Saying "we'll all be better off if Alice recognizes an obligation to pay her parents in perpetuity" does not make the claim legitimate. |
Yes, it does - evolutionary pragmatism. The social ruleset that produces the greatest economic growth is the most desirable. That is the basis of all natural rights.
I cannot find this anything other than repugnant. |
You are still just expressing your subjective opinion. How are parents' rights different from property rights? Children have a natural rights to life and to
emancipation, but the latter need not be a matter of absolutes. Full self-ownership ignores the fact that you didn't create yourself - your parents did.
If I push a man out of harms way, not only does he not have a responsibility to compensate me, but he could (if he were exceptionally rude and ungrateful) insist that I cover the expense of treating injuries caused by my push. There is no contract without explicit voluntary consent, and no obligation without contract or infringement. |
That's because you didn't create that man's life, you've merely provided a service, and the value of your service cannot be assumed. And if I was on a jury trying to establish your reward or liability for pushing that man, I'd vote $0.
The value of creating your life is objective, based on the self-evident fact that you didn't choose to kill yourself thus-far, and that wealth is being created as a consequence of your actions, which in turn is a consequence of your parents' actions.
No, the most ethical social ruleset is one recognizing first that individuals have complete ownership of their own bodies (as their sole inhabitants); second—and more generally—that ownership of particular use of resources goes to the latest descendant in title from whomever originally homesteaded them out of a natural state (everyone else being latecomers). |
That is your subjective opinion. How do you empirically prove that it is more valid than the opinion of some socialist who doesn't recognize your property rights, and might even have the public opinion on his side?
All other systems arbitrarily award ownership to those with no special claim of it... yours, for instance, to parents rather than all ancestors (or even "society at large"). |
All of your ancestors or "society at large" didn't make the decision to create you, only your mother did, and hopefully your father had some sort of a contract with her that ensured his rights as well. Your parents owed their existence to your grandparents, but you don't, with implicit parents' rights only traveling one link in the chain.
You stop short of claiming that everyone should breed to the greatest extent possible, yet insist that they are not qualified to decide on their own an optimal number of offspring. |
Breeding "to the greatest extent possible" would be a disaster too, but one that we don't have to worry about, because the free market capitalist system would naturally raise the price of resources as they're becoming scarce, thus putting a limit on how many children people would choose to have. On the other hand, there's no currently-recognized free market mechanism for preventing birth rates that are too low to prevent economic collapse - in absence of the natural solutions I'm hereby advocating.
I am not advocating dictating how many children people ought to have, I am advocating people pulling their demographic weight, just as the free-market capitalist system doesn't dictate how much you work or spend, just that you pull your economic weight (i.e. pay for what you buy). Furthermore, pulling one's demographic weight doesn't necessarily mean everyone having at least 2.1 kids, because that obligation can be transferred to others (Childless Tax) or merely incentivized through greater recognition of parents' rights (Parents Tax).
And although all else being equal, larger populations are more productive, that very important condition is not true here. It is entirely possible that some people could better increase society's productive potential by spreading ideas farther or charitably directing resources towards others for optimal use, but your "parent tax" changes their incentives sufficiently to effect the suboptimal decision of raising a family. |
It's all true, but having a sustainable (or at least slow-shrinking) population is a prerequisite for all other economic concerns. People are still failing to understand just how low voluntary fertility rates can fall, and how economically devastating a rapidly shrinking and aging population would be, triggering a negative feedback cycle of societal collapse (see other thread). You really need to think about this, hard.
Be the change you wish to see in the world. |
I may be a hypocrite on this particular issue, but that doesn't make my ideas wrong.