Thanks a lot for the reply. As for my response to your points:

In the US it’s common though it seems to be fading out. I don’t like when these hispanic trashy types give their daugthers earrings when very young and dress then too sexually. But that’s their business.

Agree. I also dislike whenever I see some girl wearing earrings or using trashy clothes because her mother made her to. I don’t think third parties have a right to intervene in this case, but I do believe that we have the right to call out the perceived immorality of such behavior.

there is no alternative to this. It is part of the nature of the situation. Kids have no capacity to decide for thselves so there must be an adult guardian who has that power and this is presumptively there parents. Not sure how you can have a problem with this. This is like saying you have a problem with the fact that humans develop from one status to another. You have a problem with reality?

No. I do agree that parents have the special right to choose for their kids. What I don’t adhere to is the idea that, because parents choose for the child, then those choices are NAP-abiding. In other words, my problem is not with the parents choosing, but with what they choose. If we are to be realistic, some things done to children would be considered NAP violations if done to an adult who is temporarily in a coma; if you were to fall in a coma, and the people who take responsibility over you decided to tattoo your face, you would consider it as aggression after waking up, or not? My point is that I don’t believe that we can just shrug off any potential violation of the NAP on the basis that the individual affected is not rights-bearing yet; I believe that these should be deferred to the future, so that parents can choose in behalf of their children, and the children, as adults, can determine whether those choices were ultimately made in their best interest or not, and act accordingly on that judgment

It’s not aggression if the parent has the right to consent on behalf of the child. We need to be clear and precise here. If we talk about something that involves touching the child’s body, it’s aggression if the child does not consent. If the child consents to surgery, say cosmetic surgery to improve a harelip, or anesthesia for dental work, it’s not aggression. Now we are assuming the consent is given by the guardian (parent). When the child has a guardian, the guardian has some obligations to act reasonably in the child’s interest and this has to be broad and discretionary, but there are limits. The child would not consent to having arm removed so we can assume that the child implicitly “revokes” the parent’s authority so that if the procedure is done then it is aggression since the child never consented, since the purported consent given by the parents is not effective since the child has terminated them as his guardian.

This is the philosophical core of the dilemma: If a procedure would violate the NAP when performed on a competent adult without consent, then it is prima facie a rights violation, regardless of the recipient’s age or developmental status.

The parent’s authority allows them to act on behalf of the child, but it doesn’t erase the nature of the act itself. The right to retroactive judgment by the then-adult is how we can reconcile the child’s temporary inability to consent, while still working within the boundaries of the NAP.

  When you say that it is aggression if the child does not consent, then I believe we find two problems: 1) how can we accept consent from a child if we are to assume that children are not yet capable of the extent of reasoning necessary for informed consent? and 2) what about children who just can’t consent, such as babies/toddlers? When we perform circumcision on a newborn baby, the child cannot consent because he’s not yet even capable of speech. Now, if we were to tell a kid that we’re going to cut his arm, and for one reason or the other he did consent to it, then how could we consider this as NAP-abiding, when we know for certain that this is entirely detrimental and that any child who agreed to it would be doing out of a lack of reasoning capability? Children are easily influenced, and if someone, perhaps indirectly, manages to convince a kid that if by cutting their arm, they might grow another one with superpowers, then at least one child may fall for it, and we’d have to then accept that a child can consent to things as if they were an adult, which would clash with the idea that children are not fully rights-bearing individuals, and thus need someone else to choose on their behalf.

All this is implying I didn’t misunderstand your argument; if I did, my apologies.

The world is full of gray areas. The default presumption is that the parent’s decision is within his discretion unless it goes too far. That has to be a judgment call.

The world is full of gray areas indeed. This is why I believe it necessary to find a way to deal with these gray areas in a manner that can be as consistent as possible, thus why I propose that parents shall be left to their own devices to choose for the child (within reason), and that any potential consequences for these decisions are put off until the child has grown old enough to judge them; deferred restitution.

This fixes the issue by leaving these gray areas down to individual judgment by parties involved, without the need to arbitrarily normalize any specific rules that others would disagree with.

In my view it’s not clear enough that circumcision is like limb removal instead of being more like cosmetic, that societally or legally we can determine that the parent loses his rights as guardian. So you are left complaining about it and criticizing it, but you can’t remove the kid and put him with new parents.

Well, I do not believe that circumcision is even remotely comparable to limb removal, but the point to be made here is that we cannot really draw that line where we can say “this violates the NAP/this doesn’t”; where would the NAP be violated? Circumcision? Scarring? Branding? Removing a finger? A whole arm? Because of this, I believe that the most deontologically consistent interpretation we can make is that any action that, if done non-voluntarily to an adult, would be considered a NAP violation, should also be considered as such when performed on a child by decision of their parents, but that because the parents temporarily have the special right to choose for said child, then these violations are to be ignored (then again, within reason) until the then-adult can judge them.

the procedure violates his rights because he has not consented; he has not consented because the parent, by acting so unreasonably, has lost his status as guardian so he is unable to consent on behalf of the child.

I agree. I guess this reinforces the previous argument, which I’m not 100% I understood well. Parents who act unreasonably necessarily need their rights over their child revoked. Obviously, we cannot quantify unreasonability as to set objective limits, so perhaps such things would be left down to the necessary and justified intervention of third parties, such as other family members, medical professionals, teachers and else, who could initiate legal action against the parents on the basis that their choices have been largely detrimental to the child.

It also has very few harms, and it has some benefits–some merely aesthetic. I personally am glad I was circumcized because I prefer it aesthetically as do most women I have been with. But that is cultural. At the same time I realize that there are risks and they are something not worth taking and I am glad the practice is dying out in the US, except for Jews. but in my experience the mere fact that most older boys and men I know have no problem with it and would “retroactively consent” means that or is a sign that it is “reasonable” and within the parents discretion.

I wouldn’t say that circumcision is necessarily unreasonable, and is it true that most people who had one are not against it, but I do think that justifying as NAP-abiding (if this is what you’re getting to) on the basis that it is “reasonable” because there’s “retroactive consent” later risks turning the NAP into a consequentialist,

a posteriori framework, abandoning the deontology upon which it is formed, allowing for utilitarian calculation. I am glad, though, that you brought up the idea of retroactive consent, because this is exactly what I am getting to for the solution to this perceived dilemma, again: once a child reaches adulthood, they can retroactively consent or not to anything done to them by choice of their parents. As you mentioned earlier, 99% were fine, but 1% were not, thus we shouldn’t generalize that something is correct due to popularity, else it would be an ad populum fallacy, instead, we should let it down to each individual to judge whether something violated their rights or not, at which point they decide if they retroactively don’t consent.

This reminds me of a discussion I had with Molyneaux about spanking. I am almost on his page but not quite. I do agree spanking is barbaric, immoral, and ineffective. Yet I do not think a light spanking is child abuse in the sense that it’s so bad that we presume the parent loses his guardianship rights, even though I think it’s terrible parenting. Just as the parent has the right to consent to anesthesia for their child to get a tooth removed, the parent has the right to consent to being spanked for discipline reasons.

Spanking is quite a problem. I agree that is it largely immoral, and studies do show that it is often ineffective. It’s pretty common in my culture, but it thankfully is a dying custom. I personally grew up in a household where spanking was common, so my two siblings and I grew up being inflicted physical violence as punishment. I cannot blame my parents for this, as they grew up in even more violent households, so it’s an intergenerational issue. Our parents used spanking, though, not as a form of malevolent violence, but under the intention and misbelief that it helped educate us and rectified our behavior;

it wasn’t so bad as for them to lose guardianship rights over us, nor was there any necessarily-evil intention to it, and outside of that, they were caring parents.

However, bringing back my previous point, while we can agree that parents, whether moral or not, have a right to spank their children to discipline them, we also need to acknowledge that such spankings can have long-term psychological consequences;

for instance, I’ve always felt very pressured to do well in academics because I was used to being spanked if I got bad grades, which is in great part why I always excelled in high school and university, but it also was a source of stress and anxiety, as that childhood fear became internalized and transformed into the idea that academic failure is unacceptable and can have terrible consequences. Would I seek restitution from my parents for this? No, not personally, but I know of multiple people who certainly would, and I believe that they would have a right to do so.

Denying said right because their parents chose on their behalf would imply that there are some rights violations which simply cannot be reinstituted/retributed, which I believe would undermine our entire ideology.

As for the podcast episode, thanks for sharing it, I will try to listen to it soon.

I know and agree with all this, but I still think that it’s not clear cut enough to say that it means the parent loses his guardianship rights, and therefore, this means we stay out of it and leave it alone.

Agree. Should be left down to parties involved to sort it out, since in the case of, say, a botched circumcision, the malpractice is from whoever carried out, not really from the parents, who at most would be guilty of choosing a negligent professional.

And by the way it is not as if there is no benefit to circumcision and it is this: if you believe your son later in life would want to be circumcised you are doing him a favor but getting it over with when he is a baby and can’t experience or remember it. In my case I am glad I am “cut.” If I was a 25 year old man and was “un-cut” but preferred the “clean” option, now I have a dilemma b/c I have to put up with having an ugly penis or I have to go through very painful surgery and recovery. I would really resent my parents for not doing this for me when I was a baby.

Mostly agree. I just once more mention that in the off-case that you did not make the child a favor, and that once they’re an adult they dislike what was done to them, the child should have the right to seek legal action.

Maybe it wouldn’t happen for circumcision, but circumcision is in this case just an example of a near-infinite amount of other things.

The fact that we can imagine this indicates this should be in the realm of reasonable parental discretion even if I would not now personally do it to my son.

Agree. I never really denied or believed that it is not within reasonable parental discretion.

It does not just have to be necessary though; it can be elective. Moreover, as just noted, there are some reasons to to it young.

True. Mostly meant “necessary” as in that they believe there’s more reason for it to be done that there is not. Perhaps just a lack of better wording from my part. Wrote that email with a headache at like 4 AM.

disagree. the parent had the right and cannot be blamed later for deciding in ways the child later regrets.

So here’s where we clearly divide ourselves. I simply do not believe that anything that would normally be considered a NAP violation should be ignored because the person it is being inflicted on is temporarily unable to choose.

Otherwise, we risk allowing parents to act in ways that negatively affect the child in the long-term, but which are within reason, or at least not severe enough as for them to lose guardianship, and then denying the child’s right to seek retribution or restitution even if they are, justifiably, victims.

I think they have the right to sue and let the court system work it out. If parents start losing lawsuits like this that’s a sign that it’s not reasonable in the first place and future parents will be aware of this and stop circumscizing. But I know how I would vote if i was a judge or on the jury. That’s why this is cultural and contextual and libertarians who want bright line rules don’t like it. They hate uncertainty and want a Libertarian Law Code deduced from the brow of Rothbard-Zeus. Too bad. And this is why we do not mess with the family and leave it to them to settle unless all other options are gone.

Well… this technically means that you do agree, then.

Now, of course, when I mean seek retribution or restitution, it should be done through a court of law or private arbitrators. Obviously, if lawsuits start flying left and right over circumcision, or anything else, and parents lose them, then there’s a clear case of something being unreasonable, under which we can later shift our general understanding of what’s reasonable parenting and what is not,

and act accordingly. Definitely, a lot of this is directly influenced by cultural and social factors; a lawsuit over circumcision carried out in Israel would be very unlikely to get anywhere for the person suing, as this is a common practice there. It’s also clear that most people would only ever sue their parents if the overall balance of their parenting came out to be negative, as in, they believe that throughout their lives, their parents did them more harm than good. Never did I mean that children should have a right to retribution or restitution in adulthood, but that they have a right to seek it, and let the law or arbitrators decide, as each case is particular to each individual and family.

If someone sued their parents for circumcising them, but there was solid proof that their parents were otherwise loving and caring, then I, as a part of the jury, would consider the parents as  free of any guilt, although in certain societies the sheer act of circumcision could be seen as outright immoral, and people could vote differently based on their own cultural values.

On the other hand, if someone sued their parents over, say, PTSD caused by spanking or other form of prolonged, “reasonable” household violence, and there’s solid proof that it had a bad impact on the person in the long term, then I know I’d vote to consider the parents guilty.

I believe that we can recognize a NAP violation as such, while contextualizing it, and acknowledging that the victim has a standing to seek restitution, which can then be judged by third parties, but while I agree that the law can be used to shape collective cultural norms and “reasonableness”, I believe it is primarily a tool for an individual to seek justice for a violation of their pre-existing, objective rights.

Hopefully this all settles it, as I believe that we did eventually agree on the main point I made, even if we might differ on what constitutes a NAP violation on a child, which is merely a difference in deontology, we do agree on the essential framework: parents have discretion, but discretion is not sacred. A child, once grown, has to have the right to contest decisions made in his or her name, if we are to preserve a consistent, coherent notion of bodily autonomy and ensure that the NAP applies equally to all people. Thank you again for the stimulating exchange, it’s an entertaining discussion.

PS: Would you agree that a robust libertarian legal theory must leave some room for delayed redress of harm, precisely because autonomy is not fully present at all stages of life or in all situations?