Too old. Too gay. Too rich. Too weird. These are some of the objections raised to Elton John and David Furnish adopting a son born of a surrogate mother.
Is this a good thing? I have no idea. Ask me, or better yet, ask young Zachary in 2028. (Until then, leave him alone.) Should it be allowed? I think so. Even on the most harsh interpretation possible of Mr John and Mr Furnish’s probable ability to give the boy a good start in life, there is no denying that billions of children are born to a worse one.
That was the peg. This is the coat. A great big dirty overcoat that will not hang up neatly and drips over the floor: what objections ought to be enough for the state to forbid people to adopt?
Everyone has heard stories of how social workers seem to actively enjoy seeing would-be parents contort themselves to fit through ever-tinier hoops of social worker righteousness. So you’re a smoker? Shake of the head. I see you are fat. Tut tut, going to have to lose a few pounds, aren’t we? What’s this – you are a Christian who disapproves of homosexuality? I am afraid… oh, you are a Muslim. That’s OK, then.
I read an account by one couple who said that the sight of a four-pack of beer bottles among their shopping on the table was enough to make their inspecting social worker devote a whole paragraph to their incipient alcoholism in her report. I heard of another who deduced from a couple’s dog being overweight that they had a dysfunctional attitude to food. What fun, to be your own Sherlock Holmes and have the consequences your deductions played out in human lives. These are the powers they would gladly take over all parents. Be warned.
Most here will be as angered as I am by the thought of children remaining in council care, becoming more harmed and mentally stunted by it with every month that goes by if the eventual fates of children who grow up in care are anything to go by, while people who would have loved to give them a good if not perfect home are turned away.
But can we dispense with the State altogether?
Without the social workers, how are you going to stop paedophiles, cultists, Fagins, and would-be owners of slaves from adopting children?
Well, you can’t. But maybe it’s asking the wrong question; the more interesting question is how one can have a society in which children can escape abusive carers regardless of their biological connection with them, or lack thereof.
Paedophiles, fagins and slavers are already breaking the law (I ignore the “cultist” issue since as an atheist I see most of my fellow humans as “cultists” and I have no desire to deprive them of their children). So the question is one of ensuring that all citizens regardless of age or other status have access to the criminal law and a means of escape.
As one example, it seems to me that the greatest risk of incestual abuse is in girls (and probably boys) who are post pubescent, not young children (although the latter occurs of course in some sad cases)[1]. Perhaps the greatest protection you can thus give adolescent girls is to allow them to leave home rather than trapping them in the home as “children” during their most vulnerable years, with the only alternative being the scary proposition of being “taken into care”. This is one reason I think the age of majority needs to be lowered.
[1] I am being somewhat speculative, but I think that the majority of those labelled with the blanket term “paedophile” are ephebophiles, or even not any “phile” at all other than “fails to restrain themself in the presence of an attractive young person”. For instance attraction to adolescent boys “on the cusp of manhood” is very common among homosexuals[2].
[2] Right off topic, but that seems to be why the very gay fashion industry chooses models who look like gangly adolescent lads and as little like women as possible.
And, we must always remember in this kind of discussion that the overwhelming majority of adults are good people who wish to do nothing but good for children and are primarily motivated in their actions by a protective urge. This is why I am personally so horrified by the current situation in which adults are basically barred from interacting with children- the “adult protective network” which existed when I was a child has to all intents and purposes been dismantled, primarily due to the campaigning of post-marxist radical feminists who are, to not put too fine a point on it, profoundly mentally disturbed.
On balance, I think the good that arises from having a social work system is more than cancelled out by the evil done by it. It is good to rescue abused children, it is bad to child snatch without any oversight. Social workers act more and more like the Stasi every day.
I’d get rid of the whole system. That doesn’t change the fact that the wellbeing of innocent children who have committed no crime should be of concern to everyone.
The best way I can think of to deal with abusive and neglectful parents is with a feudal city-state social model, without reference to specific “social work” systems at all.
People will know if their neighbours are neglecting their children and could intervene as a community in whatever way seems best. Practically this may still result in “child snatching” but much less likely to be unjust I think, it being targeted and personalised. Neighbours are more likely to volunteer to help out a mum who is struggling etc etc. It is a lot easier to shaft someone you don;t have to look at every day.
It has the added advantage that if a family does fall victim to social work style interference they can simply move to another city-state to escape it.
I also might add that I am in favour of the right to discriminate. If parents voluntarily give up their children for adoption, and their last decree as their guardians is that they don’t want “homos” adopting their kids, then I see no reason why that should be respected.
Vice versa as well of course.
Why not ask the proper question:
Why can’t “social workers” be limited to those functions?
Certainly they can be – can’t they?
Whose in ultimate control here?
Why not ask the proper question:
Why can’t “social workers” be limited to those functions?
Certainly they can be – can’t they?
Who is in ultimate control here?
The problem here is a common problem in sociopolitical theory. Small scale peer-moderated systems don’t scale to mass “stranger” societies. That’s why communism works in the family and small communities but fails disastrously at the nation level; indeed I think the same applies to much anarchist theory- for instance I’ve seen it proposed that criminals would comply with AnCap legal systems or else be shunned. But shunning doesn’t work on the scale of thousands or millions; nobody knows the shunnee, and can’t be arsed to shun them even if they do know this stranger is a shunnee.
The general problem for any system is finding one that works for the tens of thousands and for the millions, in societies of strangers. When you can just move to another town, or just another part of town, and become a stranger again, hopes for peer moderated social enforcement of any kind collapse.
Ian, there really no societies of millions, not even thousands. What you take to be those are actually artificial collectives. In other words, ‘a society of strangers’ is an oxymoron.
Natalie, I think your question is moot, unless you are willing to ask it about biological parents as well (which judging by an aside in your post, you are not?).
oh, you are a Muslim
Technically speaking, adoption in the UK legal sense is not permitted in Islam.
As far as Elton John is concerned, I thought it was a Jackson-like “surrogate birth”, i.e. one of them is the biological father, so it’s not really an adoption in this case (although the topic still stands as he tried to adopt before).
People will know if their neighbours are neglecting their children and could intervene as a community in whatever way seems best.
JadedLibertarian, I’m afraid you’re not jaded enough. As much as I wish this were true, it is not. Children are especially good at hiding abuse, as they feel it is their fault and evidence of their badness. It’s sad, sick, and exactly the way it goes. (Unfortunately, I speak from personal experience and several years of research into child abuse and trauma.)
NB I have no real suggestion for how these matters should be handled, but I will say that the current system is not working. The less power it has, the better.
Depends how you define those words haha (see other thread!).
We are basically now rapidly approaching being a single global civilisation of six billion and rising. With a libertarian society- no border controls, no barriers etc, we overtly and clearly would be a single global civilisation. There are innumerable “communities” within that six billions, all interwoven, but there are no barriers between them. The days when people didn’t leave their village for their whole life are long gone for most of the world, and that will soon be true for the whole world.
The society of people-who-know-each-other is gone. We live now in a world of strangers, and any theory has to start from that point.
Alisa,
I thought of adding a line to the post asking if there was any justification for treating adopters differently from biological parents, but decided not to branch out in too many directions.
I am not fully satisfied with my own argument, given that it sounds close to types of group-judgements that I decry on other occasions, but I think there might be such a justification, on the grounds that statistically people are less likely on evolutionary grounds to be cruel to or otherwise abuse their biological children.
Natalie, if you’re going there, how about step-parents? With all props to those who do an excellent job of it, they are faced with not only children who aren’t their own but who they may may not want (one assumes that adopters in general do want the kids) and who may be competing with their own biological children for resources and attention. The “wicked step-mother” is a powerful meme for a reason. Not sure what happened to the wicked step-father.
There are several issues here:
1) The mores of society and to what extent these are relevant when deciding who should adopt.
This is probably the least problematic. Most people agree that pedophiles should not be allowed to adopt.
Whether or not smokers, casual drinkers, and adult porn enthusiast should be allowed to adopt is a question on a totally different level. We libertarians would probably say yes, but others may be less enthusiastic. But the trouble caused by puritanical and misguided public mores in this instance is no difference from the trouble that these cause in general.
2) How those are translated into rules used by social workers when evaluating potential adopters.
Natalie’s ‘fat dog’ example. How can we ensure that rules are used for selection of adoptive parents that are reasonable?
3) The problems of observing adopters before and after adoption.
This is a problem that is partially overcome by intrusive inspections from social workers.
I would note here that this is a problem caused by the existence of privacy. As society becomes more and more transparent it will become less of a problem. The extent to which this will happen depends of course both on technological and legislative developments.
Sadly, you won’t, unless we as a society are prepared to hand over all orphans (and entrust their care) to private charities (like churches). All of which have their own problems, of course (e.g. paedophile priests).
No easy answers to this one, unfortunately. The ubiquitous answer of “the market” is as likely to fail as any other solution.
Kim, perhaps but I think a minarchist city-state approach the least bad.
It allows for a degree of oversight without intrusiveness or the curtailing of liberty, and it places the onus for action on the very same complainants who would call for new laws in our society.
Something “bad” happens and you need someone to blame? Try looking in the mirror, and afterwards make sure that single mum down the street has enough shopping.
I only think this would work in independent city states though, as earlier observed people don’t know their neighbours. For practical reasons, if people were going to live in a small independent community, they would need to get to know them however.
Of course, the above is never going to happen. Nice to dream though eh?
I might add that the whole “social work” thing cuts right to the very heart of statism.
Sometimes bad things happen. Things so awful that when you hear about it you scream inside “make it stop!!”.
Of course, evil people will do evil things. Time and chance happen to all men. There is no way to make it stop.
But we elect the people who are willing to promise to “make it stop”. Even when they fail time and time again – a good nights sleep is only ever one more law away.
What Jaded just said.
Natalie, are you sure about the statistical part – or are you even sure that statistics can truly be relied upon in such matters? In any case, evolutionary grounds are obviously not a trump-all in human behavior. The “my children are my property” seems just as powerful a motive as any other.
Finally, and to reiterate my original point, one could just as well ask: should anyone not be allowed to have children (either through natural birth or adoption)? You have no idea how many times I have been tempted to say “YES!!!” to that:-/
Well, this comes back to my stuck-record argument that the form of statism is moralist rather than communist; the State pursues “goodness”, and it was this form of governance invented in the Victorian Era. The State is thus incapable of saying “shit happens” because it is generally presumed that it must pursue the maximally “good” goal.
It is sort of utilitarian but not really, since as a moralist force it is not interested so much in outcomes as intentions. It is the classic do-gooder who is more interested in being seen to be doing good than in actually doing good. That is perhaps the difference between a do-gooder and a charitable person; the latter just gets on with trying to help people while the former is more interested in being seen to be moral by other people.
With adoption the situation has gone outside the bloodline family, into the community, so I guess the community needs a say in the matter.
How should that be done?
Britain seems to have become so fraught with emotionalism and political agendas when it comes to children that I’m not sure if a rational approach is possible.
Also from what I read it appears that many social workers have become detached from truth and reason in a very control for the sake of control manner. So I guess different decision makers are needed.
GPs? Local magistrate? I know, Judge John Deed!
How does one measure genuine love and concern?
PeterT. Wow. You are casually adopting a concept that is totalitarian:
“I would note here that this is a problem caused by the existence of privacy. As society becomes more and more transparent it will become less of a problem.”
Who will be controlling the cameras in your totally transparent society and who will be setting the agendas, rules and regulations, and controlling enforcement – Judge John Deed?
How are you going to stop paedophiles, cultists, Fagins, and would-be owners of slaves from adopting children with the social workers?
The not-so-libertarian part of me wants to see government-sector workers subjected to much stricter liability; none of this “qualified immunity” stuff. Bankrupt them in a civil suit for their negligence as social workers, and literally drag them from their homes by their hair, preferably kicking and screaming in front of their children, so that the home can be sold off to pay the damages.
Alisa and Richard Thomas,
I haven’t got time to look up the figures now, but they do show, conclusively, that step parents are on average much more prone to both physically abuse and sexually abuse their step-children than are natural parents to their natural children.
(Before the internet I once got into a huge debate in a small circulation magazine with someone on this issue and ended up looking up all sorts of facts and figures. I might do an updated version one day, but that’s another post.)
I hope that no one takes this statistical statement as an insult to them as a step parent. Of course the vast majority of step parents do no such thing.
I do not advocate imposing any sort of legal blah on step parents – the evils it would bring just don’t bear thinking about – but I would say that the welfare system, in causing women and their children to live with a series of boyfriends rather than the natural father, makes it statistically certain that more children will be abused.
As long as Elton and Furnish have godparents picked out if the worst happens why not?
Even if the kid was “neglected” by being placed with a nanny and not seeing them much he would be LESS HARMED than being left as a ward of the state.
The whole debate gets tied up in “greatest good”, why not reverse that and make the criteria least harmful?
Is it more harmful to leave the kid in state care or on the streets?
Is it more harmful to place a kid in State care than to leave them with a drug addicted prostitute?
Is it more harmful to be raised by a smoker or left in state care?
Is it better to leave them in an abusive family rather than brerak cultrual ties?
The list could go on, but I think when its worded this way most of the decisions become more clear.
Alisa, I note that we do now as a society quite regularly take children away from their natural parents (and there are some scandals there, read Christopher Booker in the Telegraph). The only thing we don’t do is pre-screen them.
God above, let’s not go there.
Others,
If I don’t comment on your very thoughtful comments it’s not because there is nothing to say but there because there is too much to say.
Ted Schuerzinger made a point that I often make in other contexts too: He said, “How are you going to stop paedophiles, cultists, Fagins, and would-be owners of slaves from adopting children with the social workers?” Jackie D’s comment of 7.58 had a similar intent, I think: it’s not as if the present system is succeeding particularly well. These things are happening now. Recall the networks of sexually abusing staff that were discovered in some UK children’s homes, and also the patterns of beatings and cruelty that took place in many children’s homes.
That’s one reason why I am very pro-adoption. (I have personal reasons also.) Adoptions do sometimes fail, and someone has to guard against wicked people adopting children in order to abuse them, but adoptions have a much better record than state care. (ADDED LATER: or than insitutional care provided by non-state bodies, come to think of it.)
Children are especially good at hiding abuse, as they feel it is their fault and evidence of their badness.
They are also often not good at recognising that abuse is occurring, because they do not have anything to compare it with, and because their personal sense of morality is usually at least partly learned from the people abusing them.
These aren’t easy things to put right, of course.
“causing”? That’s a pretty big leap. You can equally argue that welfare means a mother doesn’t require a male provider since the state gives them money instead. In what way does the welfare system cause women to get serially bored with men and move from one to the next? Could we not argue that the current divorce and child support system, in which the state obligates fathers to support their children even though the mother and children have left them, is a stronger enabler of serial slaggery than “welfare”?
The point seems to be missed that this child has an actual biological mother and father and is being allowed to grow up with two men, one of which may or may not be its father, because these men are extremely wealthy and socially influential. Th child’s mother should not be allowed societally and is not allowed morally to abandon it for money. This child is not being rescued from anything but being deprived of its mother. Sad and stupid.
Ian B, there are situations in which people lose benefits if they live as a couple.
More generally, there is the whole dilemma common to all welfare states, in which when people know that the state will provide for vulnerable people (the old, single mothers, the disabled) they step back from providing for them as much as they would if the state did not do this. I think the net effect of government support is more suffering, more abandonment, more abuse – and a loss of human contact besides. But abuse will never be zero under any possible system.
Charles Murray’s What it Means to Be a Libertarian is good on this.
Not that I’m defending the divorce/child support system either.
“…paedophiles, cultists, Fagins, and would-be owners of slaves…”
Nice mix that. Are there any statistics existing which show that paedophiles in our age are any more prevalent than in any other? I have no time for them, but I cannot believe that there has been, in our generation, a sudden rash of p’s. OK, there is the internet which allows unlimited access to information normally out of the public domain. But suppose the Romans had invented the internet, and we’d had it ever since, how would that have affected the incidence of p’s in our day, or any previous?
What on earth are “cultists”? Perhaps you can define them, Natalie?
En passant, it is instructing to recall that the great GK Chesterton remarked “..those who cease to believe in God will believe in anything.” So perhaps cultists might be people who do not believe in God. This, if true, nicely turns the tables on the atheist commentator who regarded all non-atheistic humanity as being cultists.
“Fagins”? A whole criminal class based on a single character in a single Victorian book? I guess you mean exploiters of innocent children with a view to training them up to be criminals. Groomers might be the PC word.
“Would-be owners of slaves”. Now, to dig too deeply into this might risk FO intervention for fear of upsetting our middle eastern friends.
And the original question was “could we handle these without social workers”? Read Christopher Booker. Learn about the “good” done by social workers. Weep. And consider this. In past ages the concept of social workers did not exist, and the world managed very well thank you.
Why, John – unless you think it also should have a say in a matter of who can marry whom?
Natalie, I’ll take your word on statistics, but I still doubt that as valid as the reports may be statistically, there is a good chance that the underlying surveys are not. That’s because, as others have pointed out, a lot of abuse tends to go unreported, and I would imagine that children abused by their biological parents would be more reluctant to report abuse than step-children. Adopted children are probably a different matter.
Natalie Solent: “…it’s not as if the present system is succeeding particularly well.”
How do you know?
There are medical practices which are painful, intrusive, and usually fail – yet are considered valuable because they are better than alternatives (such as no treatment).
We know a great deal about failures of the child welfare system – at least, we hear about some egregious failures. What we don’t know much about is what its successes are, if any.
How many cases are there where social-worker intervention saved a child from a destructive environment, or prevented a wrong ‘un from getting custody of a vulnerable child? I’m certain there have been some. And many of the latter cases would be almost undetectable – no one could know that some thwarted would-be adopter was a villain, because he backed off at the first resistance.
I’m not claiming that child-welfare authorities do a “good job”. I merely question the basis of a flat assertion that they consistently fail.
Great Heavens –
All this being said and no one raises the point to clarify:
“What is ADOPTION?”
Is it purely legalistic?
Is it “social?”
What are we nattering on about?
Perhaps we are nibbling around the edges of WHO should have WHAT KIND of relationships with dependent children?
Indeed RRS, and it seems to be tacitly understood by most here.
Alisa.
People who marry are adults making decisions. I don’t think the community really needs to get involved there!
With children, those born into families have natural parents and it is a fairly well established principle that they bring up the children? I realise the state, controlling elites, whatever, are trying to change that, but so far it is mainly the parents who do the upbringing.
Where children go into a family by adoption rather than being born into it, well, they have not sprung from those parents’ loins, so to speak, they have come from other people and so those other people need more of a say in the matter?
But I suppose one could take the argument anywhere, in terms of who decides what.
Some really interesting comments here, esp. Ian B. 😛
Adoption and child law is always really difficult for Libertarians because a) we’re pretty perfectionist, wanting to be correct not just good enough and b) Libertarian morality is founded on the conception of individual liberties which are kinda fuzzy in the case of children (slapping an adult is bad while spanking a child is okay? or is it not?).
Maybe we should start from the other direction; assume the child has complete adult rights and ask in where and how the Law should uphold parental authority?
It’s interesting to consider a modern re-interpretation of pater familias; that the only person fit to judge their own upbringing is the child as an adult in retrospect. While they are a child the parents have, as it were, the “right to raise” them as they see fit, with the caveat that they are responsible for any and all the child’s actions. The child is emancipated when the parents agree (or are persuaded) to relinquish the right-to-raise, or the child runs away and supports themselves (claiming their own right-to-raise through adverse possession :P). Adoption and surrogacy are simply one parent selling the right-to-raise to another.
As a Libertarian, it’s uncomfortable to consider even the idea of one human being claiming a kind of ownership over another, and as a human it’s easy to come up with terrifying worst-case scenarios, but the implications are interesting and warrant contemplation. The obligation of the parents to the child is then one of due-diligence under civil law. What kind of parents would this threat of litigation, for not exercising well their role of trustees over the child’s upbringing make? Would the more fluid and lucrative adoption market persuade parents who are having difficulty coping with raising their kids — and who might otherwise be prone to abuse — to foist them onto more loving strangers instead? On balance, is this better or worse than potential adoptees languishing in state care? Is the market and contract law a better discriminator of parenting quality than Social Workers?
I actually have no idea. Remember: there’s no way these policies would ever be implemented, so try not to panic and flame, but just enjoy the mental salad.
Discuss.
John, you might want to take note of what sconzey said, because he pretty much outlined my views on the matter (even though he claims to have no idea:-))
I’d like to expand a bit. Sconzey said: Maybe we should start from the other direction; assume the child has complete adult rights and ask in where and how the Law should uphold parental authority? Indeed, and to try and answer the question, parental authority should end when the child stops being a child – meaning, is genuinely willing to leave his parents’ home and to support himself. The precise age when this should happen is forever unknown, although we can pretty much agree that it is somewhere soon after puberty kicks in (provided the level of emotional maturity of the young person in question matches the biological one).
Alisa, I like the idea of some kind of a flexible age-of-majority too because it neatly deals with both child and adult dependants.
What I think warrants further discussion is before the child is (auto-)emancipated, to what extent does the Law support the parents, e.g. if the child runs away are they forcibly returned to the parents? If abuse is happening should the Law intervene, or wait until the child auto-emancipates?
My answer is ‘no’. A family should not be a prison, no matter how luxurious and caring. Children run away either because they are abused, or because they feel mature enough to assert their independence and to take care of themselves. Of course this is not foolproof, and the young person may be wrong as to the level of their maturity – but then they should have the option to come back, and I presume with most “normal” families they would.
This is obviously the toughest one. My gut response is ‘no intervention by the law’, but rather some other system that naturally grows out of civil-society structure – most likely involving things like peer pressure etc. Again, not foolproof by any means, but life never is anyway.
Alisa,
Your perspective sounds pretty much like what Murray Rothbard’s was. The difference between your proposal and the hypothetical nouveau-pater familias I posit above is that a) abuse is less likely to happen because it’s harder for parents to get “stuck” with a child they do not want and b) if and when abuse does happen charities and other good Samaritans can bribe the parents to relinquish the child voluntarily, or enter a voluntary co-parenting scheme where they jointly raise the kid with a more experienced couple. Whilst yes, children are being sold to the highest bidder, I see this as far less destructive for both child and parents than the state confiscation of infants.
I should add that I’m not endorsing this proposal, and even thinking about it makes me feel a little icky.
I mention it because it comes from the opposite side of the moral spectrum from Libertarianism, yet comes out with a kinda similar answer for very different reasons, and I find that interesting.
Sconzey, I don’t see a) and b) as differences, but as points I sympathize with but have failed to address.
How so?
The policy of “pater familias” comes from Ancient Rome and refers to the absolute authority and responsibility (imperium) the father had over his wife and children, even up to selling them into slavery if he wished. In my re-statement, imperium is held jointly by the mother and father, and any child, should they manage to escape, is considered emancipated, but the foundation is the same.
That’s why I mention it making me feel icky. 😛
Oh, I see – missed that:-)
Well, the legal, and indeed cultural and philosophical acceptance of slavery in general makes all the difference, doesn’t it – hence the ickyness. It’s as if (assuming you are not a vegetarian) you told me that people who eat meat make you feel icky, and forgot to mention that they happen to be cannibals;-)
I keep forgetting not everyone’s reading lists are quite so odd as mine. 😛
The general point I was failing to communicate is that, under pater familias, the Law has no right at all to intervene unless someone in the family actually “cries uncle.” I may be misreading you, but you seem to be saying the same thing?
Yes.
PErhaps it would be useful here to not limit ourselves to discussing children, but broaden it out to “dependents”. There are various classes of human beings who by general agreement are not fit to look after themselves. Liebrtarianism does very well as a philosophy for the independent, but seems to me to be on less certain ground when we come to these dependent classes.
These would include, obviously, children. But also the mentally disabled, the severely physically disabled, elderly senile persons, very ill persons (including those in comas, etc) and the insane. It seems to me that we need a general philosophy which specifies their status. Does their dependence on other people make them a form of “property”?
I can’t really justify this from first principles, but I find such a concept deeply disturbing. Purely anecdotally, when my mother was dying from cancer, and had lost her mind due to brain tumours, I and my sister both found our form of “ownership” of her deeply upsetting. But she was transparently not in a suitable state to make her own decisions. The day she demanded to leave the hospice and wandered off across the car park and we had to prevent her- thus enacting a form of involuntary incarceration- was personally tragic. Liz and I had quite the conversation about whether we even had a “right” to stop her. Who decides who is “sound of mind”?
So anyway, I wonder what other libertarians feel about the general issue. It’s not just children, but a general perspective would apply to children, as well as all the other classes I mentioned. Think of a mentally disabled youngster who will never develop independence. Who, if anyone, is obligated to look after them? What about when the parents die? What about orphans? And so on.
I agree that it’s a useful generalization, Ian – in fact, I thought it should go without saying, but apparently it does not. Which might take us even further and ask to what extent should individuals be allowed to harm themselves? What about suicide? My position is that the default line is presence of mind, and the default presumption is presence of mind as well (i.e. a person is clearly not UI or similar).
John B, very briefly since this is off topic, you said about my post on privacy as a problem:
“Who will be controlling the cameras in your totally transparent society and who will be setting the agendas, rules and regulations, and controlling enforcement – Judge John Deed?”
This is indeed a problem and explored well by David Friedman in his book ‘future imperfect’. If we are to have a transparent society it is best to have one where everybody watches everybody with no rules or regulations. I grant that the government or somebody may, or is even likely to, capture the system and use it for their evil ends.
As a ‘liberty libertarian’ rather than a ‘rights libertarian’ I do not find it obvious that an invasion of privacy is necessarily a restriction on liberty. You could say it is a violation of the right to privacy but any such right is not necessarily conducive to liberty.
Returning back to the topic, starting from Ian B’s last post, I think the issue of dependents is just one of those situations where a system generally conducive to liberty is not necessarily the system that will maximise happiness (such a system might require dependents being provided with the resources they need to be happy). Defending such a system against its critics is the difficult task that we have. It is one reason libertarians do well to advocate libertarianism on economic grounds, and not primarly ethical grounds (except in the case of victimless crimes such as smoking and drugs, where you should argue for the rightness of liberty).
It’s an interesting question. I think it’s why it’s one of the places where many of us are willing to stretch our principles a little and allow for something of a safety net for the truly most vulnerable in our society. Though one would hope an un-coerced option would work if attempted.
In the case of the parents of a mentally ill child (or similar), they, of course bear the responsibility to take care of it. In the case where they are unable to cope, one would hope there would be others to share the load but when push comes to shove, they bear the responsibility. It’s somewhat less clear when it comes to other family members. Ultimately, they stand alone.
In the case of Sir Elton, seeing it is his natural child there really is not a moral issue.
In terms of who should be allowed to adopt, well, I suppose interrogation goes with the territory.
Peter, if you are serious in your apparent views about liberty and privacy, then roll on the distopia.
The Founding Fathers in their day were not so inclined to trust human nature for good reason.
I think Natalie’s comment shone out for me. What is worse than institutional care? Determine that.
I think many issues have to exist in a biological or adopted home before it becomes worse for the child’s future ability to maintain their own sovereignty into adulthood (as in not being ripe for exploitation and abuse in later life due to damaged upbringing) vs an institution. Maybe I am wrong.
Sadly, and from much experience as a youth worker, you need to invert the question: with social workers, how will we encourage the good, the kind, the gentle or loving to adopt?
There is nothing to differentiate a social workers jobs from that of a police except expertise and a slightly alternative set of resources; would it not be easier to democratise our police and give them control over the resources needed?
The myriad stories I have about the “care” system would chill you to the bone; the least we could hope for is a little light in the dark places.
Thom-
I’m going to stay away from “democratize the police” because I don’t know what that means but it already doesn’t sound good.
Turning the adoption process over to us would be a terrible idea.
We do great with the 911 call, the immediate response to the immediate aftermath (not always to the event itself; when seconds count, the police are only minutes away), but are simply not trained to juggle the pieces of the dysfunctional jigsaw puzzle that are most families that get police involvement in their lives. And frankly, by the time we’re called, you can safely abandon hope of an easy or graceful resolution.
I’m interested in the comments regarding a so called “flexible age of majority”.
It strikes me that societies that are less top down statist and less codified have always and everywhere developed a coming of age ritual that seems to point backwards to a notion of necessary and sufficient skills required for independent adulthood. Coming of age rituals would of course include things like the Bar Mitzvah or the Latin American quincea;era, or arguably apprenticeship to a trade undertaken while still dependent on family, etc. Again arguably, the modern surrogate for such things would be the Senior Prom, or that little jig that UK school leavers dance while clutching their grade inflated A level results outside Macdonalds. Sadly, the more modern we get, the less such rituals or the notional set of life skills they represent actually mean anything.
On the question of adoption, I tend to go with King Solomon: give the kid to whoever, according to whatever test you devise, seems to care most about its welfare. Who devises the test? Logically, whoever cares most about its welfare right now, which would in practice mean the current temporary carers, whoever they may be. If I’m the current foster parent and I have a thing about sixpacks of beer, or limp wristed would be daddies, then the fact that I am probably a jerk is secondary: I at least care about the kid and not just about making my case sheets look good. No system is infallible but I tend to think that deregulation and the development of wise and enlightened criteria that can be exercised personally by responsible adults go hand in hand.
That’s a good point I never thought about. Of course, it will not always be true, but I agree that in the majority of cases it still would beat the current system.
Sunfish,
Apologies but writing close to midnight on an iphone isn’t conducive to sensible typing!
By “democratise the police” I am of course referring to the ongoing localism movement reaching the goal of elected sheriffs or chief of police; not to directly elect individual officers; I believe that is still referred to as an “interview” in some circles.
As for your other point what I am suggesting in the meat of my point is that the social services become an arm of the police, able to effectively deal with the “dysfunctional jigsaw puzzle” that is presented to them with the full force of the law immeadiately available but the accountability afforded by elected sheriffs acting as a buffer against some of the more heavy handed tactics used under the protection of the childrens act.
Either way a good start would be to bring Social Workers actions out into the open by amending the childrens act to not protect the identities of social workers involved in cases with complaints.
I can dig it. I’ve had to get my SI fix on a Droid for the last week. Swype isn’t exactly the language for complexity either.
I don’t think rolling social workers into police departments is especially viable either. It’s well away from our core competency. I, as a blue-shirted street monster, have the legal authority to remove a child from his home on reasonable belief that he’ll suffer death or serious harm otherwise. Actually, in my state, police are the only ones empowered to do so without a court order. Social workers need a judge’s permission first. And that goes back to the difference
in roles: their job is to fix the dysfunctional jigsaw puzzle, while ours is merely to prevent anyone from killing the pieces while they screw around and do whatever it is that they claim to do.
And the two roles are not the same.
FWIW: elected chiefs and sheriffs are no panacea. In my state, sheriffs never seem to stop running go re-election. The case of Arapahoe County, CO, is instructive: incumbent sheriff Grayson Robinson opened a criminal case on his challenger over an allegation that would be unlikely to be criminal even if true and provable[1].
I don’t have any brilliant ideas. I’ve become convinced that easy answers don’t exist in the real world. Maybe more and better judicial oversight will help, but even with good (and independent!) judges I wouldn’t expect magic.
[1] In this state, candidates for sheriff are required to be fingerprinted for background investigation. The challenger worked for the state’s Department of Corrections and had his prints taken at the facility in which he worked. Robinson had his done at ACSO’s booking room.
Where it gets ugly: sheriff’s offices also provide fingerprinting to the general public, for a fee, for professional licensing and the like. I don’t know whether Robinson paid that fee out of pocket or what. DOC, however, isn’t set up to collect a fee for fingerprinting as they don’t normally print anybody other than their own guests. And so the challenger didn’t pay a fee that didn’t quite exist.
I’m personally convinced that, if it weren’t a campaign against a sitting sheriff, the case would never have happened.
OTOH, the UK’s dubious blessing of chiefs ultimately accountable only to a Home Secretary, in turn accountable only to the voters in one borough, hardly strikes me as much better.
I agree that there’s almost certainly no systematic way to ensure that no child becomes the victim of a abuser. But I doubt that a market-based system is “as likely” to fail as others.
At the core of the problem is finding the optimum mechanism for matching children who need a home with parents who are willing to provide one. That is exactly the kind of situation at which the market excels. With a state-based system you can only have one mechanism at a time, and it generally evolves very slowly. If there were a free market in adoption then numerous organizations would try numerous methods, all under the control of tort and contract law, eventually leading to an optimum solution (or solutions).
I suspect it’s the “eventually” part that causes statism. We seem to be programmed to accept decades of bad results from statism without feeling the need for change, but one bad result from a market-based system and there are immediate demands for state control.