[...] I said that your argument is that because somebody has provided me with a benefit, life, I have a debt to them. [...] |
This would have been relevant if I had advocated the parents' right to force their child to work for their benefit, and even to "tax" their children's income well into adulthood. That would be a less collectivist remedy to the population crisis, but still coercive (even more so, since you don't choose your parents) and probably far less effective. One of the reasons why I'm not making that argument is because having children would still not be an objective benefit and not always make sense financially even if they are a financial asset - it's not a business venture, it is an obligation.
Well, it is plain that my neither having kids nor contributing to anybody else doing so does not damage the rights of anybody else. Your person and property remain as intact as ever. |
No, I am injured through your inaction, and so is every member of the human race. If you have a right not to reproduce (and to not pay for others who must pull your demographic weight for you), so does everyone else - then civilization fails.
Your concept of rights exists in the context of human civilization, which cannot exist without sufficient reproduction - rights have no validity outside that context. Your willful failure to pull your demographic weight (and fulfill your natural biological imperative) constitutes a crime.
[...] Failing to reinforce containers of nuclear waste allows decomposing atomic molecules to enter your property, or increases the risk of their doing so. Not having a kid, or not contributing to others having kids, doesn't. |
You don't have the right to damage the property of others through inaction, thus you have an obligation to take action to prevent that. If you fail in this obligation, and I have evidence that something on your property will very likely go boom and cause damage to my property, even possibly kill me, your rights to your property must yield. Your failure to have kids is exactly the same.
Thrity percent of the population deciding to take an extra day's weakened cause economic damage without violating anybody else's property, and so does failure to have kids. |
Even if 90% of the population decides to only work 1 day per week, it does not constitute a threat to human civilization. There will be severe economic decline, sure, but the natural system of incentives remains in place - the lazy will suffer from their refusal to work, the 10% that continues to work will come out on top, and this stupidity will eventually be phased out as more and more people see the wisdom of working more. A planetary decline in birth rates, like is already happening in Japan, does in fact constitute a clear and imminent global threat, necessitating use of violence to stop it.
Fruits of your labor are your absolute property, which gives you the freedom to create or not create them as you see fit. Your children are not your absolute property, they are a "white elephant" that requires a lot of effort for little objective gain. Throughout the history of the human species, either ignorance or coercion has played a role in encouraging people to reproduce. When that ignorance and coercion is reduced just a little bit (i.e. modern Japan, which still has lots of traditionalists and even Christian converts with large families), you end up with a demographic collapse. People in Japan aren't stupid, they believe that other people should be having more babies - just not specifically them.
I see a bunch of people who believe we have an enforcable duty to reproduce. I don't see why your telling me that they believed this to be the case is supposed to prove that their belief is correct. |
Because that belief is a necessity for survival. If all irrational and coercive pressures went away, what would human fertility be like? Less than in Japan or Singapore, clearly, because that pressure is still very strong there. We're talking about less than 0.5 children per living person. (Comparable to Ian & Julia not having kids, and Mark and his wife stopping at one.) The
population pyramid in that scenario is terrifying: more people over 70 than under 50!
Robots can't do everything. Productivity will decline. Prices will skyrocket, as will crime. Richer but older nations will not be able to defend themselves militarily from poorer but younger nations. Old people who can no longer afford to buy medication or even food will demand a government solution, but there will simply be no one left to tax.
Especially when it comes from ridiculous premises such as "a big, all powerful invisible dude said 'go forth and multiply,' so that is why we have a moral duty too." |
That fiction is what kept the human civilization reproducing up till now, and now that big powerful dude will have to be me, acting in my own enlightened self-interest, and others who also understand the economic reality of human existance. I'm not going to watch my civilization decline and not do what is necessary to stop it, even if it does require institutionalized violence on a massive scale.
If I was on a life-board in the middle of an ocean, and one of the other people on that boat was hysterical and trying to flip the boat over, I would deprive that person of his rights by force in the interest of my own survival. If that boat had leaks in it and our mutual survival depended on everyone holding those leaks closed and pumping the water out to keep the boat afloat, and the hysterical person refused to help - I would hit that person with a stick or use whatever means necessery to get that person to cooperate. Taxing people to ensure adequate birthrates is no different. I just need a big-enough stick - and that's one of the very few things for which government may still be useful.
[...] Maybe true.
[...] Possibly also true. |
Why "maybe" / "possibly"? Do you disagree with the cause-and-effect relationship of declining birth rates and the consequences I've mentioned, or do you believe that birth rates will correct themselves without coercion? If the former, please explain why. If the latter - I too wish that was possible, but how?
Drastic reversal of those kinds of trends don't happen just by themselves randomly. If you have a particular theory on what would reverse them, I would gladly agree that the need for coercion is not justified based on the merits of that theory. Coercion should only be used as a last resort.
What is all the above supposed to show? |
Justified use of force.
[...] I didn't force them, or even ask them to. Same goes for other people having kids. |
You're still thinking in terms of negative rights. This is an issue of positive rights, which require an obligation of others. Just because 99% of positive rights you hear about are socialist bullshit doesn't mean the other 1% is not valid and essential. They are based on the same rational foundation as the negative right of self-ownership (life, liberty, property).
For example, you didn't ask for my plane to malfunction and crash on your property, but it was an accident. You have an obligation to facilitate my right to free exit, even if that infringes on your right to your property for a little while. Failure to do so would constitute wrongful imprisonment. Air travel would be downright impossible if making an emergency landing or parachuting meant you could become the slave of whoever owns the property you land on.
You didn't ask some retard to rob a convenience store, killing the clerk and leaving you as the only witness, yet you have an obligation to appear at his trial, which would probably take up quite a bit of your time. Without the ability to
subpoena people to court, coercively if necessary, no justice system would be possible, even one that is decentralized and entirely based on fundamental natural rights.
In those two examples, your negative rights are violated "for the greater good". Just because this concept is most often used erroneously by altruists doesn't mean it does not exist. The same applies to coercive incentives for reproduction.
Bollocks, they had kids because they liked the idea of having a family with somebody they loved. |
People's motivations to have children are complicated and affected by their subconscious, so we can never know for sure what fraction recognize it as an obligation, but some do. More people will recognize this fact if more people study basic
population economics, and if they also study
game theory they will see the need for coersion to get people to reproduce, and if they also study philosophy they will see that it is moral to do so.
You want the cost of raising children to be individual, but the economic benefit to be shared, as it naturally is - that's theft. Having children is the only economic activity this applies to: you may be able to avoid other shared economic benefits by living in isolation, but the only way to stop benefiting from the fact that you were born into the human race is suicide.
No it isn't. Forcing them to reproduce is theft, or forced labour. |
Like I already said, your failure to recognize the obligation to reproduce is no different from failure to recognize property rights. Imagine that you suffer some sort of an accident that requires you to pay $20,000 a year in medical bills: is someone else obligated to pay those bills for you? It wasn't your choice to suffer this accident, but it is a reality you have to deal with in order to live. Same is the reality of human reproduction. You are a human being. You were born. You are naturally indebted to reproduce. If you willfully refuse then everybody suffers, same as if you were forcing them to pay for you medical bills through inflation or taxes.
The wrong of inflation is not that the value of everybody's money goes down, but that everybody is forced to use the inflated currency [...] |
Force can be natural or artificial. You are a part of the human race. Is that force?