Interesting Questions on Children and the FLDS
Jason Kuznicki on Apr 29th 2008
Here’s a fascinating exchange between Kerry Howley and Timothy Sandefur regarding the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (noted previously here and here). I should add that subsequent details about police and court procedure both before and after the raid on the FLDS compound have been very troubling to me, making me doubt my previous, uncomplicated endorsement of the state’s actions.
However, being troubled by both the state and the FLDS does not make one any less a radical for individualism. It’s perfectly conceivable that giving more control to either one means that individualism loses. Highly controlling environments like the FLDS may indeed approach the status of a government, Howley argues, and I’m certainly prepared to think of them this way. But then, there’s an actual government on the scene, too, and it’s worth worrying about that as well.
I’ve also long thought that libertarianism is the most humane way to view adults in society, but that it breaks down when applied to children. This need not be a problem with libertarianism in itself, but only an admission that all great explanatory models have their limits. One simply can’t presume that a child has the autonomy or independent decisionmaking skills necessary to act as an agent of her own self-interest. This is what libertarianism demands of adults, and I believe that virtually all adults can do it, even if many adults aren’t willing to, and even if many others are convinced that they can run other people’s lives just a little bit better. The adults who want to run things they shouldn’t are the more profound or radical challenges to libertarianism; for libertarians, deciding the status of children will always be at best a question of where to draw the borders, not a challenge to the fundamentals.
I don’t have much of a problem, then, in saying that children have a limited set of positive rights — that is, of social obligations that adults need to provide to them, for a limited time, until they reach adulthood. A newborn baby can’t feed itself, after all, and from that point forward children in some sense must have positive rights, otherwise we would simply be bringing them into the world to let them die — an absurdity.
It’s not at all ridiculous to think that children also have to be taught how to use their rationality. They must be taught to speak and to read, at the bare minimum. These things aren’t automatic, and so much less are highly abstract concepts like freedom, justice, or the rule of law.
I am well aware that there is some paradox involved in an authority figure teaching a child to value independence and even to question authority figures. But this kind of teaching is clearly not impossible. Clearly some societies have done a good job of this kind of teaching, while many others have taught near-total submission to authority. To keep the freedoms that we have, it is important that our children learn the values of liberty — among them being able to question received social conventions.
Worth noting: Much of the best children’s and young-adult literature does this very well. Consider “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “Horton Hears a Who!” and (though not all) of Robert Heinlein’s young-adult fiction. This is not to say of course that the FLDS is out there teaching their kids — as I will — to think for themselves. It’s only to note that the love of liberty isn’t mystically acquired out of the ether.
Update: Howley responds, reminding readers of the other side of intensively polygynous marriage — the discarded boys. If you don’t throw them out by the dozen, the math just doesn’t add up. She quotes from this AP story:
Damned by his religion, denied by his family and left with nowhere else to go, the teenager slept in a cold tool shed just steps from a company owned by his relatives.
They went home at night to warm, cozy beds while Tom Sam Steed stole bread, cereal and nutrition bars from a gas station just to survive. He tried, several times, to kill himself, convinced that he was worth nothing.
His salvation came when he got a job cleaning carpets and finally left the control of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and its leader, Warren Jeffs.
Former members describe a religion that thrives on domination. Every detail of their life was scripted—from plural marriages to what they could wear, who they could associate with and what job they could have. In the last 4 1/2 years, more than 400 teenage boys have been excommunicated, many for seemingly minor infractions such as watching a movie or talking to a girl.
“You’re taught that everyone out here is corrupt and evil,” Steed said. “You have no idea how life works, no idea how to survive in modern society.” They are, after all, only teens, but now they are on their own.
I hope this doesn’t sound sexist, but our society would never tolerate this being done to girls. And I hope this doesn’t sound like overly facile atheism, but our society likewise would never tolerate this if the agent were a business rather than a religion.
Filed in The Bistro, The Bureau
Jason, I’m curious as to how you see this interacting with issues like education.
Public school ranks fairly high on most libertarian’s lists of State Evils. But if we accept that children are unable to exercise their self-interest, and therefore have certain positive rights, then it seems to change the framework of the debate from a contest of principles (Public school is an imposition, private school is not) to one of merits (Which is the most effective way of insuring the positive rights of children). What are your thoughts?
[...] The eminently reasonable Jason Kuznicki weighs in: [B]eing troubled by both the state and the FLDS does not make one any less a radical for individualism. It’s perfectly conceivable that giving more control to either one means that individualism loses. Highly controlling environments like the FLDS may indeed approach the status of a government, Howley argues, and I’m certainly prepared to think of them this way. But then, there’s an actual government on the scene, too, and it’s worth worrying about that as well. [...]
I wrote something very similar to your thoughts here about children on my blog: http://exercisesanity.com/blog/?p=43.
To answer Alan’s question for myself: I agree with you — children do have positive rights. I don’t like our public school system, but I’d be very happy with a voucher-like system where schools are subject to market pressures and competition.
I justify public school funding to myself with the following logic. The only things government should use taxpayer money for are for things that benefit everyone equally, and that people do not have the ability to opt out of. For example: police protection. You get the benefit of police protection whether you want it or not — everyone benefits from a lawful society.
Things like healthcare however, people can clearly opt out of — I don’t have to go the hospital, and I can choose what hospital to go to. These kinds of things should be “pay as you go”. Anything in this class is out of the scope of proper government. Luckily, there are very few things that fall into the first class — the traditional libertarian view would most likely include only the police, the military, and the courts.
I would add education because everyone in a society benefits when there are more smart, well-educated people around contributing to the free market.
I’ve also long thought that libertarianism is the most humane way to view adults in society, but that it breaks down when applied to children.
Aye, this is the nexus, Jason. Wack parents or the state?
In my ideal world, there would indeed be only private schools. A child who in my ideal world became a ward of the state would be placed as quickly as possible with adoptive parents. Children in foster care could receive educational vouchers. Biological parents would be understood to be the providers for children’s needs whenever this was possible.
How best to remove children from abusive parents is a more difficult question. Any solution is going to be imperfect, whether because of over- or undersensitivity, what researchers call type I or type II errors. We would both hate to miss cases of abuse and hate to remove children when no real abuse was happening — which is itself a form of child abuse.
In the old days, with an extended family nearby, I suspect that suppressing child abuse was actually not all that much easier: With very conservative family norms came deference to a child’s parents and a willingness to look the other way.
One more thing: I think the Type 1 and Type 2 distinction is crucial here. Is the greater danger missing a few cases of abuse that are unclear calls or yanking kids away from their families? I’d rather risk the former to avoid the latter, admitting that neither is good.
Jason, to me it seems that depriving children of a good education is child abuse — you are effectively handicapping them for the rest of their lives. In many cases, this form of “abuse” is not entirely under the control of the parents. Without a publicly-funded education system, many well-meaning parents will not be able to provide an adequate foundation for their children, and we will be stuck with a perpetual underclass.
It seems that if you accept the premise that children have some positive rights, the right to an education isn’t that big of a leap.
Braxton, a publicly-funded education system sanctions the idea that some of us are obligated to provide for other people’s children. Not a good idea. And who should determine what constitutes a “good education”?
Steven: We’ve already accepted the position, at least within the context of this thread, that to a certain extent, we’re responsible for other people’s children in terms of protecting them from abuse. Libertarian principles, of which I am a staunch supporter, cannot be applied justly to children — they have neither the capacity to make rational choices about their future, or the capacity to act in their own best interests.
Adults have the responsibility to accept the consequences of their actions, but to say that a child should bear the consequences of their parents actions (say, for instance, parents not being able to afford a good education, abuse, or neglect) seems cruel to me.
Defining a “good education” is certainly tricky, but our current public school system is a travesty by almost any definition. If we could provide a free-market environment for education, however, the standards would surely improve by orders of magnitude under any definition.
Braxton, four days ago on your blog, you said that, ideally, you would like to see the income tax abolished (April 26 posting - Taxes). That’s a great idea, but just how do you reconcile that with a publicly-funded education system?
I agree that we all have a right to intervene in the case of anyone that is being abused or taken advantage of by others. What we don’t have is a right to force someone else to join us in doing so.
I’m not sure what abolishing the income tax has to do with public education. Public education is currently largely funded through property taxes, not income taxes.
How do you feel about government funded police or military? Do you believe the government should force people to pay for them? Both the police and the military benefit our society in a passive way — it’s not feasible for any one person to opt out of this kind of coverage, therefore the cost must be shared. Do you agree with this, or do you believe that police should not be publicly funded?
Braxton, I don’t believe in funding anything through coercion, and that includes the military and the police. Not by income taxes, not by property taxes, not by any taxes. No individual or institution, including government, has any right to initiate force against individuals that have not first initiated force against others. And taxes are an initiation of force against individuals who have not inititated force against others.
The man who lives in peace and refrains from trespassing against the rights of others has fulfilled his obligation to society. Anything else should be based strictly on individual consent. Society should be governed through persuation, not coercion.
Steven, I believe your position is not feasible in practice. Are you going to open a contract with a private police agency if you get robber or assaulted? Are you going to contract with a private defense firm to protect you against other nation-states?
Say you have a group of 100 people living in close proximity. 99 of them pony up the money to provide for “national defense” — the one person living in their midst who hasn’t paid nonetheless reaps the benefit of having a defensive system by sheer proximity. That one person, is in effect, forcing the other people to provide for his defense, as there is no way to provide defense on a smaller granularity.
Thus, in our current world political system, government will always need to exist and raise taxes through some means to fund its (hopefully minimal) activities.
We still must make the distinction, for adults, of positive and negative rights. Another way to look at my argument above is this: everyone has a moral duty to protect other people’s rights where it is practically feasible. Are you going to say “I don’t have a duty to prevent a rape or murder if I see one in progress?” — I would find that position abhorrent. The way a civilized society provides this kind of protection is through the police and the military.
Where libertarians differ from liberals (Democrats, not “classic” liberals) is that liberals tend to believe that people also have a duty to protect “positive” rights — thus, we have them trying to guarantee healthcare.
Now, I can imagine a policital structure (and here the system in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age comes to mind) where nation states are not geographically-based, membership is completely optional, and you are guaranteed the right to change membership, your argument may make more sense.
Braxton, you might want to read these two articles. They give what I consider to be a good description of how a voluntary society might function, along with several historical examples of societies without government.
The Enterprise of Customary Law, by Bruce L. Benson at http://mises.org/story/2542
The Obviousness of Anarchy by John Hasnas at http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/Obvious.pdf
*sigh*
Steven, you’re giving me SIWOTI syndrome.
I may read them tomorrow.
Yes, this seemed to be descending into anarchy…
Sorry, Braxton. But I think that you will find these articles to be a very wise investment of your time. I found their contents to be very interesting and enlightening.
I think it’s important to make the distinction between Libertarianism, Anarcho-Capitalism, and Anarchy proper. They may look the same to someone on the other end of the political spectrum, but they’re definitely not so.
Libertarianism has the goal of maximizing liberty with the realization that at least some minimal government is still needed.
Anarcho-Capitalism pushes this further and eliminates government in favor of a fully Free Market based approach.
Anarchy proper does away with the Free Market part.
Responding to Brax’s previous post:
> Say you have a group of 100 people living in close proximity. [...]
> That one person, is in effect, forcing the other people to provide
> for his defense, as there is no way to provide defense on a smaller
> granularity.
Do Home Owner Associations count as a “government”? HOA dues (or equivalent at larger scales than your local street) can be used for for “defense” or “policing”.
You don’t get the allocation granularity you want (ie: live in place X but be protected by Y), but given that you do get to pick where you live, you still get to chose the level of protection vs cost of said protection.
(I’m no fan of anarcho-capitalism, but there is no need to resort to strawmen).
There’s a good discussion regarding the various forms of anarchy by Bryan Caplan called Anarchist Theory FAQ. You can view it at http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/gcaplan/anarfaq.htm.
Correction:
There’s a good discussion regarding the various forms of anarchy by Bryan Caplan called Anarchist Theory FAQ. You can view it at http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/anarfaq.htm.
Sorry for the error.
What I’ve always wondered about non-capitalist anarchists is how they would prevent a market economy from arising. I think it would, all of its own accord. Preventing force or fraud within it, though, would require something like a government. And stamping out that market would require something even more like a government.
Aww Jason, you’re killing me. I was hoping for a critique of my public (financed) education argument, since you seem to disagree.
As to RobertO’s post. I don’t see how my argument is a strawman, and I don’t see how your HOA example does anything but prove my point. People are “forced” to pay HOA dues because when they move into a neighborhood they sign a contract agreeing to do so. HOA dues are then used to improve and maintain the common ground in the neighborhood — but hopefully for things that only benefit everyone equally. That is, they shouldn’t be used to subsidize a few people who can’t afford to maintain their home or whatnot.
As I pointed out two posts ago, under our current political system, we don’t get fine granularity choice about where to live and nation-states are geographically-based, and membership isn’t therefor entirely voluntary. Reading Steven’s anarchist FAQ, I suppose the alternative political system I was thinking of would be classified as anarcho-capitalist. I hadn’t previously considered it such due to the existence of governments that are not geographically-oriented.
I’m also not a fan of anarcho-capitalism — not convinced that it’s practically feasible. I tend to take Rand’s view on this (though certainly not on all things).
There’s only so much time in the day, man!
Jason, to me it seems that depriving children of a good education is child abuse — you are effectively handicapping them for the rest of their lives. In many cases, this form of “abuse” is not entirely under the control of the parents. Without a publicly-funded education system, many well-meaning parents will not be able to provide an adequate foundation for their children, and we will be stuck with a perpetual underclass.
James Tooley has done some work on private education for the very poorest of the world’s poor, and he has found that where such systems are allowed to operate, they often accomplish far more with far less than one could possibly imagine. See “Private Education is Good for the Poor: A Study of Private Schools Serving the Poor in Low-Income Countries.” Cato Institute white paper, 2005.
> People are “forced” to pay HOA dues because when they move into
> a neighborhood they sign a contract agreeing to do so.
Wait, people are required to honor the contract they voluntarily signed? The horror! And here I thought you didn’t like anarcho-capitalism :)
Hrm… Jason, I’m not sure that study (too long to read the whole thing though) has convinced me of anything but that the free market does wonderful things. Which I already knew :P
I have no doubt that the private schools in India are better than the public ones; it’s true here. I also have no doubt they get better bang for their buck; also true here.
But I also cannot help think how effective our schools would be at their current level of funding if we allowed market forces to operate freely. So, I guess my answer is: Yes, private schools work, but I still think that children have positive rights, and as such, we have a duty to guarantee funding for their education.
Braxton, as Roy Childs said in his Open Letter to Ayn Rand: “Once the principal of the initiation of force has been accepted, we have granted the premise of statists of all breeds, and the rest, as you have said so eloquently, is just a matter of time.”
I don’t buy the slippery slope argument. There are legitimate uses for government and valid ways to restrict the growth of governments.
My argument to Jason was that if he accepts the premise that children have positive rights, and that people have a duty to uphold the rights of others, then why not publicly-financed education?
As for your anarcho-capitalist approach, let me put my view this way. Say we woke up tomorrow and the world was transformed such that nation-states are not geographically defined (or at least not strictly so), and membership in any particular nation-state is voluntary. Then I would choose to be a member of a nation-state that maximized personal liberty while still collecting some minimum of taxes to provide for common defense and other things, such as publicly-financed education. Nothing would be forced - if you don’t like this kind of minimalist government, you could change your allegiance. Let’s call this Nation A.
You could choose to join a nation that did not have a central government and is essentially in anarchy. I’m not sure how this would be different from being unaffiliated with any nation, but for the sake of argument, let’s call this Nation B.
Now, there would exist other nations that might be Theocratic, militant, communist, or whatever. Let’s pick a nation modeled after North Korea, and call this Nation C.
I believe that in the long run, Nation A will be more equipped to develop new technology quickly, defend itself from Nation C, and provide for a better way of life than Nation B. Nation A will maximize productivity, happiness, and quality of life.
So, given that scenario, and the unlikeliness of achieving such a radical transformation of geopolitical system, I want to make the U.S. as close to Nation A as possible.
Good luck restricting the growth of an institution that is granted a monoploy on the lawfull use of force.