[Mchenoweth]

Dr. Casey,

Suppose a 12 yr old child ran away from home and was pefectly capable of taking care of himself for the rest of his life. Then suppose a week later, his parents find him, and forcibly take him while he’s kicking and screaming and put him in their car to go back home.

Should the parents be arrested for kidnapping?

I’m hoping there is a libertarian way to say no!

Thank you and thanks for your lectures!

-Mark

[gerard.casey]

Dear Mark,

First, I must apologise for taking an unconscionably long time to reply to your email. I can only plead in excuse that we have had some traumatic family problems in the last few months which have occupied all my attention and only now have I been able to return to my responsibilities.

If the child were 25 and perfectly capable of taking care of himself and living away from home, would you think that the action of his parents in forcibly forcing him home would be defensible from a libertarian point of view? No? Then what about a 20 year old in similar circumstances? No? I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. Age is irrelevant except insofar as it constitutes prima facie evidence of inability to care for oneself. So long as you grant the (counter-intuitive) point about the 12 year old being able to take perfectly good care of himself, you cannot justify, on libertarian principles, the (understandable but indefensible) actions of his parents in forcibly moving him home.

I suspect that in a real-life situation, most parents would do as you suggest and take their chances in a libertarian court of establishing the real point at issue which is whether or not, in fact, a 12 year old is perfectly capable of taking care of himself for the rest of his life.

Once again, apologies for the delay in responding to your query.

Best wishes,

Gerard Casey

[Mchenoweth]

Thanks! That helps.

Prayers for your family.

-Mark

[gerard.casey]

You are welcome! And thank you for the prayers!

Gerard Casey

[seraphim37]

Prayers for you and your family, Gerard.

This topic is related to our other thread – https://libertyclassroom.com/forums/topic/how-we-come-to-own-ourselves-2/

And here you give a very clear example that the ultimate resolution to such quandaries lies in “taking our chances in a libertarian court”. At least, it appears that would be the final arbiter here.

Thus:

If (1) the NAP is logically derived from the idea of self-ownership,

and (2) self-ownership is ultimately defined by the judgement of society and not by the self (for all practical purposes, at least),

then (3) the foundation of libertarian society is the society’s customs and norms that inform the determination of self-ownership.

That just doesn’t seem satisfactory to me. There must be another way to look at this.

[gerard.casey]

Dear Seraphim,

See my response in the thread “How we come to own ourselves”

[Author]

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