It's really not my job to tell you what your evidence should look like. You made a claim that 15-year-olds are unable to consent. You were criticizing me for supporting my arguments with sources which didn't look that serious, regardless of their content. Well, now you're not supporting your argument with *anything*, which is much worse.

So, again, why can't 15-year-olds consent?

This is a principle issue. If we know for sure that somebody cannot consent (e.g., they are in a coma), then sexually exploiting them is definitely quite bad and I would say it's good if we did our best to prevent it. But you see, this really isn't about age, but about the ability to consent. So, the question is, how do we determine who can and who can't consent? Well, the current law basically assumes that anybody above the age can, and anybody below the age of consent can't consent. Sure, there is a relationship between age and that ability, but there are many other factors involved. And some factors could even be more predictive than age.

For example, a boss abusing their power to convince their employee to have sex with them. Sure, we could make laws which say something like "if employers threaten to fire their employees if they don't agree to have sex with them, they should be punished" but that's not good enough. A smart employer could always imply the threat in a very subtle way so as to avoid criminal prosecution. If his employee is really dependent on the job, she might have no choice but to bow her head and agree to have sex with him. So, why not pass a law which says "sex between employers and employees is completely prohibited, even in the apparent presence of mutual consent"?

My assumption was that a 17-year-old boy *is* capable of consenting and I used that assumption as a reference for the younger girl (by saying that they really aren't different enough to treat them differently from a legal point of view).

Your moral judgments are your decisions and that's all cool, as long as you don't make the additional step to try to impose them on others.

I feel quite comfortable invoking a statement which is typically not used in a legal context "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". If you're going to want to somehow interfere with the personal relationships of others, you'd better give me something much stronger than a vague correlation.

Well, under objective circumstances perhaps that would be the point at which you see the appeal of statelessness. Delicate problems are simply not solved well by a broad top-down government officials who try to reason out what the best possible law is. Will they really have good motivation to select the optimal law? Will they have the ability? Will they be flexible enough to change it fast if it turns out to be disastrous without letting it cause a lot of harm before they finally realize it's terrible?

The simple truth is that delicate problems can't be solved well by a rigid approach (which a government inevitably is). It's like trying to pick up a needle with an excavator.

I think he means you embarrassed yourself because it legitimately looked like you had no idea Rothbard was okay with a flourishing free market in children. You should reread the dialogue. It looks bad. And then reacting how fly predicted you would didn't help. Not saying anything about you personally or what you internally actually thought, but it sure looked like you didn't know Rothbard's thoughts on buying/selling children. If you did know his thoughts, you needlessly opened the door to fly's FINISH HIM maneuver.

And on the issue of not being embarrassed by Rothbard in general, I identify with libertarians on most matters, but Rothbard is horribad. I own several books by him and I can't get through a single one. Maybe he's a good libertarian cheerleader but I went into reading them with a scholarly mindset and had to put them down.

Just to add to the conversation of the moment, the big problem with libertarians is they are sooooo enthusiastic about showing off the internal coherence and syllogistic nature of libertarianism that they take up these awful fringe situations with glee. Literally any strategy is better than, e.g., justifying the CSA's position or trying to persuade people why the equal rights laws of the 60s are tyranny. As a general rule of thumb, if you find yourself arguing that black people would've ended up fine under slavery, it's time to rethink your methods. Or if your argument leads to others grilling you on where exactly your line between pedophilia and a legitimate adult-child relationship is, you might need to take a step back and regroup.

Here's an example of how to avoid embarrassing discussions about the civil war. This is what usually happens:

Unprompted libertarian in a thread not about the civil war: "States rights! States have the right to secede! Including the south in the 1860s."

Holy ****! You just opened yourself up to good arguments, bad arguments, trolls, people questioning your sanity, people questioning your social skills, etc. All because you just had to let everyone know how deep your libertarian roots are. Here's how it could have gone:

[You being silent]

Here's how it could go if someone knows you're a libertarian and wants to push your buttons:

Libertarian in relevant thread: "Looks like a states' rights issue."
Random poster: "just like slavery amirite? Gonna justify that?"
Libertarian: "No."


bam, you just avoided looking ridiculous

Okay, at this point I'm 99% sure you're not serious. I mean, you can't be. I believe you're an intelligent poster and it's incomprehensible to me that you don't know that sex in a relationship is much more than "BAM-CHICK-A-WAH-WAAAAHHH".

Again, if anybody told me I couldn't have sex with my girlfriend (especially an old bigoted judge), I would flip them with the speed of light and not even consider complying with their stupid law. And I'm pretty sure you'd do the same thing.

I admit I was sloppy initially and a bit quick to react without clarifying what I mean and what my position is. You would agree, though, that Fly's characterization of Rothbard's position was a straw man to a significant extent?

Maybe this is for another thread, but I can't really say much, given that you haven't really said why you think Rothbard is bad. I'm not saying he's the greatest economist or political ideologue, but I certainly like many of his positions.

I understand what you mean. But are you actually saying that it's preferable to hide some of your principles for rhetoric purposes? I don't think this is a bad idea necessarily, but I want to make sure I understand you correctly. But it definitely isn't a trivial question, as I think it's some sort of a trade-off between the short run and the long run.

Supporting people fighting for their freedom isn't contradicting any libertarian principle. First of all, from the perspective of the slaves, they are more than justified to fight against their owners. From the perspective of a third party, I don't think they are legally *forced* to help the slaves, but they certainly have a strong moral obligation to do so. So, what I would say to the Confederate States if I was the other dudes: sure, go ahead and leave. But don't think we'll let you keep your slaves, since they don't really belong to you by any meaningful sense of the word.

Yeah, I'm not sure how well this will work, as they'll then start asking you more questions. After all the silences and "no"s at some point you *will* have to clarify what your position is.

You think that's what this is, but it's not. This is me asking you "What, in theory, might persuade you that you're wrong, were you to be shown it?" I can't force you to answer, but I know what it'll look like if you don't.

Because in theory it's possible for both to give informed consent. Whereas legally it's not possible for children to do so.

Why is that your assumption, though? I mean, if you could actually persuade me that an 18-yo male has the decision-making capacity of a 14-yo girl, my first instinct would definitely be to restrict the 18-yo rather than empower the 14-yo. Fourteen-year-old girls don't know **** about ****, in my experience.

So, it's OK for me to think that one is worse than the other, as long as I don't take that into account when deciding which of them should carry the day in a decision about the permissibility of a given action? Stroll on, pal.

Firstly, it's not a 'vague' correlation, it's observed consistently over a three-generation longitudinal study. That's not 'vague' by any stretch. Secondly, it's still more than you have (none).

Secondly, again, I already said that it's not proof, just that it's evidence. Evidence was all we were talking about. 'Proof' didn't come into it until I showed you some evidence.

And on a side note, doesn't it bother you slightly that earlier ITT you confidently stated that there was no evidence, and once I spend ten seconds on google you're haggling over how strong the evidence is? Could it be that things are as they are for reasons other than you've been supposing?

So, no answer, just the standard nirvana fallacy of the state's imperfection. Fair enough.

All the typing gets tedious, so I try to lighten the mood, mostly for my own amusement. Ignore my levity if it does nothing for you.

It's just a hunch, but I think you might seriously reconsider that if you were fresh out of a yearlong stay at the Casa de Bumrape.

How will "real" anarchists deal with oligarchy?

how is lirva not permabanned?

Why can't I find a full auto AK under $10k?

because lirva

What would persuade me is what persuades me regarding any other issue. An observation from which your claim follows logically. This is a pretty weak sauce attempt to shift the burden to me. If you attempted to defend a position of yours like that in the scientific community, it would look pretty weird, to say the least.

"Hey, I am proposing this new theory".

"Oh, cool. What's your evidence supporting it?"

"Nothing"

"Huh?"

"Well, I'm claiming it's true, isn't that enough?"

"No?"

"Okay, what should my evidence look like?"

"I don't know dude, it's your theory, the burden of proof is on you, you find the evidence, WTF?"

"No, sorry, you have to tell me what the evidence should look like, otherwise I win"

Oh, goood, you're going in circles so badly. Obviously, legally it's not possible for a child to consent, that's the whole point of the conversation. If we passed laws that it's illegal for employees to consent, it will become legally impossible for them as well. The question is, why not pass that law in order to protect employees from potential exploitation from their sociopathic employers?

The thing is that even if I managed to persuade you (in your heart and mind) that a 14-year-old girl isn't that different from an 18-year-old boy, you still wouldn't admit we should therefore make it illegal for 18-year-olds to have sex. And look, the point here isn't that 14-year-olds are perfect decision makers. Can they make a mistake and have sex with a guy and later regret it? Sure. Can the same thing happen to a 24-year-old? Sure. Is it more likely to happen to the younger girl? Most likely.

And? The same holds for every other decision in life. The younger you are, the less experiences you are generally, and therefore your decisions will be worse than the decisions you're going to be making when you gain more experience. But that's part of learning. So, the question again is not whether the decision a 14-year-old will make is going to be flawless, but whether she has the mental capacity to know what she's doing. And 14-year-olds have a pretty solid understanding of what sex is (*a graphic description of a sexual intercourse*), why people do it (because they find it pleasurable, bonding, etc.), that it does have certain risks (STDs, undesired pregnancy). Last, but not least, a 14-year-old girl is biologically mature for sex. And again, a 24-year-old will know more about these things, but this is simply due to more experience. Similarly, a 40-year-old will know more about sex than the 24-year-old, etc.

To get a good sense of contrast, compare that to a 5-year-old. Well, that kid clearly doesn't have any concept of sex whatsoever. What it's for, what are the positives and potential negatives... Hell, they probably won't even know such a thing exists. And, again, last but not least, they won't be biologically prepared for sex, not even a tiny bit!

It's not true that I have none. More than half of the girls from my school had had sex when they were 14 (and any other school that I've ever seen). Are we living in a society that's being crushed by the negative effects of adolescent sex? I don't think so. And the correlation is vague not necessarily because it's close to zero, but because the possible factors that contribute to this correlation are so many that the inferences we can legitimately make based on the correlation are practically none. All we can really say is (as you correctly observed from what the researchers themselves wrote) "there could be something, but we need to conduct other studies to see if there is something at all related to a causal link between teen sex and whatever side effects.

And by the way, notice that with your so-called evidence your argument has magically shifted from whether an age gap between teens is okay to whether teens should be allowed to have sex in the first place, even if they are exactly at the same age. If you're attempting to defend the latter, cool. But then the age gap becomes irrelevant, since what you cited doesn't say that teen sex is harmless as long as the two parties are same age, but harmful if one party is like 4 years older.

As you noticed yourself (or at least I thought you noticed), I hadn't realized you were asking about evidence for that. Otherwise, I'm aware that such correlations exist and it's not like they don't make sense. Sexual encounters do introduce certain complications in the social life of the teenager. But guess what, the same holds for adults. It's not uncommon for people to allow themselves to get distracted by sex at the expense of something else. I mean, Tesla and Kant were virgins and they achieved great things. Maybe they wouldn't have achieved them and died in mediocrity instead if they had decided to get involved with sexual encounters with women. Maybe it's not such a bad idea to ban sex (unless it's for reproductive purposes) altogether, huh? Maybe we will have a very productive society then.

I already told you what the solution is: individual approach to the problem by individuals, not by the state machinery. If a person decides to have sex with a 5-year-old (claiming it was "consensual"), he is held accountable (easy). If the person had sex with somebody who is at an age which is sort of a gray area, then we investigate the issue to see if it *really* was consensual. If not, then we take measures, etc. But you have to realize that asking me to give you a more concrete solution than that is quite oxymoronic, as the whole purpose of statelessness is to avoid rigid pre-defined solutions to problems, as anti-statists believe (quite rightfully) that the world is a very complicated dynamic system and the problems which arise in it are unsolvable with a pure feed-forward approach.

I'm not bothered by the funny expression. But it did imply that sex is some sort of a capricious desire. And I'm saying that sex is quite an essential part of a modern-day relationship. Especially if you'd already been having sex with that person and are all of a sudden asked to stop for the next 3 years. We both know that would have a pretty nasty effect on the relationship.

I don't know why you're assuming that relationships are some sort of a peripheral activity in a person's life and that their partner is something they should sacrifice easily to avoid complications. Would you reason the same way if a judge asked you (for a super weird reason) that you should stop seeing your child for the next 4 years? Because the law says so? Would you not fight for your parental rights? Would you let your child down to save your own ass? Would you be able to live with yourself afterwards?

Absolute unwillingness to compromise is a hallmark trait of Libertarians and their ilk. Just give a little ground on some of these fringe issues and you'll get more traction with people. But for whatever reason, they insist on absolute ideological purity and we wind up with these inevitable discussions about why the Civil Rights Act should be repealed and why kiddie pron should be legal.

Really, why not try picking and choosing your battles a little better? You could give up on the CRA and focus your energy on winnable fights like convincing people that the NDAA needs to go.

Called that one pretty good!

Youz guyz are nothing if not predictable. Again... does your answer explaining what you feel libertarianism is logically depend on what I 'am'? Do you have a different answers stored up depending on what the questioner 'is'? How come libertarians are incapable of explaining their 'theory' in a stand-alone logical manner?

I agree with the OP.

So, evidence would look like evidence. Helpful.

Man, I'm indulging you here, you understand that? You don't think that newborn babies can offer informed consent, correct? So you accept that there is some age at which people cannot do so. And you want to change the generally agreed limit. And apparently the burden is all on the people who don't want to change the generally agreed limit. Because it's handier for you if that's the case.

The above quite closely describes your trajectory ITT. You are the one proposing a change to the current state of affairs. Believe it or not, the burden of proof is not on me to justify the status quo over and above your proposed change, it's on you to justify the proposed change. When I ask you what the 'evidence' you're asking for looks like, I'm going along with your wrongheaded assertion that the burden is on me for the sake of advancing the conversation.

The only conclusion I can come to, honestly, is that you either have no idea what it would take to convince you that you're wrong, in which case your opinion can be safely disregarded, or that you're deliberately avoiding expressing what would convince you, in case the criteria you lay out happen to obtain. In which case your opinion can be safely disregarded.

But the reason it's not legally possible for a child to consent is that it is felt that it is not actually possible for a child to consent. It's just not a useful analogy, since it ignores the reasoning behind the laws it's aimed at questioning.

I probably would, actually. I'm pretty sure I already more or less said exactly that.

You are doing an absolutely bang-up job of explaining why 14-year-olds shouldn't be having sex, I must say.
'Knowing what sex is' is entirely different from understanding and being mentally and emotionally prepared for the possible fallout of such a relationship and of decisions made in its wake. An 8-year-old can 'understand' blackjack, should I be allowed to teach it to one and fleece him of his pocket money?

'Biologically mature' means precisely jack ****. Lina Medina began menstruating at eight months of age and gave birth via C-section aged five. It's hard to top 'pregnant' when determining 'biological maturity for sex' and I can only assume you aren't going to push this down to five-year-olds.

It's not really got much to do with 'knowing more'.

Except for Lina Medina!

They do mention numerous potential confounding variables being eliminated. It's a far stronger observation than you're trying to make out. And anecdotal evidence is worth absolutely nothing here.

There's no shifting, magic or otherwise. I've maintained throughout the thread that children aren't capable of offering informed consent to sexual activity. The only difference between activity between older and younger children and children of the same age is the nature of the intervention I'd think adviseable.

Yes, and we allow adults to take risks because they are capable of offering informed consent to such risk. You're starting to ramble, here.

So, it's actually unreasonable of me to ask you for specifics? To be really fair and even-handed, I should reject an imperfect system in favour of one composed of hand-wavey generalisations? Are you ****ing serious?

Worse than prison?

That's an exceptionally ill-conceived example. Restraining orders are a thing. Abusive parents are ordered to have no contact with their kids, like, all the time. And I'm sure many of them think the reasoning behind it is 'super weird'. Shockingly, they're not in charge of that decision.

libertarians should focus more on things like poor people, in ways that demonstrate some sort compassion. that would be very beneficial to their message.

Time for the lock I think. Waaaay off topic and into somewhat creepy territory. At least I won't get a mean PM from the OP this time.