The Voluntary Life

An AI narration of the article 'The Theory of State Ownership of Children' by Jake Desyllas.

Who owns a child? One long-running answer, older than the modern state and still very much alive, is: the State does. On this theory parents are not the child's natural guardians but an obstacle — a rival authority that cannot be trusted to raise loyal citizens, and whose influence must therefore be diluted or removed. Jake Desyllas traces the idea from Plato and Aristotle, through Rousseau and the French Revolutionaries, to Hegel, the American Progressives, and the founders of sociology, and shows that it survives intact in contemporary political philosophy — where theorists openly write to advise the State on what parents should be permitted to do with their own children. The quotations are the argument: read in their own words, the advocates of State ownership are remarkably candid about what they want.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction 0:58 Antiquity 1:39 Rousseau and the Revolution 2:56 The Modern State

First published at https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2025/4/7/the-theory-of-state-ownership-of-children on 7 April 2025.

An AI narration of the article 'Argumentation Ethics Entails Self Ownership From the Beginning of Life' by Jake Desyllas.

A reply to Stephan Kinsella's comments on an earlier critique, this episode argues that the Hoppean rights theory already settles a question Kinsella leaves open: when does an individual come to own their own body? Jake's contention is that self ownership cannot be something acquired, recognised, or granted at some unspecified later point. A body cannot be homesteaded by the being who needs it to do the homesteading, and any rule that lets others confer self ownership by fiat is, by the theory's own standard, non-objective and conflict-promoting. The only rule that does the job is self ownership from the very beginning of life. Along the way the piece presses a harder consequence: if you try to ground rights in rationality, you have to follow Singer and Tooley all the way to the legitimacy of infanticide.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction 3:37 Rationality and Infanticide 6:28 Are Rights Inherent?

First published at https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2025/12/19/argumentation-ethics-entails-self-ownership-from-the-beginning-of-life on 19 December 2025.

An AI narration of the article 'A Critique of Stephan Kinsella's Approach To Rights Theory' by Jake Desyllas.

Stephan Kinsella famously overturned the libertarian case for intellectual property by refusing to prejudge the conclusion: instead of assuming IP was valid and hunting for arguments to fit, he followed the arguments wherever they led. In this short piece, Jake Desyllas turns that same standard back on Kinsella's own theory of rights. He argues that when Kinsella asks not *whether* but *when* we come to own ourselves, he is using exactly the motivated reasoning he so effectively diagnosed in others — quietly assuming that rights must be acquired rather than inherent. Drawing on Kinsella's own words, Desyllas shows the symmetry between the two cases and makes the case that the question of inherent versus acquired rights deserves to be reopened without a thumb on the scale.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction 1:25 The Problem Of Motivated Reasoning

First published at https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2025/8/6/a-critique-of-stephan-kinsellas-approach-to-rights-theory on 6 August 2025.

An AI narration of the article 'Three Views of the Relationship Between Parents and Political Authority' by Jake Desyllas.

Philosophy of the family looks like one of the least political subjects there is. This episode argues the opposite: that it is one of the most political, and that the philosophers who write about parents and children usually have an agenda they are not advertising. The perennial problem for rulers is that obedience has no good justification, and forcing an outnumbered majority is expensive — so it is far cheaper to persuade, and cheapest of all to persuade people while they are children. That raises a question the philosophical tradition has answered in three incompatible ways: are parents the State's allies in producing obedient subjects, an obstacle to be dismantled, or the last line of defence against political authority? This opening episode sets out all three positions and the interests behind them.

First published at https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2025/4/3/three-views-of-the-relationship-between-parents-and-political-authority on 3 April 2025.

An AI narration of the article 'What Is The Libertarian Theory of Parental Obligations?' by Jake Desyllas.

This article examines four competing philosophical theories of the parental role within a libertarian framework: parental ownership, parenting as charity, parenting as voluntary social contract, and causal parental responsibility. It critically analyzes each theory, evaluating its logical implications—particularly concerning the legitimacy of enforceable parental obligations—and its compatibility with libertarian principles. The article argues that the first three theories are unsound and incompatible with libertarianism. In contrast, it defends the theory of causal parental responsibility as the only sound framework consistent with libertarian philosophy, grounding enforceable parental obligations in the creation of peril. This analysis seeks to resolve long-standing debates and establish a coherent libertarian theory of parental obligation.

Chapters:

0:00 Abstract 1:00 Introduction 3:22 The Theory of Parental Ownership 9:46 The Theory of Parenting as Charity 22:07 The Theory of Parenting as Voluntary Social Contract 30:07 The Theory of Causal Parental Responsibility 53:13 Parental Obligations in Contemporary Libertarian Thought 59:51 Conclusion

First published at https://jls.mises.org/article/141458-what-is-the-libertarian-theory-of-parental-obligations on 1 July 2025.

An AI narration of the article 'When do Parental Obligations Not Apply?' by Jake Desyllas.

The causal theory of parental responsibility grounds positive obligations in the fact that, by creating a child, parents place that child in a state of peril. But if obligations follow from action, what about the cases where a child comes into existence without the parent having acted in the relevant sense? In this short piece, Jake works through the principled exceptions: rape, gamete theft, paternity fraud, gestational surrogacy, and a pregnancy that endangers the mother's life. Each case is a test of the theory's internal logic — and a clarifier of where parental obligations begin and end. The piece also draws an implication for the abortion debate, distinguishing the consensual-sex case from the rape case on grounds that follow directly from the causal theory.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction 0:29 Rape 1:31 Gamete Theft 2:28 Paternity Fraud 3:01 Gestational Surrogacy 3:20 Endangered Life Of The Mother During Pregnancy

First published at https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2024/7/13/when-do-parental-obligations-apply on 13 July 2024.

An AI narration of the article 'Objections Against The State-Of-Peril Argument For Parental Obligations' by Jake Desyllas.

Critics of the state-of-peril argument for parental obligations have raised many objections — that creating a child is not aggression and so cannot generate duties, that unborn children are themselves the aggressors, that giving life is so great a gift it nullifies all further claims, that adoptive parents disprove any causal theory, that the chain of causation is impossibly tangled. In this post Jake works through ten such objections one by one, drawn from libertarian and analytic-philosophy critics including Brake, Block, Evers, Long, Dominiak, and Brighouse and Swift. A pattern emerges: when each objection is examined, the case for parental obligation only sharpens. Many of the standard counter-arguments turn out to be assertions rather than refutations, or to collapse into ad hominem.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction 0:31 Objection 1: Creating A Child Is Not An Act of Aggression and Therefore Does Not Incur Obligations 1:48 Objection 2: Obligations Are Only Valid If Voluntarily Agreed To 3:27 Objection 3: Unborn Children Initiate Aggression Against Their Mothers 5:31 Objection 4: Giving Life Is A Net Benefit And Therefore Parents Are Not Obligated Further 9:51 Objection 5: Adoptive Parents Disprove The Causal Theory of Parental Obligation 12:16 Objection 6: It is Too Difficult to Determine Who Caused a Baby to Exist Therefore Parents Don't Have Obligations by Cause 14:45 Objection 7: Causal Action Leads To Insufficient Parental Obligations 16:49 Objection 8: Creation of Peril Only Occurs if Someone's Rights Have Already Been Violated but Creating a Child Does Not Violate Rights 18:30 Objection 9: The Non-Identity Problem Means There Is No Creation of Peril 19:48 Objection 10: The Concept of Parental Obligations Is Merely a Cover for Prejudice or Ulterior Motives

First published at https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2024/6/27/objections-against-the-state-of-peril-argument-for-parental-obligations on 27 June 2024.

An AI narration of the article 'Support for Abortion Has Corrupted Libertarian Theory' by Jake Desyllas.

Libertarian philosophy ought to offer a coherent and beautiful account of family life: parents bear responsibility for the children they create, parental authority and its limits flow from that responsibility, and children are recognised as individuals with inherent rights. Modern libertarianism does none of this. In this episode Jake argues that the corruption can be traced to a single assumption adopted in the mid-twentieth century: that libertarian theory must justify abortion. To accommodate that one position, libertarians have denied parental obligations, swapped a theory of inherent rights for one of acquired rights, abandoned the presumption of innocence, and written fathers out of the family entirely. Each distortion follows from the same root error — and each disappears once that error is corrected.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction 1:49 The Denial of Parental Responsibility 2:58 The Distortion of Rights Theory 5:08 The Abandonment of The Presumption of Innocence 6:21 The Invisibility of Fathers in Libertarian Theory 8:21 Conclusion

First published at https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2024/8/20/support-for-abortion-has-corrupted-libertarian-theory on 20 August 2024.

An AI narration of the article 'Opponents of Parental Responsibility Cannot Help Conceding The Argument' by Jake Desyllas.

The principle that parents have causal responsibility for the children they create is so undeniable that even its most prominent opponents end up making the argument for it themselves. In this article Jake works through four examples: Judith Jarvis Thomson, Murray Rothbard, Elizabeth Brake, and Roderick Long. Each is committed to denying causal parental obligation in defence of abortion, yet each in turn lays out the very case they are trying to refute — whether by conceding that "partial responsibility" can ground a right, by setting out the moral duty of parents to raise their children to independence, or by demonstrating how negative rights generate enforceable positive obligations through the creation of peril. Their motivated reasoning collapses under the weight of their own logic.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction 0:27 Judith Jarvis Thomson 3:26 Murray Rothbard 4:52 Elizabeth Brake 7:44 Roderick Long

First published at https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2024/12/30/opponents-of-parental-responsibility-cannot-help-conceding-the-argument on 30 December 2024.

An AI narration of the article 'Abortion is Incompatible With Parental Obligations' by Jake Desyllas.

If parents are causally responsible for the peril they place a child in by bringing them into existence, what does that imply for abortion? Jake traces a striking line of argument first sketched by Richard Werner in 1974 and made explicit by Doris Gordon a few years later: causal parental obligations begin at conception, and abortion is therefore incompatible with them. Werner dismantles Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous burglar analogy and offers a strict-liability gun analogy in its place. Gordon, an Ayn Rand disciple who went on to found Libertarians for Life, shows why the standard Objectivist defence of abortion contradicts the Objectivist account of parental responsibility. Those who deny the incompatibility must abandon causal parental responsibility altogether and resort to a voluntary social-contract theory of parenting.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction 1:04 Richard Werner's Argument 3:51 Doris Gordon and the Objectivist Origin 8:59 The Logical Argument

First published at https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2024/11/18/abortion-is-incompatible-with-parental-obligations on 18 November 2024.