Child Labor

At Crooked Timber, they have been making jokes about libertarianism and slavery.  But neither the posts nor the comments really come to grips with the structurl issues involved in any libertarian political theory.  Two which I think particularly interesting concern families and generations, or passage of time.  The jokes aout libertarians owning their children are on to something.  It does not matter if parents own their children as slaves – I would assume that the ownership would lie with the mother rather than the father.  The mother contributes a goood deal more to the creation and maintenance of the child,  I don’t see why the libertarian is really committed to slavery; the child is likely to meet the requirements for personhood under the political theory.  The problem, which may or may not lead to a suggestion of slavery, is structural, and ties to the fact of passing time, generations.  The difficulty for the child is tht it owns nothing but its labor, which has no value.  (It is kind of amusing that libertarianism may be the last bastion of the labor theory of value – how else to get initial ownership of things?  What other grounds for appropriation would be available given that st=ocial structures and practices are subsequent in the political theory?)  So the child cn come to own only what is given to it as gift.  Insofar as what is involved are gifts, there is no obligation, at least political opbligation sufficient for enforcement by the state, to make the gifts.  And thus nothing wrong, from the perspective of the community, with refusing to make the gifts.  Thus, starving or otherwise ending the lives of children is not a problem for politics.  The normal move is recourse to moral duty.  I find that a curious move in context.

Suppose it is immoral to refuse gifts to one’s own or others’ children.  Not a particularly heroic assumption.  But, in the nature of the theory, it is a duty which is outside the purview of the state (or other organization able to compel conduct legitimately).  The upshot then is that conformance to the relevant moral duty (or duties) is voluntary, and enforceable only through informal social mechanism, e.g., remonstration.  Of course, then, libertarians are committed to decontrol of abortion.