Parenting licenses

Parenting licenses—that is, requiring permission to have children—is a concept I think is not only morally acceptable, but morally good. A lot of people have a very negative reaction to that statement, but I think it's a very reasonable idea that, unfortunately, is very nearly impossible to implement practically. Also, when I say "prevent people from having children", the method is unspecified—do not assume I am speaking of sterilization or forced abortions. With that said, this post is about the abstract concept in moral terms, unmuddled by practical concerns.

We already say, as a society, that people don't have a right to raise children. If parents aren't doing a good enough job, we as a society reserve the right to revoke that privilege, to take the children away and place them in the care of the state. I think it's a very small jump from saying that people don't have the right to raise children to not having a right to have children.

The issue is, at its core, the same as with foster care: children's rights. Children have a right to a childhood free from abuse and neglect. Parenting licenses are based on the concept that if a child has no chance of having a decent childhood, they should not be conceived in the first place. This concept is already present as one reason for abortion—if the mother does not think that the child will have a proper environment in which to develop, she can terminate her pregnancy to prevent that from happening. People can voluntarily give up their children to foster care, but in certain cases society can force it upon people to protect the child's rights—and in analogy to voluntary abortions, society should be able to (in an ideal world with ideal methods) prevent people from having children.

Now, on to the objections. A lot of times that I bring this up, people's first reaction is a very strong but very vague objection—they think it's wrong, but cannot provide me with a coherent thought as to why they think it's wrong. I imagine this has to do with very base biological instincts relating to procreation.
Most objections relate to practicalities—that it would be excessive government intervention, a tool for oppression, classist, etc. None of these are arguments against the morality of it, only against any actual implementation of it. I have yet to hear a coherent argument against the fundamental morality of parenting licenses, and welcome anybody who wishes to provide me with one.
I agree wholeheartedly that parenting licenses would be a bad idea. The first issue that comes before all others is how to determine who is fit to be a parent. Such a psychological evaluation would be incredibly complex and would surely give many false positives. Beyond that, the methods used to control fertility are another huge barrier—we would need near 100% reliability with a near 100% certainty of re-enabling fertility. IUDs come closest to this, but I would be opposed to a system where the prevention rests solely on females. Finally, the potential for abuse is enormous. Not only would it probably tend to be classist (the argument that there is a certain level of funding that a child deserves is a pretty easy one to make), but it could easily descend into eugenics. So obviously the system cannot be implemented, but that has no bearing on its morality.

Objectivism

[This was a forum post I made in response to a guy touting Objectivism.]

Objectivism, ugh. First off, the proposition that there are objective moral truths is by nature a supernatural claim. Since I don't believe in anything supernatural, Objectivism is right out.

Since I am a relativist (which I can easily defend as the only consistent moral position for a philosophy without supernatural elements), morality is the set of rules a society agrees upon. Now, this is not to say there can't be guidelines. It's a fairly simple rational argument to make that civil and political rights and equality are necessary for this process to function correctly (that is, each member of society must be free to partake in the making of the rules). So civil and political equality are what we may call "inalienable" rights. I think it is far from clear that there exist similar economic rights (for example, the right to own land or the right to the entirety of the fruits of one's labor).

Your attack on government, taxation, etc. are based on the naive subset of relativist moral structures in which the role of society is deemed irrelevant. Well, ok - it's generally naive, but can also be rooted in greed and selfishness. Basically, society doesn't exist to take away your freedoms - instead, exactly as you think of it, its purpose to ensure self-fulfillment.

It's a little like people who hear about the prisoner's dilemma and reciprocal altruism, and take this to mean (or as evidence of) that being vindictive and not helping others if they have not helped you is the best strategy. You aren't seeing the forest for the trees. A game like Snowdrift explains how cooperation and even always-generous strategies can be beneficial to one's situation.

Now, you'll probably argue "Well, it's ok as long as it's voluntary - you can't force people to pay taxes." This is again a problem of not seeing the forest for the trees. It is beneficial for the members of a society to agree to create a government that can force its citizens to do certain things. A good example of this is taxation. Governments are necessary. You have to build roads. To have roads, sometimes you need to take people's lands (Would you rather not have interstate highways? If you are against eminent domain, you are against having interstates.). To build roads, you need money. Once you have a road, you can conceivably use tolls to pay for maintenance, such that the only people who pay to maintain a road are the ones using it. However, to build it, you need money, and you have no way to know who will use and who won't. Therefore, it is in your interest that the government take money from everybody - sometimes you'll help pay for a road you won't use, sometimes somebody else will help pay for a road they won't use but you will - but if it wasn't forced, then people who would use the road could refuse to pay for it (the road would still get built if enough people needed it badly enough).

Government taxation of this kind is sort of a form of insurance. You are making sure that things get paid for by people who will benefit, at the expense of sometimes paying for things from which they won't benefit. Again, the short-sightedness and also greed/selfishness of people often obscures for them the benefits they will reap from certain things - allowing people with a broader view (e.g., politicians and bureaucrats - remember that we're talking ideally here, not as the system stands today) to evaluate these things and then tell us what to do (i.e., enact laws) is a way of both delegating decision-making and ensuring that the selfishness of others doesn't cause them to skip out on their obligations.

An example of the above is public transportation. Public transport is paid for partially by people who don't use it. But viewing it as "This is theft because I don't use the service" is naive. Public transport keeps a lot of people off the road, especially commuter transport. If the whole populace wasn't paying into it, the fares would rise, which would cause ridership to drop, which would put a lot more cars on the road, especially during rush hour. Congestion would skyrocket. Paying taxes for public transport when you don't use it is about paying to keep congestion low.

Another problem with Objectivism and related philosophies is that the idea that everyone is rational and can make informed decisions on all things is just false. Not only are most people not rational, but most people are uninformed. Read up on rational ignorance. As I touched on earlier, part of government is a contract between the people and their representatives for the representatives to spend their time gathering and considering that information that the people don't have time for. The stipulation is that once the representatives make their decision based on the information, the people are going to abide by that. Again, this ends up benefiting the people.

Now, on to collectivism in its proper forms (government, taxation, etc. alone are not collectivism). The above arguments are absolute, whereas the following paragraph is more a matter of the discretion of a society. Beyond the basic provisions of a society and government as hinted at above, there are many different options for a society to treat itself. From a libertarian viewpoint to full socialism, they aren't inherently wrong, but rather different approaches that each society must consider and choose between.

The welfare state is a form of further insurance, basically insuring that all people are supported in the most basic form such that they can achieve happiness. If you look at de-regulated laissez-faire capitalism, it tends toward a pseudo-feudalism where there are powerful economic entities to which most people are subservient. It's not a hard argument to make that the people at the bottom levels of these kinds of hierarchies are being oppressed, that economic circumstances prohibit them from pursuing and certainly from achieving self-fulfillment. Protecting people from such economic oppression and providing all citizens with a suitable basis for achieving self-fulfillment is the goal of the welfare state. In fact, it's actually striving to achieve what you claim is your goal by recognizing the practical implications of economic strategies (If you are born into abject poverty with no hope of getting out of it, then you have no hope of self-fulfillment. Objectivism doesn't ever correctly recognize these situations.).

Summary of beliefs

I'm going to maintain this post as a summary of what I believe.

Philosophy

• I'm an atheist, although a more correct term is probably physics chauvinist.


• I maintain that all that exists are particles and energy, and that they are governed by strict (though probabilistic) laws [post].

Morality

• I'm a relativist.


• I consider any claim that there is an absolute morality separate from human constructs to be a supernatural claim.

Politics

• I'm a progressive.


• I believe that people have a moral responsibility to help one another, that this strategy is beneficial, and that it can be rationally determined based on deep-seated beliefs that are common to all humans.

Religion

• I believe that religion is damaging to society and will always be damaging and an impediment to progress. It has benefits, but its negative effects far outweigh the positives.

I will update this list periodically, adding and revising items as necessary, and adding links to relevant posts.