my money by injecting more/fake money into the economy... But when the Federal Reserve creates new money out of thin air, you call it "good fiscal policy."

4)  You agree with absolutely everything government does.  Remember the pledge of allegiance?

5)  Facts found on the internet are true when they point to the idea that the U. S. Government is the greatest entity on earth, and when you see facts found on the internet that contradict that conclusion, you say "anyone can say anything on the internet"

6)  You think that graduating high school/college means you are educated, regardless of how much information you remembered and forgot, how many tests you guessed on, etc.

7)  You see the civilians who die in war as collateral damage instead of people who were murdered.

8)  You think of the nuclear bombs launched on Nagasaki and Hiroshima as a testament to the government's power rather than as a testament for the government's capacity and willingness to commit evil.

9)  You are glad to live in a first world capitalist economy, which outlasted communism in the cold war, and push for regulation of business, welfare projects, wage controls, central banking, etc.

10)  You identify moral rules as being universal, but when questioned about the government's violation of those rules, you bring up the effects and dismiss it.

11)  You see government as the solution to any social problem.

12)  You know what the president's golf score is, what he had for dinner, where he ate it... all or any one of these is fine.

13)  You refuse to believe that calling government a necessary evil is the same as saying evil is necessary.

14)  You say thank you when a police officer gives you a ticket or a judge decides to throw you in a cage.

15)  You cannot conceive of any way to build roads, enforce safety standards, or make sure our food is not rotten without the government.

16) you think capitalism means government giving money to businesses.

What makes a person ethical?

For most of my life I believed that if a person generally understood the difference between right and wrong, it meant that they were a moral person.  Maybe they did not see the actions they were taking as being immoral for some reason, but the people themselves had good intentions at heart.  The best example I can think of of this kind of person would have to be a supporter of say the war on drugs.

Drugs are completely destructive.  In  my opinion, people become addicted to them because fantasy is preferable to the reality of their lives.  The drug replaces the pain of reality with the pleasure of fantasy.  It erodes the need for the people to take actions which would make their lives better.  Sometimes life changes that are necessary for a person's true happiness can be difficult and perhaps be seen as completely unobtainable; why not take x drug, by the way we are talking prescription or street-drugs, and do it that way?

So the drug warrior is looking at the situation saying "this is awful!  we need to get drugs off the street and out of our society."  Fine.  This is a goal that I believe in as well, though I do not consider myself a supporter of the war on drugs.  So "Hooray" for those cops fighting the good fight...

BUT

There is a problem with the drug war.  It involves coercing people who have not initiated force against other people.  Whenever force is used against someone that is not in the immediate defense of them-self or another person, that force is not justified.  Everyone gets this.  As a private citizen, I cannot "defend myself" against my neighbor when he is in his home smoking a joint.  His actions are not causing me harm.  The police, however, claim the moral obligation/right to knock down the door and drag that neighbor out of his house and throw him into a jail cell. 

So here we have a violation of principle; using force against someone in a circumstance other than defense, or simply aggressive force.  The use of aggressive force is being considered ok, only on the part of cops mind you, to get drugs off the streets. 

"Sure", the drug warrior will say, "it is a violation of the non-aggression principle, but look at how harmful the drugs are!"

Yes, we all understand the point about the drugs.  What the drug warrior is not doing is putting the aggressive force under the same microscope.  He is accepting that which he considers evil (aggressive force) to eliminate that which he considers evil (drugs). 

This situation challenges my former theory that a person is ethical so long as they know the difference between right and wrong, for an ethical person cannot by definition accept evil as an acceptable methodology to solve problems. 


In hindsight, the person who knows right from wrong AND accepts an evil methodology is worse than the person who does not know.  At least the person who does not know has the potential for morality; the person who knowingly accepts evil has sealed their coffin. 

Sure, accepting evil methodologies in life can be revised and actions can change so as to reject evil methodologies, but as long as evil is accepted, I for one can no longer accept the proposition that knowledge is enough for morality.

Since we are saying knowledge is not enough and judging the drug warrior based on their actions, we must add a condition of action to what makes a person ethical.  The knowledge must be applied.

Note: I am not going to discuss the need for knowledge to determine if a person is ethical.  The need for knowledge is too obvious: accidentally doing the right thing is just that, an accident.

Knowledge includes moral principles.  Most people get this principle in Kindergarten.  Don't steal, don't hit, don't lie...  Libertarian circles simply call it the Non Aggression Principle (NAP).  The logic behind the NAP is very simple:  Man is a limited being.  Man does not have perfect knowledge, cannot be everywhere at once, and must choose what endeavors to pursue in his own life.  Man deals with reality the best he can.  Any person interfering with this reality in others blocks their ability to freely and openly live their lives.  If you steal from someone, you rob them of the choice to do what they wish with their own things.  If you lie to someone, you distort their perception of reality in order to trick them into doing something they wouldn't otherwise do.  If you hit someone, you damage the vessel with which they live.  <---Disclaimer: Sometimes people prefer being lied to, sometimes people prefer being stolen from, and sometimes people want to be hit.  A boss at work may request that you leave out details of an event so they do not have to take a particular action.  A person addicted from heroin may plea with a friend to "please go into my house while I'm at work tomorrow and get all my 'stuff' out, so that if I want to do it, I won't be able to."  And a person who takes pleasure out of boxing may jump in the ring with another and spar.  These situations are sometimes tricky and each one must be treated as an individual case, as specifics vary, but generally, when someone WANTS to be hit, jumping into the ring and sparring does not constitute a violation of the NAP since they WANT it. 

The harder thing which knowledge includes sometimes is the perception that a certain action violates moral principles.  Most of the confusion here rests with government.  Government is the only entity in society which may tell people all over the country that they will "pay their taxes or get locked up in jail."  Yet many people miss this obvious violation of the NAP.  Indeed, any time the government passes a law, the message taken away is "Do x or you will be locked up in jail."  When x does not = a restraint from initiating aggressive force against other people, the government IS initiating aggressive force! 

Force can only be aggressive or defensive.  These two categories are not hard to see at all...  Sure, if you turn a corner of a building somewhere and see one person hitting another, it is true that you do not understand the context that warranted, or didn't warrant for that matter, the striking.  However, when someone clearly says to people "you will drive how I want you to drive or you will receive tickets from my agents, and if you don't pay those tickets you will eventually be thrown in jail" then the aggressive party is known. 

To summarize, what makes a person ethical is they must first have ethical standards.  Second, they must consciously try to live up to their ethical standards, and finally, if their attention is brought to the fact that they are doing something that does NOT live up to their ethical standards, they must abandon that action. 

So, who has the right to complain about politics, anyways?

Complaining... it's something everyone seems to love to do.  In fact, almost any political position known to man can be reduced to the act of complaining.  The liberals complain that people do not want to give everything they own to some charity so that mankind may have equal living standards.  The conservatives may complain that others don't want to give enough of their money to the military... the libertarians complain that both the conservatives and liberals want to steal from everyone else... and the list goes on...  but in reality, who has "the right" to complain?

In order to answer this question to the best of my ability, I feel it important to share a realization that I made recently here, and that is, politics itself is a game... a fantasy... the very word politics, in my opinion, was invented to replace the words "abstract ethics" so that sophists could avoid pointing out that it really is a question of ethics... they would rather have people debating over what should be done with tax money than debating whether or not tax money is ethical.  This debate over what to do with tax money is essentially what is known as political science. 

By calling the questions pertaining to how government should rule politics, and the study of the topic political science, nobody is studying the ethical issues.  So let's attempt that briefly here. 

Any law passed is the State saying: If you do (or don't do) ______, then you will be thrown in a cage.  Some of these laws are justifiable and some are not.  Here are a few examples of some justifiable laws:

If you murder someone, then you will be thrown in a cage.
If you set someone's property on fire, you will be thrown in a cage.
If you steal from someone, rape someone, assault someone, you will be thrown in a cage.

This list goes on.  These laws are justifiable because they all involve the criminal infringing on the property of other people.

Here are a few laws that are not justified:
If you do not give us your money, you will be thrown in a cage.
If you open a restaurant without permission, you will be forced to close it, fined, and possibly thrown in a cage.
If you do not drive how we'd like you to, you will be thrown in a cage.
If you possess drugs which are not on the list of being acceptable, or use a prescription drug in a manner other than prescribed, you will be thrown in cage.

These laws are not justifiable because the criminal in question has not infringed upon the rights of others.  Indeed, others have infringed upon his property. 

In any just society, laws are rules which involve one person infringing upon the property of another; property including the person's body, as self-ownership is where property stems from.  In such a society, the State cannot possibly exist since tax money would be unjust. 

So who has a right to complain?  Why, everyone does. Everyone is taxed or suffers from the problems involved with taxation, i.e. loss of economic opportunities. 

So, how can we say there are some who do not have the right to complain?  I wouldn't say they don't have the right to complain, but I would say that they shouldn't complain.  Those who hear these basic truths and understand them and whom still advocate the government tax others in favor of what they want should not complain.  Those who stick their head in the sand to the truth should not complain... 

As I get older and write more of these blogs and talk to people, more and more every day I believe that at some point everyone gets hit with truth... it is simply too easy to dismiss and forget about it. I write this blog because someone close to me recently told me that since my position is unpopular, I have no right to be offended with the views of others.

Let's check that.  The view of most people is that should I fail to pay taxes that help pay to blow up innocent people and throw more innocent people in jail cells, I deserve to go jail myself and possibly get raped and be ruined economically for violating the law.

What is my view?  My view is simple: nobody should be forced to pay for anything they don't want to pay for.  You don't like the wars, don't pay for them.  If those fighting them have a problem with your failure to pay, well, quite frankly, they never asked you how you felt about it and when push comes to shove, they can refuse to protect you.  If you do not want to give to charity, you shouldn't be forced to... doesn't mean the people in your community won't lose respect for you, it just means stealing is wrong. 

So to say the person complaining about the theft and violence has no right to complain and try to convince others to behave more peacefully because their view is unpopular, well, I find that quite insane.  The only way this even occurs is because of the words politics and political science, as mentioned above.

Let's be honest, nobody makes excuses for private criminals.  If a homeless person stabs me for money to feed his family, I would insist he goes to jail.  First off, beg.  Do not tell me the only alternative was to stab me.  Second, while I am sympathetic to homeless people, see first point.  I've known many of them and they did not steal to eat.

So, who let's criminals off the hook who shoot innocent people while they're trying to take out a bad guy?  Maybe that can be understandable... how about say a criminal who blows up an entire building with all kinds of innocent people in it to get one bad guy?

Suppose a criminal didn't like the way his neighbor treated his kids... he abused them let's say.  Who's letting this guy off the hook for cutting his neighbor off from food and medical care for those same kids?  anyone?

Call it politics, political science, and countries, and you will find different answers with the same questions.

I realize this blog is scattered and unorganized and all that, but it's my blog and I am awfully short on time since I have kids and everything... leave a comment if you disagree or feel you have anything to say on the topic...