Children are a controversial issue among anarchists and libertarians, so I definitely don't think all ACists regard children as the property of their parents (in any case, count me among the anarchists opposed to this "child ownership").

Me too.

Exactly. it's the old "default deny" vs. "default allow" stance.

It's like me and you discussing whether we should allow Edge to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Because, the default position is that he isn't allowed to do anything without our permission LDO.

Is there anyone in the world who thinks children should be property?

I do.

natedogg

I dont know about that. Property doesnt have the right to self-ownership. Children do. While there might not be much practical, day-to-day difference (I particularly enjoyed the point you made earlier about anyone who says parents dont own their kids is really just saying the government owns your kids) between considering children the property of their parents and considering them (insert some special category that I cant think of a name for), I think there is a fundamental difference that you would recognize. It is not wrong or immoral to destroy my own property. It is wrong and immoral to destroy children. They have a right to self-ownership, and its one that will be defended by other members of society if necessary.

a constant inner struggle afaik

It is not wrong or immoral to destroy my own property. Is it wrong and immoral to destroy my children?

This.

it has to do with something called the law.
if you're a hardcore commie then of course anglo saxon legal system descended from hebrew mosaic law means nothing to you.

just first link that popped up. 100% certain that measles shot, for example, can have side effects includding death. wanna bet?

so you're saying a healthy person with no disease is a threat to the public? wow you must be a bush administration official or something.

well first of all you can get a waiver in every state in the union, so if you don't want your child vaccinated, you don't have to. so if by not in dispute you know that, then ok.

if by not in dispute you mean you have to get your kids shot up, then you are propagandize and need to wake up.

having said that, hey, the system is such that all dumbbells get their kids vaccinated no questions asked, which I guess is for the best.

play online poker and never leave the house. drink only rainwater and pure grain alcohol. preserver vital essence.

well if they are less than 9 months old (from concedption) then courts have ruled go ahead and kill away.

6 posts in like 4 minutes, are you some kind of machine? WTF dude, lay off the Red Bull.

I'm not so sure this argument works: it obviously isn't rights-violating to destroy your own property, but it may or may not be immoral. (Suppose I just created this amazing new cancer-curing medicine, and only I know the formula. I would be well within my rights to destroy the medicine and get rid of all data so no one would duplicate it. But doing so would be nonetheless immoral.)
In any case, I think that "destroying one's children" is wrong regardless of whether or not the children are found to have rights or are the rightful property of their parents.

EDIT: Actually, if we reword it a bit, something like...

1. If parents owned their children, then parents would have the right to murder their children.
2. No parent has a right to murder their children

3. Therefore no parent owns their children, QED

(this doesn't imply that the relationship between a child and his or her parent is the same as with any other adult, or that children ought be tried and treated as fully functional moral agents, only that they can't simply be the property of their parents)

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Destroying the cure would be a weird and dickish thing to do but it wouldn't be immoral. Removal of a positive is not the same as imposing a negative. If the standard is it is immoral not to help people when you have the means to do so then we're all in trouble (how many Africans could half your wealth save?). Destroying your property is morally neutral. So I'm afraid either children aren't property, destroying them is morally neutral or you have to take the above stance which means you're immoral unless you near bankrupt yourself helping others.

Unless you put children into a different moral category which is property that is unlike other property but then the statement "children are property" is useless.

^^^^^^All this. Especially the last paragraph...thats what I would do, put them in a different property category, you dont have to call it property if you dont want to. And its not necessarily a static, closed, sealed category.

1. Just edited my post: how do you feel about my reformulation?

2. I'm certainly not arguing that it is always immoral not to help others when you have the means. I'm taking an extreme case (in my scenario we aren't even talking about $$, I would certainly have no problem with selling such a cure. But destroying it without cause--just so others could not benefit seems sadistic and immoral).

3. Our disagreement *may* on some level stem from how we're using terms, but it may be more substantive. In my mind, rights and right-violating actions, etc. are a subset or the moral and ethical. So while stealing from you may be immoral, I could also act immorally toward you in other ways (e.g., by being a total dick to you for no reason). So when you say that destroying the cure would be "dickish" and I say its immoral, I'm not really sure how far apart we are here. Ethics incorporates more than just the virtue of justice--generosity, courage, prudence, wisdom, and so forth are other character traits that people might have that make them moral (likewise, being greedy, cowardly, or nasty might makes someone immoral, even if they are otherwise model libertarians). In any case, I certainly don't mean to equate "moral" with "altruistic" or anything like that.

1. Yeah seems right to me I'd be interested in what natedogg has to say

2. Sadistic yes immoral no. Sorry to be nitty but it's a very specific word to me and it's abuse is (imo) one of the major causes of suffering in the world. All the bad thing in the world are done "for the children" or other "moral" reasons. It seems here that your stance becomes X (destroying the cure) is immoral unless you make money from it in which case it becomes moral (would you have a problem with someone withholding the cure if noone wanted to pay for it?)

3. But you kind of are, at least you're certainly muddying the waters where they don't need muddying. I think there are two types of morality aesthetic morality which is be on time, don't lie, be nice to people and true morality don't kill don't steal etc. My line of demarcation is what you can use violence to stop. Would you advocate using violence to make Mr Sadist release his cure? Bear in mind this can't be case by case you'd have to universalize it. It is ok to use violence to stop a murder "true morality" it is not ok to use violence to make someone generous prudent etc "aesthetic morality".

Again, I think we are making similar distinctions (since I'm a libertarian I clearly don't believe that one can use violence to force someone else to be more generous, prudent, etc.) But since I'm also an Aristotelian, I don't think that "ethics" and "morality" are exhausted by questions about rights.

Just because someone's intentions are good doesn't mean that all actions that flow from the intentions are good. We shouldn't abadnon morality just because people do bad things in attempts to attain good consequences (if anything, we should just abandon the ethical outlooks that generally lead to such phenomenon--eg, utilitarian ethics), especially since ethics are a necessary part of understanding why aggression and coercion are wrong.

I'm not sure I have a real stance on this issue, other than "destroying it needlessly is cruel and sadistic". Both giving the cure away and selling it to people seem reasonable and ethical (especially since anyone who got their hands on it could figure ouyt the formula themselves and duplicate it). Withholding it may or may not be moral, circumstances depending.

This is perhaps a bit tangential but here's one nitpick (although I agree with a lot of what you're saying): IMO acting truly sadistically IS immoral. So "sadistic yes immoral no" is self-contradictory. Someone CHOOSING to be an a-hole is doing something immoral, no matter what that might be.

The issue of at what point others may or may not have some right to exert force is not what I'm addressing here.

If (for instance) someone sees a hungry malnourished person (don't ask how he knows he's hungry etc.) on the sidewalk, and in walking past, deliberately throws an apple he was carrying down the sewer next to that person, that is being an a-hole and it is an immoral act (assume the effort of throwing it down the sewer = the exact same effort of dropping it into the starving person's lap). I'm not saying it is immoral to not donate to starving people in Africa by sending a minimal check, but if instead you went to the trouble of placing the cash in an envelope, stamping and addressing it, then carrying it out to the mailbox, and then BURNING IT, that would be an immoral act. Also, if someone just acts like a complete a-hole for no reason to a total stranger he meets, that too is an immoral act: being a rude prick for no good reason is an immoral act. I think acting truly sadistically is immoral no matter how one may try to spin or look at it.

It makes zero difference to the people in Africa what he does with it.

Would you advocate the use of violence to stop this behaviour? If not then it's not immoral as I think the word should be defined. I agree it's aesthetically immoral and I'd cut that person completely out of my life if I knew them and I'd advocate all the non initiation of violence sanctions (terrible wording but you get what I mean and I didn't want to use the term nonviolent as it is loaded) against him but it's not "truly immoral". We can use different terms if you'd like so long as the demarcation line stays the same.

FYP

So you're saying that you are in favor of outlawing something, regardless of its inherent qualities, if it is misused or abused? I have absolutely no clue how that relates to vaccinations, other than they both obviously affect public health. So you're saying that we should outlaw guns because when misused they lead to poor health? Outlaw basically all food, because when misused it leads to poor health? Outlaw ritalin and narcotics because they are frequently abused?

Now you've lost me completely. What is "correct use of non-vaccinations"? Do you just mean don't immunize kids whose immune systems won't respond appropriately because of a genetic defect or because they're on chemo? Or is this some game theory strategy? Where we immunize the minimum number of kids so that we have an ideally low risk to the population and an ideally low number of kids getting stuck with needles?