You might be interested to know that in certain European countries like France, you very much do not have the right to disown your children. Both children and parents have legal obligations that extend to one another through adulthood (e.g. If your parent is homeless, you are legally obligated to help them out.). As for inheritance, if you have a single child, half of the inheritance must go to the child, this goes up to three quarters for three children.
Among my French acquaintances, this is considered normal and common sense. There are of course exceptions to this duty of reciprocal care in case of abuse.
Fun fact : the original objective behind these heavy handed inheritance laws was a progressive one : Stopping aristocratic families passing on all their wealth to their eldest son, and hence gradually diluting their wealth and power.
Old post, kinda wrong about the law then as now. Germany: you only can reduce the inheritance of a kid to half. By law, the surviving spouse gets half, the kids share the other half. So if you have 2 kids, each would get 25%, you can write a will that reduces that for one to 12.5%. Totally disowning a kid only possible if they gone criminal (1 year jail), beat you up or tried to kill you ;)
Seems our society/judges found it kinda wrong to threaten kids about who to marry or not. Obviously, it is possible to "disown" indirectly by giving the "obedient kids" substantially more while you are still alive. Which has its own drawbacks, see King Lear.
I agree, modern people are usu. "libertarian" not communist: Mine is mine and yours is yours. Still they usu. have no fundamental trouble to adjust to taxes and other restrictions to their "financial freedom".
“What do we learn from this? Most obviously, this is yet another piece of evidence that common sense morality is extremely libertarian.”
I don’t see this lesson. I do see this much: common sense morality very much includes the idea that one can have the right to do something, even if we think that it would be wrong to do that thing. I suppose you can claim that the very idea of rights in that sense is libertarian, but that would, I think be a rather confusing use of terminology. It is perfectly consistent for non-libertarians, even socialists, to say that some moral rights exist, without thereby agreeing that there are all the rights that libertarians typically claim (e.g., certain forms of economic rights). Obviously one can have substantive disagreements about whether the socialist or the libertarians are correct, but it merely muddies the water to attempt to define any acceptance of rights as libertarian.
Mostly true IF the issue is portrayed the right way - people SHOULD or SHOUDN'T do X, but have the right to opt out. If you put it that way, most people will go along. If you present it as a law - people SHOULD[N'T] do X, too many people will go along, forgetting about the exceptions.
Practical libertarians would do well to pay attention to how things are framed.
>Libertarians are too quick to condemn traditional societies as “coercive.”
Social pressure in small places can be astoundingly strong - my wife moved out of Croatia because of it. Not technically coercive, but at some point the distinction becomes difficult to see.
"Coercion" (force or threat of force) is not the right concept. And neither is "aggression" (although that is less confused). "Licence" (the flouting of liberty) is what ought to be objected to.
You might be interested to know that in certain European countries like France, you very much do not have the right to disown your children. Both children and parents have legal obligations that extend to one another through adulthood (e.g. If your parent is homeless, you are legally obligated to help them out.). As for inheritance, if you have a single child, half of the inheritance must go to the child, this goes up to three quarters for three children.
Among my French acquaintances, this is considered normal and common sense. There are of course exceptions to this duty of reciprocal care in case of abuse.
Fun fact : the original objective behind these heavy handed inheritance laws was a progressive one : Stopping aristocratic families passing on all their wealth to their eldest son, and hence gradually diluting their wealth and power.
Old post, kinda wrong about the law then as now. Germany: you only can reduce the inheritance of a kid to half. By law, the surviving spouse gets half, the kids share the other half. So if you have 2 kids, each would get 25%, you can write a will that reduces that for one to 12.5%. Totally disowning a kid only possible if they gone criminal (1 year jail), beat you up or tried to kill you ;)
Seems our society/judges found it kinda wrong to threaten kids about who to marry or not. Obviously, it is possible to "disown" indirectly by giving the "obedient kids" substantially more while you are still alive. Which has its own drawbacks, see King Lear.
I agree, modern people are usu. "libertarian" not communist: Mine is mine and yours is yours. Still they usu. have no fundamental trouble to adjust to taxes and other restrictions to their "financial freedom".
“What do we learn from this? Most obviously, this is yet another piece of evidence that common sense morality is extremely libertarian.”
I don’t see this lesson. I do see this much: common sense morality very much includes the idea that one can have the right to do something, even if we think that it would be wrong to do that thing. I suppose you can claim that the very idea of rights in that sense is libertarian, but that would, I think be a rather confusing use of terminology. It is perfectly consistent for non-libertarians, even socialists, to say that some moral rights exist, without thereby agreeing that there are all the rights that libertarians typically claim (e.g., certain forms of economic rights). Obviously one can have substantive disagreements about whether the socialist or the libertarians are correct, but it merely muddies the water to attempt to define any acceptance of rights as libertarian.
>Common sense morality is extremely libertarian
Mostly true IF the issue is portrayed the right way - people SHOULD or SHOUDN'T do X, but have the right to opt out. If you put it that way, most people will go along. If you present it as a law - people SHOULD[N'T] do X, too many people will go along, forgetting about the exceptions.
Practical libertarians would do well to pay attention to how things are framed.
>Libertarians are too quick to condemn traditional societies as “coercive.”
Social pressure in small places can be astoundingly strong - my wife moved out of Croatia because of it. Not technically coercive, but at some point the distinction becomes difficult to see.
There actually are Filial Responsibility Laws in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws?wprov=sfla1 .
"Coercion" (force or threat of force) is not the right concept. And neither is "aggression" (although that is less confused). "Licence" (the flouting of liberty) is what ought to be objected to.
https://jclester.substack.com/p/coercion-and-libertarianism
https://jclester.substack.com/p/non-aggression-principle-or-axiom
https://jclester.substack.com/p/liberty-in-itself-a-libertarian-viewpoint