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Libertarianism: What About the Children?
Why does libertarianism seem to insufficiently care about children? It appears to only be concerned about the rights of adults while brushing off the consequences to children.
At first blush, this is a legitimate complaint. In libertarian world, there would be — for instance — easier access to harder drugs, which will lead to inevitable child/drug interactions. Obviously, it’s in our interest to minimize this, and what better way to minimize child/drug interaction than simply minimizing the amount of drugs?
The problem is this neglects the fact that, in the vast majority of cases, no one cares about a child more than their parents. Among all the rights of adults, the right (and responsibilities) of adults to their children is paramount, and the rights of good parents must be protected before we worry about the consequences of poor ones. Libertarians believe state authority is no replacement for parental authority. Instilling necessary morals into children can only be accomplished by their parents, families, and other close responsible adults.
Some people believe parenting is hard enough without extra temptations. They fear that, despite their best efforts, drugs will find their way into their children. Libertarians see this as a risk inherent to a free society. People differ greatly in the things they find objectionable and permissive, and the best thing to do is remain neutral, lest the government have the power to tell us what we can eat, for whom we must bake cakes, and from whom we are allowed to obtain medical care.
Does this mean there will be tragic stories that could have potentially been avoided under a more restrictive society? It does. But it also means that parents will unquestionably understand the state will not be there to do their job for them; a service that is largely a fiction, and one that causes immense harm.
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Thank you!
Ha! In case you didn’t notice, I merely eviscerated yours.
Aren’t you the one arguing for changes? You want significant relaxation of drug laws, yes? I think it’s quite possible that that’s a really bad idea. I don’t think we can responsibly dispense with the “threat to minors” concern on the argument, “well, that’s what parents are for.”
Some people here seem to think we’re in a kind of all-or-nothing dilemma, wherein the state either has to disavow all responsibility for children’s welfare (because that’s parents’ concern), or must assume primary responsibility for it, potentially replacing parents as the primary supervisory power. I don’t think it’s that straightforward. The state can’t just take over for parents, nor should it. But the welfare of minors is indeed a legitimate concern for any society, and that concern should very properly influence our views on law and public policy. Parents’ autonomy isn’t in any noteworthy way jeopardized by the non-availability of legal pot, but their job might be a little easier and more manageable, and kids with bad parents might be somewhat less likely to fall prey to vicious, debilitating habits. Those are goods. We should have no objection to adding them to our calculus.
There are also downsides, relating to costs of enforcement, and the non-availability of pot to more legitimate adult users. A reasonable approach, I think, is to weigh out those costs and benefits. An unreasonable approach is to dismiss the risk to minors out of hand on the grounds that it’s not the state’s concern.
You make my point exactly, except that you still are fixated on absolute individual rights. Some individual rights have to be mitigated. You still have to pay taxes to support the community and the country. That is a limitation on individual’s right to keep everything and give what he desires. There are a million laws that limit absolute individualism for the community and family.
You’re adorable.
Of course some individual rights are mitigated by legitimate functions of the state. This is the reason I included the section on negative rights in the comment you quoted. In the end though rights are held by the individual, we may abrogate them to do certain limited things collectively (such as pay taxes to support a military and legal system) but the concept of the government or the collective having the “right” to do that is incorrect. We give it the ability to violate individual rights when there is no other way to accomplish a certain goal. e.g. National Defense.
Rachel, I have a question regarding drug legalization and children.
Is it better for the child to potentially expose him to marijuana use or to jail the child’s father for 10 years breaking up the family?
Wow. You seem like a very nice person, but you’re living in a fantasy land.
I went to a good private high school in CT. In my class, there was exactly one person who had never tried an illegal drug. One. (No, it wasn’t me.) This despite the fact that these drugs were illegal. I’m told that they’re just as available in my daughter’s schools, public ones in a town near the one in which I went to school. They’re still illegal.
Drug prohibition is such a comprehensive, utter failure from an empirical perspective that to sit here and read your argument that it’s a reasonable means to protect our children is like reading something out of a wildly unrealistic science fiction novel.
Illegal drugs are widely available wherever you go in this country. The prohibition of them has had so little effect on availability that it’s hard to imagine that they’d possibly become more available. Every child is already faced with the choice of whether or not to try them.
So in a nutshell, I find it hard to believe that legalization will increase drug use in our children, and more than ending prohibition of alcohol caused all our kids to become drunks.
What prohibition does do is subsidize the two groups that do actually pose an additional threat to our children: the police state, and the criminal element. You could not come up with a better scheme to promote those two elements than to criminalize drugs. (I’ll note that this is exactly what has happened with the high cigarette taxes that the Fascists running NYC instituted to protect children: they’ve created a whole new business to enrich organized crime, and a whole new rationale for people to be victimized by the police, like that poor guy strangled in Staten Island.)
Scientific method has one basic principle: if you have a theory, and that theory is contradicted by real-world observation, your theory is wrong. This is simple empiricism: it’s how you gather reliable knowledge.
The notion that drug prohibition “protects” anyone is a failed theory on the order of the flat earth theory.
Children cannot be thought of (or treated as) individuals in the libertarian sense. Because they can’t, this impinges on the freedom of adult individuals in an unlibertarian manner. That’s the point that people like me, Rachel, Manny, et al., are trying to make.
No but we can treat their adult parents as individuals with the right to raise those children as they see fit. I guarantee that no matter how much you think you care about children, you will not care about my future children’s well-being more than I will.
Those are prudential questions that have to be weighed.
But to answer Tuck… I am aware, of course, that compliance with current drug law is a little shy of perfect. I went to high school in Boulder, CO, where drugs were pretty widely accepted even in the nineties. But the suggestion that legalization won’t increase use seems ridiculous to me. Once drugs are legal, companies can run their above-the-board product research, find their primary market, and figure out ways to advertise and deliver the product in ways that will encourage their intended client base to buy as much as possible. Of course they try to do that now too, but it’s a whole lot harder when you have to do it all under the table. Can’t set your cannabis candy next to the beef jerky, can’t take out a billboard on I-95. All the stuff legal businesses do when they want to, you know, sell stuff.
Will capitalists be more successful in their efforts to increase and then fill demand if they use normal channels? To answer that question in the negative, you have to pretty much ignore everything we know about capitalism and how it works. Of course they will.
We can put certain restrictions on how legal pot is sold and advertised (no pot candy in Toys-R-Us, no commercials on Nickelodeon), but basically, legalization massively expands their reach. Capitalists tend to know their business. They’ll get the drugs to the people, and persuade them that they want more.
I really think, Tuck, that you’re the one living in a fantasy world. You seem to think that:
— People aren’t very influenced by advertising and product placement and the like.
— Legal peddlers of drugs won’t be involved with the criminal element in other ways.
— Police can’t find ways to use increased addiction to increase their power.
Maybe you also think that parents are totally capable of persuading their kids not to use stuff that’s readily available in local stores.
Again, I’m not denying that there are problems with the current system, but I think the pro-legalization crowd is wildly optimistic about how well this whole legalization strategy is going to work out.
Its a good thing we currently have an experiment running to determine exactly what the effects will be.
It’s not just legitamate functions of the state. There are a slew of laws that people want that go against absolute individual liberty. Mandetory education, even with vouchers, takes away freedom to choose. Tax breaks for children, for mortgage interest, and gov’t support for children’s healthcare all go against Libertarian principles and there is no way society would ever contemplate eliminating them. Even something as miniscule as a local ordinance requiring a person’s lawn to be cut (to maintain property values) is a reduction of individual liberty for community purposes. There are a million such laws. That’s why we have the Bill of Rights, because the norm is reducing absolute individual liberty.