Parents as the State
Parents have a unique responsibility. They have the power to create life, and then the duty to protect it and raise it into a functioning adult. But can we say that this life that they create is theirs in the sense of materialistic ownership? I don't think we can. If we are to apply libertarian property appropriation principles , the one who first appropriates and puts to some use the child's body is its rightful owner. Since the child itself is the first one to do this, albeit with little rational direction, it stands to reason that the child is a self-owner the moment he takes his first breath of life (and perhaps before). Therefore, the relationship between parent and child cannot be one of ownership. The most we could call it, I suppose, is stewardship . And because the parent does not own his child, what sorts of behaviors and actions toward the child can we consider ethically justified on libertarian grounds ? Hans Hoppe defined the state as, "an agency that exerc