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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:00:55
Does Spanking Violate the Non-Aggression Principle? - Walter Block Debates Stefan Molyneux
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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
I hope you're doing very well.
This is a debate which I'm sure some people will say will result in a spanking of one or the other but it is actually about spanking the ethics, the evidence for and against the practice of spanking which I will define and it's a very general definition.
My pleasure.
as the open-handed striking of a child on the buttocks or some other extremity, not with the goal of causing physical harm, but with the goal of changing behavior through negative reinforcement.
I'm sure that's going to be fairly acceptable.
On the other side of the aisle is Dr. Walter Block.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
My pleasure.
Pleasure to be with you always.
All right.
So, I'll start with, I think the best way to approach these kinds of questions is a brief combination of reason and evidence.
You know, that's sort of the one-two, hopefully, that can help unobscure a moral question.
So, let's start a little bit with the evidence and then we'll jump into the theory.
Spanking is, this is particularly true in the US and the UK.
It's one of the most common strategies for reducing undesired behaviors in children.
Over 90% of American families report having used spanking as a means of discipline at one time or another and more than half of 13 to 14 year olds are still being spanked an average of eight times a year.
Almost 70% of American parents think spanking is not only good but essential.
to child's rearing, and 90% of parents spank their toddlers at least three times a week, two-thirds spank their toddlers once a day.
One in four parents begin to spank when their child is six months old, 50% when their child is 12 months old, and 52% of 13 and 14-year-olds get spanked, as mentioned, as do 20% of high school seniors.
So it is something that most parents feel quite ambivalent about.
According to the studies, 93% of parents justify spanking, but 85% say that they'd rather not if they had some sort of acceptable alternative that they could really, really believe in.
There is, in terms of the effects on children, there is a 93% agreement in scientific studies that spanking is harmful to children.
Now, that missing 7% might sound like a lot, but in the realm of social sciences, a 93% agreement is I think beyond platinum to a diamond standard of correlation.
Spanking has been shown in a wide variety of studies over the past 20 or 30 years to lead to more antisocial behavior in childhood and increased aggression to increasing potential for spousal abuse when the child grows up and child abuse in adulthood.
One study shows that disciplining children by spanking puts youngsters at risk for becoming aggressive, antisocial, and chronically defiant.
A woman who's been on my show, Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff, analyzed 88 studies over the years to determine the effects of spanking on child behaviors.
And apart from immediate compliance, the research showed that spanking had negative effects on other behaviors.
So very briefly, Children who are spanked and slapped are twice as likely to develop alcohol addiction, other drug abuse problems, increased rates of anxiety disorders, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, antisocial behavior, and to some extent depression.
Spanking by parents can significantly damage a child's mental abilities and result in lower IQ.
Later in life suggests a study from the University of New Hampshire And they also looked at corporal punishment practices in 32 countries and found a lower average IQ in nations in which spanking was more prevalent.
I've got a video called The Facts About Spanking where the graphs are sort of all gone into kids who are physically punished.
Again, this is not beating, this is not hitting with implements, this is legal spanking according to the definition earlier.
Kids who are physically punished had up to a five point lower IQ score than kids who weren't.
And the more the children were spanked, the lower the IQ.
In other words, it's dose-dependent, which is a strong evidence, I think, of correlation.
A study shows that corporal punishment slows the development of mental ability, particularly in children from two to six.
And parents who experience frequent corporal punishment are more likely to perceive it as acceptable and more likely to spank their own children.
And just one or two more here.
Thanks for your patience.
Frequent use of corporal punishment, which is a mother's use of spanking more than twice in the previous month when the child was three years of age, was associated with increased risk for higher levels of child aggression when the child was five years old.
Even controlling for baseline antisocial behavior, the more three- to six-year-old children were hit, the worse their behavior was when assessed three years later.
There are social problems, life problems.
Corporal punishment is associated with increased levels of aggression and is a predictor of delinquency, violence, and crime in later life and is, of course, as mentioned, a risk factor for child abuse.
And this is 12 of 13 recent studies found corporal punishment associated with a higher probability of delinquent and antisocial behaviors.
So there's a bit of a sort of firing cannon of correlational studies.
One counter argument, of course, is that the more difficult children are, the more they get spanked.
And researchers have spent quite a lot of time and energy trying to tease this correlation out.
And they've had some significant success.
They're limited by the fact that you can't have a sort of double-blind control group experiment wherein you tell one set of parents to hit and one set of parents to use in negotiation or some other non-coercive technique.
Because you would never have that approved because spanking is marked as harmful by the Canadian Pediatric Association, by the American Pediatric Association and so on.
marked as harmful by the Canadian Pediatric Association, by the American Pediatric Association, and so on, you can't actually have it administered to children as part of an experiment.
You can't actually have it administered to children as part of an experiment.
So what they have done is they've done studies where they show little boys aggressive videos or videos of children being treated aggressively and then let them play with dolls.
So what they have done is they've done studies where they show little boys aggressive videos or videos of children being treated aggressively and then let them play with dolls.
And they found a very strong correlation that after being exposed to aggressive behavior, the boys are more aggressive afterwards.
This is considered to be some evidence towards the fact that it is the spanking that is causing the aggression.
It is not the more aggressive children who are being spanked more.
I don't think that's been fully confirmed, but it's fairly well established, though I wouldn't put that on the absolute column.
So, you know, it's very briefly, the study shows spanking leads to increased child aggression, increased delinquent and antisocial behavior, decreased quality of parent-child relationships, decreased child mental health, increased physical abuse, increased adult aggression, increased adult criminal behavior, decreased adult mental health, and an increased adult criminal behavior, decreased adult mental health, and an increased risk of abusing one's own spouse or child.
Now, the With all of that disaster scenario there, I fully accept that there are a large number of people who were spanked who turned into very nice people as adults who don't exhibit these kinds of behaviors.
Nonetheless, no parent knows ahead of time which of the epigenetic factors are going to be triggered by spanking.
There are latent genes which seem to be activated by physical abuse or even just spanking, and you don't know ahead of time.
You know, some people who smoke Don't die of smoking.
That doesn't mean that smoking is safe.
So to depersonalize it a little bit, I'm not saying that this is the case for all children who were spanked, but there do seem to be some negative results from spanking that are pretty substantial.
And there are, I think, some good moral arguments against spanking, but rather than monopolize the entire conversation, I'll turn it over to you.
Wow.
Maybe we should have done more research into who had which views and exactly what we're debating about.
And I'm not even sure that we're having a debate because there's not one word that I disagree with you of what you said.
Interest in this subject is, I think, much less than yours.
You've done a lot of homework, and I have really nothing to say about what you just said, except, you know, it makes sense to me, it sounds reasonable, and I've done no research on this, so I certainly wouldn't want to disagree with that.
I approach this in a very, very different way.
Not so much from the utilitarian, which I characterize your statements as being a part of, just utilitarian, you know, spanking has thus and such harmful effects.
My interest in spanking is, is it compatible with libertarianism?
Is spanking per se a violation of the non-aggression principle?
And therefore, even if spanking had good effects, which I'll stipulate that you're right, it doesn't have good effects, but even suppose it did, or whether it does or not, it doesn't matter, do parents have a right to spank?
And I see this is a very different issue, and I'm sure you'll have something to say about that in your second go-around, but let me get in my five minutes or so, and then we'll have more like a conversation back and forth.
To me, the issue is not just spanking, but initiatory violence.
If I were to spank you or kidnap you or put you in a room and close the door or something or anything, to me it's all part of the package.
Like if I give you a time out and you have to stand in the corner or whatever it is, you're an adult and if I did that, that would be a clear violation of the non-aggression principle and it would be incompatible with libertarianism.
The way I see things, again, I'm not talking deontology or rights.
I'm not talking about utilitarianism.
As I say, we really have no debate or nothing worth debating on utilitarian issues because I haven't studied this and I'll accept what you say, just arguendo.
But to me, children are not fully rights-bearing creatures.
Children are sort of intermediate between animals and other adults.
Animals have no rights.
I don't think that if you kill a cow or something, you're violating the libertarian non-aggression principle.
Whereas if you kill another person, you certainly are.
And if you use violence or initiatory I like the approach.
Since somehow I lost your picture.
Now I see my picture, but I don't see your smiling face anymore, Stefan.
I just see a picture of you.
No, I like the approach.
I think the ethics argument is more interesting, so I'm glad we're doing that.
Right.
Michael, I would say I'd like the whole unexpurgated thing, you know, don't edit it out.
Even with these glitches, it's fine with me.
Okay, so I'll continue.
I assume that the audience will have heard my opening statement of about a minute or two.
The way I see it, the key for us libertarian deontologists or rights theoreticians is to Get clear on the relationship of parents and children, and the way I see it, it's sort of like homesteading.
You homestead some land, you mix your labor with it, you get to own it.
With children, you homestead the children, too, by having intercourse and having your wife produce the child, and you're sort of mixing your labor with it, the parents mix their labor with the children, only they don't get to own the child as a slave, but they do get to own the guardianship rights.
So that if Bill Gates comes along to Stéphane Molyneux and says, hey Stéphane, I can give your kid a better life than you can, therefore I'm taking your kid from you, this would be unacceptable because as long as Stéphane is being a good guardian, namely guarding his kid, feeding the kid, taking care of the kid, he has the guardianship rights to the kid, and even if it can be proven that Bill Gates can give Stéphane's kid a better life, still Bill Gates can't take his kid away from him.
So the question comes, can you use violence, or can you treat your child in a different way than you can treat a fellow adult?
And I say yes, and you're still compatible with the Libertarian Non-Aggression Principle, or NAP, because it doesn't apply to kids.
It doesn't apply to kids fully, because kids are...
Kids!
And not just kids, but people with Alzheimer's or dementia or what have you.
There was this case in North Vancouver just yesterday or the day before where a 75-year-old woman who had dementia and had some sort of ankle bracelet or wrist bracelet that wouldn't let her get out of the old person's home.
And somehow it didn't work.
And she got out and walked in the woods, and it's very cold now in Canada, and she died.
Well, you know, if I would have put a wrist around Michael DiMarco or Stefan Molyneux and keep them in a certain place, I could only be justified if they were criminals and I were, you know, a police or, you know, a prison guard or what have you.
So I think it's perfectly reasonable to use, to treat children differently than adults because I favor paternalism for children, whereas libertarianism certainly opposes paternalism.
Namely, we don't want the big daddy or big mommy government telling us what to do for our own good, but we have the right as guardians to tell our kids what to do for their own benefit.
And if we don't, we're really not good guardians.
So it's not just a matter of spanking.
It's also a matter of, you know, times out or what have you.
Let me give you a case that happened with me and my son when he was, I don't know, three years old or four years old.
I forget exactly how old he was.
We'd go to a restaurant and he wouldn't be quite big enough to use the urinal.
So what I did is I sort of propped him up on my feet and I held him up and so that his penis wouldn't touch the urinal.
He wanted his penis to touch the urinal.
He was desperate to have his penis touch the urinal.
When I prevented it, he would start crying and fighting me, and I use physical abuse or physical violence.
I held him under the shoulders, and I wouldn't let his penis touch the urinal, and I think I was eminently justified.
And if I didn't do that, I think I would be a bad guardian.
So my view is that I'm trying to get clear on the libertarian theory on children, and my theory is that you have the right to.
Now, whether it's good or bad for them, again, that's a utilitarian issue, which is sort of apart from our main discussion, because I think we agree on that, or at least I don't disagree.
So that's my opening statement.
And now, I guess, Stefan, it's your turn.
Well, thanks.
So I think we can both agree that children are not in the same moral category as adults, of course.
I mean, they lack independence, they can't enter into contracts, they can't work for themselves, and of course they are legally and economically dependent upon the goodwill of the parents.
I think we both agree it would be crazy to say that a three-year-old has the same moral stature as an adult.
The question then becomes whether the moral stature for a child should be higher or lower than an adult.
And the way I sort of view it is certainly you are responsible for your children, you choose to have them, but they are not really like any other property in that you aim for independence, right?
So you don't have your car in order to set your car free in some So I think we could make a case that children need to be treated with a higher moral standard rather than a lower moral standard.
children you grow and release into society.
So there is of course a responsibility for parents to grow their children in that direction, which means to give them the best possible training and reason with them as much as possible and prepare them for the adult world and so on.
So I think we could make a case that children need to be treated with a higher moral standard rather than a lower moral standard.
So I've got a couple of rules that I think we can evaluate something like spanking by.
Now clearly spanking just on the face of it is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
It is the initiation force.
Now holding your child away from something dangerous, I don't really think that that's, that's not spanking, right?
Now if you did that, if you, if you didn't tell him about it and explain it to him and so on and then you just kept doing that into his teens, that might be somewhat suboptimal.
So I think as far as spanking goes, it is the initiation of force in that it clearly, it is the initiation of physical aggression, and it is not in self-defense.
I mean, unless your child is very adept at flinging knives at you, it is not in self-defense.
So the question is, is it justifiable in terms of the child's safety and security, which as I think, Walter, the argument that you're making, the godforsaken hellspawn of germs on the urinal going into your child's penis, not very positive.
And we do allow for the initiation of force, I think, in reasonable moral systems.
In situations where, like, a blind guy is wandering into traffic, he's about to get creamed by a bus, and we tackle him, he'll probably get up and say, thank you for saving my life, and not press charges for tumbling him to the pavement.
So there are times where you can initiate force.
Some of the examples that are often given by parents with regards to young children is the boiling pot of water on the stove.
where the child is reaching for it.
And of course, the idea is that spanking the child, to have them not do that is far better or far less of an injurious state than allowing the pot of boiling water to fall on the child or running into the street, that kind of stuff.
And first of all, of course, it is, I think we all understand, the parent's responsibility to create a safe environment for the child, right?
I mean, you wouldn't want a boa constrictor in the child's crib and say, don't touch the boa constrictor or I'll spank you.
I mean, that would be kind of a trap and not a very good way to approach parenting.
And if there's tons of stuff you can do, you build fences around the yard, you use the back burner, you turn the handle away from the child.
Lots of things that you can do and you coach the child on what heat is and why to stay away and all that kind of stuff.
Childproof the house.
If the child is in a dangerous situation, then I would argue that that's probably more the responsibility of the parent than it is something that the child needs to be punished for, since it is the parent's responsibility to create a safe environment.
If there's something dangerous that is occurring, the first place to look is the actions of the parent rather than punish the child.
So I think you can violate the non-aggression principle in a moral manner if it's an unforeseeable crisis.
In other words, if nothing could be prepared for something like that.
If the initiation of force is the only possible remedy in the moment, in other words, if just grabbing the blind guy about to wander into traffic is the only thing that I could do.
Maybe he's got headphones and he can't hear me talk or something like that.
And if the victim would almost certainly give his consent in the moment, if it were possible.
In other words, if the blind guy wandering into traffic, we would reasonably imagine that he would say yes, if he knew the danger and this was the only way to save him, or if the victim gives his consent After the fact.
Like every time you use aggression, you're kind of gambling on whether somebody's going to be bothered by it or not.
Maybe there are people who aren't.
Now, in the case of the kid reaching for the pot of boiling water, it's not an unforeseen crisis in that it's well known ahead of time that this is dangerous and there's lots of things you can do about it.
Is the initiation of force the only possible remedy in that situation?
Well, no.
Because if you're close enough to hit the child, then you're close enough to move the child gently out of the way of danger.
Would the victim give his consent in the moment if it's possible?
No, because the whole point of spanking is the child desperately does not want it to happen, otherwise it doesn't really serve the purpose.
It's a little more complicated if we ask, does the victim give his consent after the fact?
Because there are, of course, a lot of people who say that they were spanked as children, they turned out fine, they're glad it happened, there's no problem with it.
Now this may, of course, mean that they have a better relationship with their parents, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's perfectly moral, because there are lots of people who don't know the negative effects of spanking, who haven't understood the alternatives and so on.
Like if someone steals a cardboard box of mine, I won't really care about it.
I may even be happy about it, because otherwise I'd have to throw it out, unless I find that my wife hid $20,000 worth of gold in there, in which case I'll be a little bit more bothered, because now I understand the negative consequences of that which didn't really bother me before.
So I think if we meet these four standards, then I think you can initiate force and still remain on the sunny side of the moral universe.
If the event is an unforeseeable crisis, if the initiation of force is the only possible remedy, if the victim would almost certainly give his consent in the moment if it were possible, or if the victim gives his consent after the fact.
So the example that's been tossed around is a guy hanging from a flagpole outside somebody's apartment building, outside somebody's apartment window.
Should not fall to his death, but rather should kick in the window and crawl to safety that way.
And that is an unforeseeable crisis.
So the balcony gave way, you grab the flagpole.
The initiation of force is the only possible remedy.
In other words, breaking property rights or initiating property damage.
The victim of the apartment would almost certainly give his consent in the moment if it were possible.
In other words, if you could phone the guy and say, listen, I'm about to fall to my death.
I'll fix your window.
Can I kick it in to save myself?
I mean, Everybody, except maybe three sociopaths in the universe, would say yes to that.
And of course the victim can give his consent after the fact and say, I'm really glad that you kicked in my window rather than fall to your death because that would be terrible.
So I think you can violate these things if a number of conditions are met.
I just don't think that spanking meets those conditions.
And I think that if you look at a lawyer who has care and custody of somebody's money, in other words, they're holding something in trust until a kid turns 18, Their right to use that money is restricted.
It is less than if that money were the lawyer's own.
And in the same way, we hold children in trust for the future, in trust for their adult selves.
And therefore, I would say that our moral standards should be higher, just as the lawyer's is with money that's not his, rather than lower.
Wow, you said a lot of stuff, interesting stuff, some of which I agree with, some of which I disagree with.
I don't know about this higher or lower standard, maybe approaching it orthogonally.
To me, I sort of put the blinders on and I try to narrow my focus on, you know, is Is spanking or the use of violence per se a violation of children's rights?
To me, again, spanking is just the tip of the iceberg.
It's just one instance.
There are many other things, times out, or grabbing people by the shoulders and pushing them out of the way of the oncoming truck.
In the case of the blind man, it's all the same.
Perhaps we shouldn't have agreed that The debate or the discussion, more like a discussion, I don't think we're that far apart on many things, is about spanking.
It's more about does the non-aggression principle apply to children in the same way that it applies to other people?
And I say no, and I hope to be able to convince you, or I think you're already half convinced, that it doesn't apply in the same way.
And I would put children in the same category as Alzheimer's or dementia people, people who just can't take care of themselves, and I think Paternalism is justified for them.
Getting back to my son and grabbing him away to keep him safe, I didn't spank him.
He was too young to understand anything, although one time he threw sand in his little sister's face, and I wanted to throw sand in his face to show him what it felt like, which would be roughly spanking or, you know, uh, heavy abuse or something.
My wife wouldn't let me and she's the boss, so I didn't get to do it, but I thought I would be justified just to show him how it felt.
And my daughter was crying and he didn't understand.
And this would be a good way to explain just what throwing sand in the face of, uh, of, uh, somebody really means.
Um, there are several, uh, criticisms of libertarianism that have been launched and I'm shocked that you've fallen for one of them.
Let me give you both of them.
Uh, The first one is by Milton Friedman, and what Milton Friedman says is, look, the NAP is no good, because here's a guy who's standing at the edge of a, what do you call it, a bridge, and he's about to jump and commit suicide, and what any reasonably nice person is going to do is grab him and say, you know, Don't jump.
Life is precious.
Life is wonderful.
Don't jump.
But meanwhile, you're using physical violence.
You're not spanking him, but you're kidnapping him.
You're keeping him from doing what he wants.
Now, in my own case, the way I deal with this one is I say, if I saw one of you two guys, Michael or Stefan, at the edge of a bridge and you were about to jump, I would grab you.
I would violate the non-aggression principle.
But the non-aggression principle really isn't the essence of libertarianism.
The essence of it, I think, is punishment theory.
What happens to me when I do that?
Now, if I would say to you after I grabbed you, let's say I'm bigger and stronger than you and I'm able to grab you and you don't push me into the water with you, but somehow I'm powerful enough to stop you or let's say you're smaller than me or whatever.
I would then ask you, I'd say, well, why are you jumping?
And if you said, well, you know, I'm in the last stages of an incurable disease and the pain is just terrific and I've had morphine up to my ears and it still hurts and it's excruciating.
Let me jump.
I would say, okay, well, you know.
It's unhappy, it's unfortunate, but if I were like that, I would jump too.
So I'm not gonna stop you.
On the other hand, if you said, well, your girlfriend broke up with you, or you got a bad mark in your class, I would then kidnap you for a day or so and try to, what is it, decommission you?
That's not the right word.
Deprogram you, I think it is.
Deprogram, and I try to say, you know, life goes on, there are other women, plenty of fish in the sea, or whatever.
But then after a day or so, I would let you go because, you know, I can't be a paternalist forever.
But the point is, now what happens to me?
Well, I did violate the non-aggression principle.
And I'm a criminal, so I should have some sort of sanction imposed on me.
And I use this case in the case of, can there be a Nazi concentration camp guard, a libertarian?
And the situation I offer is the following.
All Nazi concentration camp guards have to kill 100 Jews, blacks, gypsies, gays, whatever, a day.
But the libertarian one will only kill 90 because he has to kill 90.
Otherwise, they'll see him for what he is, namely not really enthusiastic about killing people.
But he does it, and he does it in order to save 10 people a day.
Instead of killing 100, he kills 90.
So at the end of the week, he's killed 630 people, but he saved 90, as opposed to the ordinary concentration camp guard who killed – And now we have the Nuremberg trials, and I'm the concentration camp guard, and I go before the bar, and let's stipulate that the crime, the punishment for murder, and I'm a murderer, I killed 630 people, is death.
That is, unless the heirs of the victim forgive the murderer.
That's my view of punishment.
So I would go around to all the heirs of the victim and say, look, I wish I could have saved your uncle, brother, son, mother, but I couldn't.
I could only save 10 a day and I saved 70 people.
And if you want to execute me, you have a right to do it.
But first you have to have a ticker tape parade in my honor because I'm a hero.
I saved 70 people who otherwise would have died.
So I think that the Milton Friedman critique of libertarianism on the fact that there are certain good things that can violate the NAP like grabbing suicides and As you mentioned, grabbing blind people who, you know, are going to be hit by a truck, or grabbing people who, whether they're babies or adults, if they don't see the bottle or the pot of boiling water coming at them, you know, you grab them and then presumably they'll thank you for it.
The other attack on libertarianism is this flagpole business, and here I disagree with you.
Perhaps.
I'm not sure I understood you, but let's explore this for a minute.
Here's the situation.
You're standing on the deck of the 25th floor.
And the deck caves in and you go down, down, down the building.
Then you grab onto the 15th floor.
And now you're on the 15th floor.
And what you really want to do is just go into the apartment and get onto the staircase and go up back to your party and not go out on the deck again.
But the, uh, uh, and there's a flagpole on the 15th floor and you're crawling down the flagpole to try to get into this person's house.
And this person comes out with a gun and says, that's private property.
You're a trespasser.
Get off.
And the issue is not, what should you do?
That's not a libertarian question.
The libertarian question is, if that person shoots you for trespassing, are they a murderer?
And my claim is that they're not.
They're not a murderer if they shoot you.
Because, you know, in the ordinary case, most people, they see a helpless guy crawling down with his fingers on a flagpole.
They're going to say, you know, come on in or I'll get you a net or something.
But suppose there was this little old lady who was raped by a person that looks just like the person on the flagpole and they're afraid.
Well, then, you know, that's libertarianism.
So we might be disagreeing on the flagpole, but I don't think we're really disagreeing that much on children and whether it's spanking or time's out or whatever, because we agree that if you're a proper guardian, you'll guard your children, and sometimes guarding your children requires the use of physical force.
You see, If I grabbed you from the, whatchamacallit, from the bridge that you're about to commit suicide, I would be guilty of something.
But if I grabbed my kid, I would not be guilty of anything.
So therefore, there is a difference between kids and adults.
And I'm right and you're wrong.
If you started with that, we could have saved a lot of time.
All right.
So yeah, so the reason that I said that the standards are higher for children rather than lower is that You said you couldn't spank myself, but you could spank a child, which means that the standards of moral behavior would be lower for children.
And my argument is that they're in fact higher.
I'm not obligated to feed everyone in the world, but if I lock a guy in my basement, I'm obligated to feed him or I'm a murderer.
Confinement in your house raises moral standards that wouldn't otherwise apply to the general population or to other people you don't know.
And so in this instance, if you have someone trapped in your house or you lock someone in your basement, you have to give them food and water or you're responsible for their death.
If somebody is on the other side of town and gets stuck under a bridge and dies of thirst overnight or something, that's not your doing because you didn't confine that person.
Children are, of course, confined in the home, and so my argument is, of course, parents are obligated to feed their children because of the confinement aspect, and they're not obligated to feed strangers' children because they're not confining strangers' children.
And that's an example of the moral standards being higher for children, or the moral obligations, I guess, being higher for children in your house, your own children, than it would be for strangers' children.
And so in the same way, I would argue that because children are confined and dependent upon you, The responsibility to not use force against them wherever possible would be higher than it would be for strangers.
So I just wanted to sort of clarify that.
The issue of the sort of Schindler's List question that you pose about the concentration camp guards, my understanding of, you know, just I'm an annoying historical buff, so my understanding of the Nuremberg trials is the rank-and-file were never put on trial because they were recognized as being in a coercive situation.
In other words, They were told by the Nazis, go be this concentration camp guard or we'll shoot you.
In which case, you can't really fault someone for what they do with a gun to their head, right?
If I kill someone because someone says, you know, kill this person or I'll shoot your whole family, it is the person who puts the gun to my head who holds the moral responsibility, not me who's trying to survive in that situation.
So I think from that standpoint, it's a little tougher to make the case.
We're going to assume the concentration camp guard is operating under a system of coercion and confinement.
And therefore, we can't really discuss a huge amount.
I mean, it's nice if they do save some more people, but I don't think they're guilty of murder if it's kill or be killed kind of situation.
And that's the situation with the military, right?
In the First World War, for one of the first times in history, people were told that they had to storm into no man's land or they would get shot by their officers.
And so they went and did that under a system of coercion.
If they save some people, that's nice.
It might be nice if they went and shot some other guards instead of a few fewer prisoners.
But I don't know that I would put a lot of moral weight to somebody who's at the business end of the barrel of a gun.
So as far as the flagpole scenario goes, I think that these very, you know, I know that, I mean, I'm down with the Socratic method, right?
Try and find the exceptions to the rule, try and find the exceptions to the rule.
But I think that when we are in the process of inventing really like once a century kind of situations, I think it's like trying to invalidate the laws of biology by saying sometimes a horse is born with two heads and therefore we have no idea what horses are.
There are going to be ridiculous and extreme situations that are going to occur that are going to be tough to tease out.
They're going to be tough to figure out.
You know, someone shoots someone coming into their house.
Maybe I think there was a situation recently where a man shot a guy who was coming up to his house and banging on his door.
And it turned out the guy had been in a car accident.
He was delirious.
He didn't know where he was.
And so he didn't back off and the guy had been robbed before.
And, you know, so these are just complicated situations that I think you're right.
They do sort of go around punishment.
I think if I were on a jury and someone shot someone who was trying to climb over their fence because they were being chased by a wild dog or something, and said this, right, I think I would have a little less sympathy for that kind of person.
And so everything that you do that violates social norms or has the potential to violate social norms puts you at risk of punishment.
Then you try and make your case and try and find reasonable accommodation with whoever you're going to be judged by, hopefully a private system of justice and thus having some level of efficiency.
But I think that the principles are not particularly broken by the sort of once in a century situations, if that makes any sense.
Well, I disagree with you on several grounds.
I don't think we disagree so much on spanking and children.
We disagree more on these other issues that keep coming up.
And I'm finding this really delightful because I think you're very bright and very libertarian, and so am I. And yet we don't agree on everything.
So this is a way of knocking off edges off each other so we can both improve as libertarian theoreticians.
Get polished.
Get polished, yes.
This business of two-headed horses and weird cases I think is very important for libertarians to try to analyze.
With regards to the concentration camp guard, this is a voluntary concentration camp guard.
This was not somebody who was told, I'm the libertarian concentration guard.
I don't have to go to Germany.
I'm here in the U.S.
and I could, we're in 1938 or 1942 or whatever it is, And I go over to Germany and I become a concentration camp guard.
Why?
Because I want to save lives.
So it's not the case that I was forced into it.
Although, the way you mentioned it, when A puts a gun behind B's back and A says to B, shoot C or I'll kill you.
I've written several articles about this, weirdo that I am.
And the question comes, well, and C also has a gun.
Remember, A is behind B's back.
A is the total bad guy.
B is an innocent murderer.
C is another innocent murderee, maybe.
So A puts his gun behind the back of B, and B can't turn around and shoot A.
For some reason, he's got to face forward.
And now the question comes, well, who has a right to shoot?
Because C also has a gun.
And if C shoots, C really wants to shoot A, because he knows B is just an innocent guy, but the only way to get A is to go right through B, and then the gun will go through both.
And now, who has the right to shoot?
This is a very important issue.
It's true it'll only happen once in a million years or it'll never happen, but it'll only happen because weirdo theoreticians like you and I, I hope you don't mind me calling you a weirdo, a fellow weirdo, we think of these cases.
And I think it's imperative that we come to grips with it in order to better understand what libertarianism is.
And in my analysis, and here I disagree with Murray Rothbard, my analysis is that B is the first homesteader of the misery.
And therefore, we're trying to figure out who has the right to shoot, B or C. B shooting an innocent C or C shooting an innocent B. And I come out in favor of C. Murray comes out in favor of B. But that's another weirdo issue.
I want to get back to the children stuff.
To me, my best debating point against you, and I want to hear you clear on this, is if my child is standing on a bridge and he's about to jump off and he wants to commit suicide, he's five years old, I grab him and I say, I'm not a criminal at all.
I pay no penalty whatsoever for grabbing him.
Whereas you, You're an adult, and you're standing on a bridge, and I grab you again with the same motivation to being a nice guy, and I ask you why you're committing suicide, and if you're excruciating pain from some dread disease, I'll let you go, and if not, I'm gonna grab you and keep you.
But in any case, I think I'm guilty of assault and battery with you, but I don't think I'm guilty of assault and battery with my kid, and therefore, we have a lower obligation for kids opposite to what you're saying.
How do you react to that?
Well, I would do a jujitsu flip and see if we can turn it around.
Insofar as you said earlier, Walter, that when you bring somebody home, you might keep him for a day, right?
And then you have to release him because you can't be paternalistic forever.
And then it just simply becomes kidnapping and, you know, locking the guy in your basement to make him better or whatever.
But of course, with a five year old child, you have to keep them, you know, for at least, I guess, what's 12, 13 more years.
Until they each some whatever the age majority will be in a free society.
So again, I think we're at the place where your obligations are higher for the child than they would be for a random stranger.
So I think again, we're back in that situation where your moral responsibility is higher.
Of course, you know, I mean to one of the problems with the flagpole scenarios and the kid on the bridge scenarios is what is the continuum process, right?
If we're going to do Socratic exceptions that we need to look at the process as well.
Of course, why does your child want to kill himself?
Would that have something to do with your parenting?
I would argue it probably does, in which case you may not get to keep the child if you're a really terrible parent to the point where your kid wants to jump off a bridge and they're just terrified to get out of bed or whatever.
So I think that since you have to keep your kid that you take off a bridge, then again, your standards for care and custody are far higher than they would be for the general individual.
And of course, If you find a stranger on a bridge who's about to jump, you are not causal in that decision that they're making on the cliff edge.
They're just some guy who's had a bad life or a bad day or whatever, and he wants to jump.
You're not causal in that, so you have no moral responsibility to either save or not save him.
I think it's nicer to try, but nobody's going to shoot you for keeping walking on by.
They may not like you, but they can't initiate force against you for failing to act.
On the other hand, if your child wants to jump off a bridge, then you as a parent are causal to some degree or another, and I would argue to a pretty significant degree, you are causal in that child's decision to want to die.
Because, you know, certainly from I'm sure your experience as a parent and my experience as a parent, you know, kids are pretty happy and jump around and dance and do cartwheels and so on.
And so if a child is depressed to the point of suicidality, then that has something to do with the parent.
You know, maybe they're being bullied at school, but the parent is not homeschooling or moving or taking some action to prevent, you know, this escalating to some suicidal level.
So again, I think the difference is the causality, which is different, of course, for your own child, the responsibility after the fact for your own child, which I think puts them in a separate moral category, but a higher moral category.
You're more causal in your child's suicidality and you have, you know, 13 more years responsibility for a five-year-old, which you wouldn't have for I think you made two errors here, one a minor one.
say that the moral standards should be higher, not lower to the point where we would accept the initiation of force in the parent-child relationship.
I think you made two errors here.
One, a minor one.
Only two.
Excellent.
It's hypographical, and I think you'll accept what I say on this, but then a major error, and I'll get to that second.
The minor one is you have to keep him for 15 years.
Surely you can adopt him or sell him.
You can sell your parental rights.
There was this case where some woman sold her child for $5,000 and she went to jail.
I think that if you own the guardianship rights, you can sell it.
I'm also into voluntary slavery.
If I own myself, I can sell myself into slavery.
If I can't sell myself into slavery, I don't really own myself.
Well, if I own X, I have a right to sell it.
But you cannot sell a child into slavery.
Oh, no, not into slavery, but in adoption.
In other words, let's say you're a rich guy.
I mean, you can sell a child into adoption.
I agree.
So yes, you're still responsible for what happens to the child, whether you sell them into A good home, or you keep them, or whatever.
So I agree, that's not a huge issue, but I certainly appreciate the clarification.
Well, I think that's like the typographical error or something, or a mis-awkward statement.
So we agree on that, that like, if I'm rich and you're very poor, and you see that I'm a good parent, and you sell your child to me, and I take good care of him, the government shouldn't put you or me in jail.
So we agree on that.
The major problem that I have with what you just said is you avoided my point.
You're talking about causal.
You're saying that if the child is about to commit suicide, it's probably the parent's fault.
Forget about that.
You may or may not be right, and probably you are right, but I'm not interested in that.
I want to focus not on the prequel, but the sequel.
Namely, I don't want to focus on the cause of why the child is jumping off a bridge.
I want to focus on what happens to the person who grabs the child, or what happens to the person who grabs the adult.
And I'm saying, in libertarian law, there should be some difference.
And my understanding of your position is there should be no difference.
So let me reiterate this to be perfectly clear.
My kid is on the bridge, for whatever reason.
We don't go into the causal antecedents.
He's about to jump off, and I grab him.
And I don't let him jump.
I don't care what he says.
Unless it's excruciating pain or something, but forget about that.
And I say, I'm not guilty of any crime whatsoever.
Second case, Michael DeMarco is at the bridge, and I grab him, and I don't let him jump, and I keep him for a day or so, and I say, I am now a criminal.
What do you say to that?
And if you say, if you agree with that, then you have to realize that I'm writing what I think the debate is, namely that libertarian law applies differently to children than it applies to adults.
Which I conceded at the very beginning.
So the question is whether the standard is higher or lower, right?
So if you can initiate force against children in the form of spanking, then the moral standards are lower with regards to children.
My argument is that the moral standards are higher with regards to children than they are with regards to strangers.
You can't hit children, and you can't hit strangers.
And you can't hit children even more than you can't hit strangers.
The moral standards are more destructive for strangers.
Strangers, of course, if you hit a stranger, the stranger can fight back, the stranger can call the cops, the stranger has economic independence, the stranger can run away, the stranger can avoid you in the future, and so on.
So it's bad to hit strangers, but they have so many recourses that children simply don't have.
If you hit your own child, The child can't leave, the child can't fight back, the child usually can't call the cops because in most places in the world it's perfectly legal.
So because the child has fewer options, less capacity, well really no capacity for self-defense and is entirely economically and legally dependent upon the parents, hitting a child is worse than hitting a stranger.
So I agree with you, it's different.
I just said that the standards must be higher for the parent-child relationship than for any adult relationship.
I think you just contradicted yourself with all respect.
I think that if you agree with me, and you haven't said that you agree with me, you're sort of skirting this a little bit.
Let me reiterate it again.
If I use violence against the child on the bridge, I'm not a criminal.
If I use violence against an adult, I am a criminal.
Therefore, I have a lower, not a higher responsibility, kids, but a lower one, because I define a lower responsibility.
When I do something bad, I'm not responsible.
I'm not a criminal.
Yeah, look, I completely agree with you.
First of all, you may not be a criminal if the guy thanks you and gives you a million dollars for saving his life because he just had a really low point and he feels better now and so on.
You may not be a criminal.
I agree with you about the punishment theory that the criminality doesn't exist in some abstract manner, like there's a deity.
I know we're both atheists.
There's no deity up there who's judging you and putting the scarlet C on your forehead if you do something bad.
The criminality of the act occurs in the matter of the complaint of the victim, right?
So if you save someone from jumping off a bridge and that person then wakes up the next day and says, My God, I have so much to live for.
I can't believe it.
Thank you, Walter.
I'm going to kiss your feet and give you a million dollars in thanks.
Then clearly there's no criminality woven into the fabric of moral physics of the universe, right?
If there's no complaint, there's no crime, right?
So I don't think you become a criminal for grabbing the guy.
You may not even become a criminal by keeping the guy in your house for a day.
In fact, you may become a hero.
He may thank you.
He may name his first born after you and thanks for what you did.
Now, if you keep him for a year, you know, at some point he's going to have a complaint against you, and then he's going to go and complain to whatever authorities are going to be out there to enforce these standards and so on.
So I don't think that any, you know, magic criminal action that occurs when you tackle someone on a bridge and prevent them from killing themselves, if you repeatedly do so despite them saying no, and if they pull out a gun to defend themselves from you preventing them, you know, again, we're getting all kind of silly scenarios.
I agree.
It's the complaint and then the standards of the society that need to be applied to create criminality.
And if you just look at the moment of grabbing someone from a bridge, yeah, you're certainly not a criminal if it's your kid.
Although, your kid is probably jumping because you are a criminal.
In other words, you've been a child abuser and so your kid is jumping because of a prior history of criminal behavior against your child.
But if we look at the continuum of the process, right?
I mean, you can't just take a snapshot and think it's a movie.
The continuum of the process is you are now responsible for what happens to the child, but you are not responsible for what happens to the adult, right?
So, again, the moral standards are higher in that moment.
Sorry, in the continuum process of what happens after that moment.
Stephan, I think we're not communicating.
We're not on the same wavelength.
You keep talking about the past, namely, if the kid is committing suicide, you are in some way responsible for that.
I don't care about that.
I'm not focused on that.
Just assume arguendo that for some reason, I don't know, a devil may have do it, or who cares?
I'm not interested in that.
And if you return to that, You're not promoting this discussion because I don't want to focus on that, at least for the moment.
So arguendo, forget about that.
And also forget about whether adults can defend themselves or not.
I'm assuming I'm much bigger and stronger than the kid, certainly, and I'm much bigger and stronger than the guy at the bridge, and I can do what I want.
And also forget about whether they thank you or not.
And I certainly agree with you that there's no mens rea in either case, namely guilty conscience.
You know, I'm not really a criminal inside because my intent is to help.
As was my intent in becoming a Nazi concentration camp guard.
But let's stick to the point.
Let's stick to the point that I want to raise and that you seem to be... I'm not communicating it as well as I could, so let me try it again.
I say that you have a lesser obligation to your child than to a stranger.
Because if you do something X to the kid, you're not a criminal.
Whereas if you do something to an adult, you are a criminal.
And therefore, you have a higher obligation to another person to not commit assault and battery.
Because it is assault and battery.
Now look, the guy might forgive you.
He might say, yes, thank God you saved me.
But suppose he doesn't say that.
Suppose he says, you dirty rat, you.
You kept me from committing suicide because my girlfriend left me.
You're a bad guy, and I would say that in that case I am a bad guy, and therefore I owe him a higher obligation to keep my goddamn mitts off of him.
Whereas with my kid, I'm his guardian, I grab him, I'm not a criminal, I don't care what he says, whether he thanks me or doesn't thank me.
And by the way, my son is now grown up and he does certainly thank me for keeping his penis off of the urinals, but that's a different issue.
So look, Stephan, please focus on the question that I'm talking about.
I say that I owe you a much higher standard to keep my mitts off of you, because if I don't keep my mitts off of you, I'm a criminal.
Whereas my son or my daughter, I owe them a lower standard to keep my mitts off of them or to commit aggression against them, because if I do this to get them off the bridge, I'm not a criminal.
Now, how do you respond to that very narrow question?
Forget about prior and defense and all this other stuff.
Just focus on that very narrow point.
Well, sure.
Look, I mean, I certainly accept the argument that you will face fewer negative repercussions, if not no negative repercussions, for saving your child than you will for trying to save a stranger.
I mean, so I fully accept that.
Okay, well then... Hang on, hang on.
But the reason for that, Walter, is because like, okay, I don't know if you can see.
Let me just bring up my little video here.
I think I can see if I can get my hand in here.
Okay, so here, right, you have, okay, this is my right hand is your child, the left hand, sorry for those just listening to the audio, right hand is you, your moral responsibilities to your child overall, and this is your moral responsibilities to strangers, right?
You have a much higher moral responsibility to your child than you do to strangers in general.
We agree with that.
You have to feed your child.
You don't have to feed strangers.
You have to give your child medical attention and care.
You don't have to do that to strangers.
Do we agree on that?
Absolutely.
Yes.
Okay.
So in this situation, so in general, and in the entire five years before your kid tries to jump off the bridge and for whatever time period afterwards, you owe your child much higher moral obligations than you do to a stranger.
And that's all I'm trying to say, is that the reason it's flipped in this moment is because of this hole, because you have care and custody of that child and you have a responsibility for that child that is higher than it is for strangers, which is why you're not going to face negative repercussions in that moment when these flip.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, I think what you're saying is absolutely right, but irrelevant in the following sense.
First of all, libertarianism has got nothing to do with morality.
As far as I'm concerned.
I really don't even understand what morality is.
But to the limited extent that I know what morality is, you're absolutely right.
You have much more of a responsibility to feed your kid or somebody that you trap in your basement than you have some stranger, whether he's your next door neighbor or somebody on the other side of the earth.
But we're not talking moral responsibility.
That's a very different issue.
We're not talking about responsibility to help.
We're talking about what obligations do you have as a libertarian to keep your mitts off of people.
And I say you have a lower responsibility, legal responsibility, namely libertarian law, a lower legal responsibility to keep your mitts off of your kid, namely you can put your mitts on your kid in a way that you may not put your mitts on other adults.
So the word moral responsibility or responsibility is a two-edged sword, and you're looking at one edge, and I agree with you on that edge, but look at my edge for a minute, and forget about moral responsibility to feed.
Talk about responsibility to keep your mitts off of.
Namely, to not spank, to not grab.
And I say, you have much... To me, it's not a matter of lower or not.
You have no responsibility to not put your mitts on your kid.
You can put your mitts on your kid whenever you want, and you can still be a good... Well, within reason.
I mean, if you do child abuse, as you mentioned in the beginning, forget about that.
But the point is that if I grab my kid to save him, I'm not a criminal at all, and therefore my ability to interact with my kid in a way, physically, is very high, whereas I am a criminal if I grab somebody else, and therefore my responsibility to him is the opposite.
Okay.
All right.
So, let's say that we have a challenge, which I'll have to mull over further.
I've not sort of had this argument before, and it's a great argument.
Obviously, it's a tricky one.
So give me some room to mull it over and I promise I will give some more thought about it and talk with you further.
Let's say that your argument is entirely correct, that the argument about the five-year-old wanting to jump to his death on the edge of a cliff is entirely correct and my argument is entirely incorrect.
Linking that to spanking I think is not a valid extension of the principle.
For the reason being that this is not a one-time thing, that spanking tends to occur in households sort of three plus times a week, that spanking has objectively destructive and negative consequences to a child's mental, physical, and emotional health, and so on.
So I think that we could, even if we were to, even if I were to concede, which you know may very well be the case about this bridge edge incident, That doesn't, I think, justify a continued behavior on the part of a parent that is going to cause significant physical, mental, emotional, spiritual problems for the child down the road.
Does that make any sense?
Like, I think equating the bridge edge with a continued process of hitting children, I don't think is particularly valid.
But now you're getting off the point again.
I agree with you on all this stuff.
Now you're getting back to the utilitarian stuff.
I mean, all these statistics you gave, they made sense to me.
I mean, you spank your kid and the kid is more likely to be a criminal or a bully or something.
I've not looked at that literature.
I'm not really that interested.
I mean, you know, we have specialization and division of labor.
Not everybody can be an expert in every issue.
And you seem to have devoted a lot of time to this.
I, none.
So I regard you very highly and I take your word for that.
I'm not disagreeing with that.
I agree with you wholeheartedly in the absence of me doing any independent research, which I'm not inclined to do because I trust you on these issues, and you're an expert in that.
But when you say that the bridge thing has nothing to do with spanking, it has because spanking is just one part of a physical invasion.
So forget about spanking.
Let's just talk about physical invasion.
I physically invade my son to keep him from jumping, and I'm not a criminal.
Therefore, I have a very low or no responsibility not to do that.
Whereas you, I physically invade.
I don't spank you, but I grab you.
And I am a criminal.
Therefore, I do have a high responsibility to keep my goddamn mitts off of you.
That's the issue.
And that's the only issue.
And there, I'm glad you're willing to Not filibuster and to say that you'll think about this, which is very rare.
Usually when I'm in a debate with somebody and if there's a problem, they filibuster, they interrupt, they won't let you speak.
So I really appreciate the fact that you're approaching it the way I'm approaching it, namely with two Not sinners, but two ignorant people trying to get a little bit closer to one millionth of an inch closer to the proverbial truth with a capital T. And I respect your contribution to this debate or this discussion, really.
And it's a pleasure to deal with a person like you.
I wish I could hug you right now.
You're close.
You're on my screen.
No physical abuse, but because I really appreciate your contribution to this.
And I think we've come to some sort of end to this discussion, because you said you'd have to think about this.
And it was a pleasure to take part in this with you.
Thank you.
Yeah, I really do appreciate that.
You've got some, obviously, I was not expecting weak arguments from you, and you did not disappoint.
I try not to debate with anyone I can't learn something from and so I really do appreciate great arguments.
I will rub my brain into hopefully some useful supernovas of insights and good arguments and see what I can come up with.
So thanks again.
Walter, do you have a place on the web where my listeners can come and review your voluminous material and see your lectures?
Is there a sort of central hub for the block universe?
Well, WalterBlock.com, I think.
That ought to do it.
Or, yeah, WalterBlock.com.
Or email me, WBlock, at loyno.edu.
L-O-Y-N-O dot edu for education.
That'll get me.
I have a new book out called Defending the Undefendable 2.
So your listeners might, I think your listeners would be interested in both of us because you and I are brothers and we're both libertarians and I think there's a great overlap between people interested in me and people interested in you.
So thanks for having me.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I will absolutely say I've always enjoyed your lectures and heartily recommend.
I don't think I've ever read anything of yours and yawned.
So I would highly recommend my listeners to grab a copy of anything that Walter has written and almost everything that Walter has said.
It's almost always going to be something that's going to be very thought-provoking as this has been for me.
So I really do appreciate your time.
And well, I'm sure we'll talk again. - Stephen, one more thing.
You and I were supposed to have a debate out in Vancouver on voting or politics or something like that, remember, with Jay Ant and you had to cancel your illness.
I think we're scheduled to do that again.
I'm not sure.
But if not, we could do that one on your show here or do it both times.
I don't know.
But that would be a pleasure also.
Yeah, I mean, it would be fun to do in person.
I think we're both going to be out in Vancouver next summer.
July?
Is it July?
July.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Otherwise, if for whatever reason that doesn't work out, then we'll definitely do it here because I think it's a very important question.
We all want to help move liberty forward as fast as possible and there are lots of different thoughts about how best to do that.
So we'll either do it live or we'll do it over Skype.
Thanks again.
That's WalterBloch.com.
Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Radio.
Thanks so much for watching and listening.
Take care.
Thanks for having me.
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