"uh. i think you’ll find the correct term is ephebotarian"

[reddragdiva]

There’s a trope that KEEPS COMING UP in discussions with internet libertarians and/or anarcho-capitalists that fucking children, child porn etc. should totally be legal. Advocates can get quite incensed about it.

Motivations are an unholy blend of (1) the principle of the thing (1a) “children can totally decide for themselves! 12yos are famed for correct life decisions” (1b) “children are property, per Rothbard” (2) that the ‘berts in question are teenagers themselves and feel oppressed (3) that the ‘berts in question are mid-thirties or so and possibly not people you want within a mile of your social circles.

RationalWiki’s only ever “no just fuck off and never come back wtf moonmoon” hellban was after the mises.org webmaster posted his essay putting forth the libertarian argument for fucking children. (You can find it online, but not on RW kthx.)

So this is probably material for a RationalWiki article, because this trope KEEPS COMING UP. the problem is of course that this would involve (1) researching it (2) thinking about it in depth, neither of which appeals, so I’ve been avoiding it for a few years now.

(This is actually a distinct thing from Rothbard expounding upon how a free market in children would totally result in increased child welfare and not e.g. slavery.)

So, lazyweb! Has anyone else outside libertarian circles written up this trope as yet that i can crib from?

(If your very first reaction to this post is to expound upon the importance of whether we’re talking about adolescents or preadolescents, and you are neither, you may be part of the problem.)

Comments

[greylock]

There’s a trope that KEEPS COMING UP in discussions with internet libertarians and/or anarcho-capitalists that fucking children, child porn etc. should totally be legal

Where the heck are you hanging out?

[reddragdiva]

Places where libertarians argue their case.

I didn't realise libertarian ideas weren't some sort of extremist comedy trope until I got onto the Internet.

[greylock]

Then don't go to Camelot, it's a silly place.

[pseudomonas]

Is there no Libertarian equivalent of the Harm Principle? Or do these people think there's no likelihood of harm here?

[reddragdiva]

Not really. Personal freedom to decide your own future is the watchword here.

There's also arguments about the squishiness of age of consent. Which there could be a sensible discussion concerning, but I suspect not one that ends "so we should abolish it entirely".

Many tout the Non-Aggression Principle, a simple principle which has lurking in its depths "crossing land someone owns is aggression but the owner shooting them dead for it isn't." Like many bad arguments, it relies on equivocation between normative conventional meanings for words and special libertarian jargon meanings for words.

[pseudomonas]

I tend to hang out with liberals online rather than libertarians, and I think this argument hasn't come up even on fringes. I think there's a consensus that "synthetic" porn (material that is CGI or drawn or written, not involving a real child) should not be criminalized. I think I've seen a suggestion or two that possibly only the making and not the possession of child abuse images should be illegal, though that's partly backlash against the UK judiciary which holds that if you have a copy of an image on your hard drive, you have duplicated it, so are thereby manufacturing and should be treated equally harshly as the person holding the camera.

But yeah, I can't think of anyone suggesting that it'd be a good idea to have no mechanism to protect kids too young to consent (and as you say, obviously how old that is is open to debate but it doesn't seem to be something that online liberals are fond of debating; overturning prohibitions on adult incest is more likely to be a subject for discussion). To me it seems like one of the clearest-cut examples where it is legitimate for the law to override an individual's will.

[pseudomonas]

Maybe I'm just not looking in the wrong places.

[(Anonymous)]

(This is Andrew Hickey. DW OpenID is borked)

It's very common in US libertarianism, because US Libertarians owe so much to Heinlein, whose last dozen or so books can be summed up as "incest is super-neat and has no downside!"
There's also a strong libertarian fringe who are influenced by anarchists like Hakim Bey, who writes for NAMBLA Bulletin.
Basically US Libertarianism as a movement seems to have its roots in sociopaths discovering the hippie counterculture :-/

[khalinche]

Ew and thrice ew. And I say that even as I'm lovingly reading Lolita, still one of the finest works of the twentieth century for many reasons not least its incredible power to make the skin on your neck prickle with disgust even as the madman slavers out his love.

splitting some hair

[(Anonymous)]

My first first reaction was that the root issue isn't age but power differential.

A sufficiently large power differential implies that consent of the less powerful party can be faked (and the one in power may even be successfully lying to themselves that there was consent). The power differential between children and adults is large enough (for lack of knowledge and experience alone) that you can clap a "no meaningful consent possible" on it.

From that follows that where there is no power differential (because you have e.g. two adolescents of about equal age) criminalising one or both of them for getting it on together is not actually useful, whereas if you have an adult who is 100% dependent on someone else, consent between them becomes iffy.

Tying back to libertarians: I have the impression that a sizeable portion of them wants the liberty to keep slaves, and to suppress everybodies but their own (and peoples just like them) capability to band together and protect themselves and their interests. As in "We have organized it so they can starve or be our slaves, they decided to be our slaves of their own free will! no, of course they cannot organize with other slaves to improve their lot, that would cut down on my individual freedom to be as nasty to them as I please, they all have to negotiate individually!"

[loosechanj]

My first reaction to the pedo/ephebo debate whenever I see it is oh goody the semantic argument that trivializes the reasons those two things get lumped together.