on body "rights"

I showed in the last post that your control of your stuff is the result of a negotiation between all market participants.  You control your stuff, because, on average, market participants prefer for you to control it, rather than someone else.  I want to show here that even your control of your own body is necessarily subject to the negotiation of market participants.

Current market participants would generally prefer for each other to have full control over our own bodies.  But we only allow average adults under average circumstances to have full control.  We don't allow people who are infantile or senile. We don't allow the mentally handicapped or insane. We don't allow the comatose, suicidal, sleepwalking, intoxicated, or brainwashed. In all of these cases, market participants prefer to maintain some degree of stewardship over the bodies of others.

If you are a child, we will lock you up in the house at night like a prisoner and we won't pay you back for it. We will force you to eat green leafy vegetables, to go to bed at a reasonable hour, to get vaccinated against life threatening illnesses, to memorize multiplication tables, and a host of other things that we think are in your best interest and we will NEVER pay you back for it. We will never feel obligated to pay you back for it.

If you are mentally handicapped, if you suffer from Alzheimer’s, if you are in a coma, or if you are in any other way incapable of exercising adequate stewardship of your own body according to our opinions, we won't allow you to have complete control over it. We may keep you locked in a facility, or at least under constant supervision. We won't allow you access to certain resources like vehicles or weapons. We will commit an endless stream of offenses to maintain our control over your body. And we will never pay you back for it. We will never feel obligated to pay you back for it.

Rights theories are incompatible with this reality.

At what point does it stop being OK to force a child to stay locked in the home? How old is too old? When does it transition from responsible stewardship to evil body rights violation?

At what point does it start being OK to force an adult to stay locked in a facility? How handicapped is too handicapped? How senile is too senile?  When does it transition from imprisonment to assisted living?

We generally keep kids locked up until they prove they're responsible enough. And we generally leave adults alone until they prove that they aren't, but what gives us the right to restrict their rights in the first place?

As an An-Cap, I would have said that issues like these should be settled on a case by case basis in a free market for arbitration services, but that just begs the question. What is the objective criteria by which you determine the difference between violation and non-violation in this context? “The market will decide” isn't an answer. It's a black box.

All property arrangements are negotiated, even control of your own body. If the average sentiment of the community is that you can't be a responsible steward of your own body, then we won't let you control it. That is, you don't own your body. Nobody owns anything. Ownership doesn't exist. But we all want to control resources, and we all continually renegotiate with each other for who is going to control which resources.

Final thoughts:

1. Sometimes I support rape, but "sometimes" will never happen:

If the human species ever reaches a genetic bottleneck, if it is reduced to only 300 breeding pairs or whatever the hypothetical minimum would be, each surviving member would need to breed according to a stringent central plan in order to maximize genetic diversity and population growth to save the species. If certain members of this desperate tribe refused to submit to this program, I would rape them. I would minimize the trauma associated with it as much as possible, but I wouldn't spare anyone the responsibility of participation. I love the human race more than I love any individual member of it. The human race is the most precious thing the universe has ever produced. If you wont fuck to save your species, then your control over your body is forfeit.  But this is the only scenario I can imagine, and it's vanishingly unlikely.

2.  Moral feelings have evolved to maximize the long term value of tribal assets:

We say that it's "bad" to lock up average adults, because they have a "right" to control their own bodies.  But that isn't why it's bad.  The tribe needs people who can hunt, gather, fight, nurture, heal, and everything else.  Average adults are best suited to all these tasks, and they need to control their own bodies to perform them.  The tribe that disallows average adults to control their own bodies starves to death.

We say that it's "good" to lock up children, because they have a "right" to responsible stewardship.  But that isn't why it's good.  The tribe needs children to grow up to become average adults.  The tribe that allows children full control over their own bodies, watches them die.