I treat my child as a young adult. I explain things to him, rather then say things like, 'because I said so', or what have you. Rather then assume he doesn't understand I assume he does understand and ask questions if he doesn't. He is 5, if he wasn't a short child, my wife and I are both 5'4", he would be mistaken for a child older then that.

It is my opinion that if more parents would stop treating their children as children and prepare them rightfully for the world, instead as some do trying to protect them from the world thereby stunting their growth as human beings, then half the problems relating to arrant children would all but disappear.

Parents in Rome had motivation that by 7 years old the child would have the understanding of right and wrong, for the child would suffer as an adult for a crime that was committed. Today such motivations no longer exist. So child are condemned as second class human beings till they reach some mystical-magical ages.

I have no idea why, when asked "Why?", parents tend to answer "Because I said so!" instead of "Because it might kill you!" or "It's dangerous!" or some other more informative answer but until a child has enough knowledge and experience to make informed decisions for themselves, parents must often make choices on their behalf in order to protect and educate them.

Were parents not to do this (and there are plenty that don't) then they would be considered neglectful and rightly so.

The children of neglectful parents often wind up dead.

When speaking of morals, I was speaking in the religious sense, since that appeared where Paul was coming from Zeus. I agree with you, Zeus, that morality should be based on whom ever initiates force is the one acting immorally(this time not in the religious sense).

However, my problem is that parents treat children as property, deciding what is an initiation of aggression for a child instead of letting the child decide. And in doing so are actually initiating aggression against others without any authorization, since it is the mind of some people that children are unable to give authorization until they reach some magical, mystical age.

For an example, I, like some others, was fondled as a child by someone older then me, a pre-teen male kid in the neighborhood. I did not view his fondling then, or even now, an initiation of aggression against me, even though my parents might consider it one and subject the young man through torture that is the criminal justice system. If I don't feel it was an initiation of aggression, then and even more so now, was it a violation of non-initiation of force principle? If anyone acting on my behalf, neither asking my input nor considering what I might want, were to initiate force against this young boy, would they not be in the wrong?

Can you honestly say you are prepared for the act of sexual intercourse and its possible results, even if given an education about the act for 10 years time? Such is the saying about crossing such bridges when they are reached. You could plan and train for years for an event as crossing a river, but never be totally prepared for the actual crossing of a river, and it isn't until you are on the other side of that river that you can really say, you know what you know.

It is this conversion of knowledge to experience before one really can, in my mind, actually give consent to anything.

The argument that children can not make such choices is, as I have postulated on numerous other occasions, simply false one, created by parents who view their children as some property or quasi-property to be controlled and held away from the harshness of life, and it is these parents who are initiating force against their children and are the real criminals.

In your experience, a child fondling another child is a crime punishable by the harshest of sentences. In my experience, a child fondling another child, is only a crime if the one being fondled objects to such an act. Regardless of religious morality of the act.

Whereas we believe the Philosophy of Liberty is the best method for interacting with others, statists believe that a handful of people should be given a monopoly on force to keep both the immoral and the undesirable in check.

The flaw with that line of thought being that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."

And yet this is the tool statists give to those who seek power. Immoral people are attracted to power like flies to dung.

What if someone began spreading lies about you to all your neighbors, that you were, say, a pedophile?

Certainly such slander would be exceptionally damaging to one's reputation and livelihood but in a voluntaryist society I would openly challenge them to prove their allegations publicly.

Should he accept and lose, he will have damaged his own reputation and livelihood and would likely be ostracized. Should he decline, same result. No force necessary and he looks like a fool and a liar if he refuses to provide satisfaction (can't get no).

Should he accept and win, then that would prove his allegations to be true and my reputation and livelihood would be damaged as a result of my own actions and not his. As much as punching someone in the face for such slander might seem necessary, you may have to pay for it later. Literally, via restitution. Cooler heads will prevail.

I would certainly consider that unjust, but I wouldn’t say it should be prevented by force. I would guess you probably consider it the second category, because only unjust force, not just any injustice goes in the first category, right?

Correct. Undesireable behavior would, in most cases, be filtered out through competing market systems based on reputation rather than force. If someone runs around being a douchebag (proven by making false allegations he either cannot prove or refuses to do so), then he'll get his when he tries doing business with those who don't appreciate douchebaggery.

Actually, this is a larger question. Don’t you agree that one can behave unjustly towards others without acting violently?

I believe people can act hateful, stupid and emotional to others and thus be douchebags but if they have the right to express themselves, then they must be free to make fools of themselves and produce undesireable behavior if they so choose. Make no mistake, there would be market consequences for such behavior.

As for the examples from an earlier post, prostitution and drug use, obviously those will also have consequences. Some people won't care to do business with such people, and others won't care. But, barring extenuating circumstances, neither of these things harms anyone else but the consenting individuals who choose them. In many cases, you will never even know that these individuals engage in these practices.

Undesirable behavior is subjective. Immoral behavior is inherently objective because it is by it's nature, destructive.

Would you say nonviolent injustice is only undesirable then, and not immoral? Or do you also have a third category, of immoral behavior which should not be prevented by force?

Again, if no one is harmed or damaged in some way, it is not immoral to me so yes, "nonviolent injustice" is undesireable but not inherently immoral.

I see no reason for a third category. If it doesn't hurt another or affect me in some way, then it's none of my business. What a high-priced call girl does in Los Angeles or a pot smoker does in Seattle is not my business. And, while unfortunate, neither are the self-damaging choices of a street walker in Hoboken or a meth head in Chattanooga. It all comes back to non-aggression and self-responsibility.

I agree that nothing you put in the “undesirable” category would justify counter-force.

I think our worldviews are not terribly different, and our views on what justifies counter-force are pretty much identical.

I think the key difference is that I believe that we have been given our lives by a creator, to whom we are morally responsible for not abusing them. I think you would say that we have no such moral responsibility, that we can morally use our lives any way we choose, as long as we don’t harm others, right?

And that's a fine belief with one minor (yet dangerous) flaw: it includes those who may not believe as you do into your religious collective i.e. you include all of humanity into your belief rather than just those who subscribe to your beliefs.

This plants the seed for enforcing your collective's ideas of what is or is not acceptable behavior on others. The Catholic Church and it's inquisitions is an obvious historical example of this as are the Salem witch trials.

"She doesn't act as we believe she should act. She must be a witch! Burn the witch!"

"He doesn't prostrate himself before us and worships heathen idols, he is a heretic! Burn the heretic!"

And so on.

So yes, I believe people should have the freedom to do with their lives as they wish. As much as I hope that they would choose a constructive path rather than a destructive one, I do not believe they have any obligation to do so. Their lives would, however, be better if they did.

By the way, what do you believe is the source of the moral law you describe — which prohibits violence towards others? Do you think there is an inherent moral law to the universe, somewhat like physical laws?

There is natural law which, to me, is to imagine what kind of choices you could make, for good or ill, in a world where you were the only person on earth.

Now take that and add 6 billion more people with that same ability. In order to prevent or alleviate the conflict that will naturally arise from interaction, there must be a common sense set of principles shared amongst a society.

That set of principles is the philosophy of liberty.

Regarding legal/illegal, I meant not what is currently legal or illegal, but what should be legal or illegal. So, murder should be illegal — drugs should not. If you like, perhaps replace illegal with "morally preventable by force", and legal with "not morally preventable by force". That's all I was trying to communicate with those terms — I probably could have chosen better ones.

By "imperfect" I really just meant "undesirable".

What if someone began spreading lies about you to all your neighbors, that you were, say, a pedophile? I would certainly consider that unjust, but I wouldn't say it should be prevented by force. I would guess you probably consider it the second category, because only unjust force, not just any injustice goes in the first category, right?

Actually, this is a larger question. Don't you agree that one can behave unjustly towards others without acting violently? Would you say nonviolent injustice is only undesirable then, and not immoral? Or do you also have a third category, of immoral behavior which should not be prevented by force?

I agree that nothing you put in the "undesirable" category would justify counter-force.

I think our worldviews are not terribly different, and our views on what justifies counter-force are pretty much identical.

I think the key difference is that I believe that we have been given our lives by a creator, to whom we are morally responsible for not abusing them. I think you would say that we have no such moral responsibility, that we can morally use our lives any way we choose, as long as we don't harm others, right?

By the way, what do you believe is the source of the moral law you describe — which prohibits violence towards others? Do you think there is an inherent moral law to the universe, somewhat like physical laws?

I don't believe there is such a thing a "perfect" behavior so I can't really subscribe to a belief in "imperfect" behavior either.

Pretty much everything I consider to be "immoral" relates to the "real crimes" of murder, assault, rape, theft and vandalism. These are all crimes involving usurpation of another person's property (be it their body or other type of property).

Since these are all the initiation of force, using counterforce to prevent them or subdue the perpetrator would be justified.

I can't imagine a scenario wherein undesirable behavior would justify counterforce but if you have one, I'd be interested in hearing it.

So yes, unless you have some convincing argument otherwise, the distinction I make between the two does determine whether or not force may be used as a response.

You didn't offend . I think you hit pretty close to the mark here with this last post. I would have the following three categories:

Immoral behavior (illegal): That type of immoral behavior which involves violence against another person or their property. It can be moral to use force to prevent this kind of behavior. I believe this would fit entirely in your "immoral" category.

Immoral behavior (legal): That type of immoral behavior which does not involve violence against another person or their property. It is not moral to use force to prevent this kind of behavior. This category includes self destructive behavior, such as hard drug use, as well as destructive behavior towards others which is not violent, such as verbal abuse. I believe this falls into your "undesirable behavior" category.

Imperfect behavior which is not immoral: Undesirable behavior due to personal limitations, such as clumsiness, lack of intelligence, etc. This behavior is not immoral, because it is due not to poor priorities or bad judgement, but to lack of raw ability or education.

Does that make sense? Also, I am curious, is it right to use force to prevent everything in your "immoral" category, or are there some things which you consider immoral, but should not be met with force? That is, does the line between "immoral" and "undesireable" for you also determine the justifiability of force as a response?

You use immoral to describe undesirable behavior whereas I use it to mean unjust behavior.

To me, undesirable behavior means conduct that doesn't quite reach the level of injustice or wickedness.

For me, immorality is a matter of evil whereas undesirable behavior is about people making choices that are self-destructive, illogical and/or humiliating to themselves and others.

While I'm fairly neutral as to the desirability of marijuana use, I find heroin and meth use to be extremely undesirable. Since neither is inherently good nor evil, neither can be described as moral or immoral.

I would consider selling or giving those substances to a child extremely to be extremely immoral, however.

It is not so arbitrary as you make it sound. Certainly you must recognize that there can be behavior which is self destructive, or destructive towards others, which does not rise to the level of criminality. I believe that that is immoral behavior. It's fine if you disagree, but let's not pretend my beliefs are based on randomly selecting some book out of a bargain bin, based on its nice looking cover, and deciding to follow its every dictat.