Frequent commenter Monte, who commented on my blog post titled “Mind Your Own Business!”, asked “Do Libertarians believe that government should play a role in setting limits on self-ownership?”
I didn’t answer in the comments because I think the question is of more-general interest, and only a small percent of readers read the comments.
I’ll start by pointing out 2 important distinctions.
First, the word “Libertarian” with an “L” is usually used to refer to people who are members of the Libertarian Party, whether here or in Canada or in other countries with Libertarian Parties. I haven’t been a member of the Libertarian Party for at least 3 decades. So I’ll answer as if Monte asked about small “l” libertarians.
Second, I’m only one libertarian and so I’ll answer about my views. Other libertarians may have other views, although I think there’s a large amount of agreement.
Now I’ll answer the question Monte asked as if he were asking my view.
The basic answer is No, for all adults of sound mind. The exceptions are for children and for adults who are not of sound mind.
If you say, “Wait a minute; you haven’t completely answered,” you’re right.
Specifically, what’s the age limit for defining a child? My answer is 18, but I realize that that’s arbitrary. I remember David Friedman being asked this question after a speech. He pointed out that the answer “Someone is not a child if he/she can make mature decisions” is not a good answer. He noted that some people make a lot of bad decisions when they’re 30 and others make mainly good decisions when they’re 14.
Let’s say that we settle on the age 18. What happens when, say, a 14-year-old wants to get the surgery to transition to a different gender? The surgery is pretty much irreversible. Should that 14-year-old be able to choose it? I say no. Will that mean that there will be 18-year-olds who missed their chance to get the surgery when they were 14 and regret that? Yes. But it also means that many people will be glad at age 18 that they didn’t get the surgery at age 14.
If you agree with me that 18 is the cutoff, there’s still the issue, for those under age 18, of who gets to decide for the child. Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party’s candidate for president in 2024, believed that the parents ought to be able to decide. I’m not sure about that. The question I ask people who agree with Oliver is: “If a 14-year-old wants to ingest heroin or meth, and the parents think it’s alright, should they be able to allow the child to do so?” After all, surgery for gender transition is way less reversible, typically, than the effects of heroin.
UPDATE: As commenter David notes below, I was wrong about Chase Oliver’s views. He explicitly says that he would not allow transition surgery for people who are under age 18.
How about not of sound mind? Would someone with an IQ of 40 be of sound mind? I think not. But you can see that this is arbitrary. Would I have a good argument against someone who said the cutoff for IQ should be 30? 50? No, I don’t.
READER COMMENTS
steve
May 20 2025 at 11:35pm
It’s sort of interesting that virtually no one objects to parents giving their permission for plastic surgery but many oppose it when parents give their permission for gender transition surgery. Also, increased mortality risks persist even after people stop using heroin so it may be more reversible but when it isn’t it’s probably more deadly. Anyway, it’s a tough question especially since so many parents are abusive and/or negligent.
Steve
Mactoul
May 20 2025 at 11:54pm
This, of course, defines another limit on libertarian self-ownership since this settling is inevitably political in nature. No individual can define this age for himself, the entire society has to settle on a determination.
As a practical matter, actual societies have not shown much of concern with libertarian self-ownership. Even American state, founded on most liberal principles, has behaved almost exactly like any other Old World state in this respect, going as far as banning alcohol (never done in Europe as far as I know), conscription in wars at will, income tax, property tax, so on and so forth.
Why it should be so? Why even America found it impossible to keep on the narrow road of strict self-ownership? Doesn’t it point to fundamental lacunae in liberal theories and self-ownership concept?
robc
May 21 2025 at 12:32pm
Prohibition in Europe:
Iceland 1915
Norway 1916 (spirits), 1917 (beer/wine)
Finland 1919
Russia 1914
Faroe Islands 1907
Sweden had a referendum in 1922, but it was defeated.
nobody.really
May 21 2025 at 12:34am
If we want to guarantee that no Jewish males become libertarians, I can’t think of a better way than to tell them that they must wait until age 18 to experience the joys of circumcision.
David Henderson
May 21 2025 at 10:05am
I’m not sure you’re right. It’s not as if they would say, “Oh, you didn’t let my parents hire someone to take a knife to me at age 8 days and so your philosophy sucks,”
nobody.really
May 21 2025 at 2:05pm
No, the 18-yr-olds are going to say, “Oh, you didn’t let my parents hire someone to take a knife to me at age 8 days, SO WE HAVE TO DO IT NOW.” If you were ever an 18-yr-0ld boy, I don’t think I should have to explain to you how popular that policy would be.
(Indeed, the unpopularity of adult cirumcision was an initial impediment to the spread of the Christian faith. Ultimately Paul, “aspostle to the Gentiles,” declared that Christ’s sacrifice meant that Christians would not have to abide by all the Jewish rules–only some of them. Go figure.)
robc
May 21 2025 at 4:01pm
Peter in Acts 10, preceding Paul.
Alan Goldhammer
May 21 2025 at 8:37am
Followers of Islam also practice male circumcision.
Alan Goldhammer
May 21 2025 at 8:44am
There are religious practices that recognize years other than 18 for specific purposes. The age of marriage consent varies widely by state. There are also some religious practices that do not have the child’s best interest in mind (Christian Scientist). David’s post discusses gender transition surgery. I’m inclined to agree with him but what happens if someone gets married at age 16 in a state that permits it, are they eligible to make a decision about the surgery? This is an interesting philosophical question. I also wonder about what is the role of puberty blockers which are reversible. Should someone under the age of 18 be allowed to use those?
David
May 21 2025 at 10:19am
Not directly related to the philosophy discussion but I want to point out that Chase Oliver, the Libertarian candidate for President in 2024, did NOT believe that parents should be able to decide if their children get surgery. His position was (is) that parents should be able to decide to give their children hormone treatments but that any more permanent procedures including surgeries need to wait until 18.
https://reason.com/podcast/2024/08/07/chase-oliver-qa-with-the-controversial-libertarian-party-candidate/
David Henderson
May 23 2025 at 9:30am
Thanks for that correction.
Warren Platts
May 21 2025 at 10:35am
Why age 18? People are not allowed to drink beer until they are 21. Therefore, sex change operations should not be allowed until at least age 21.
David Henderson
May 21 2025 at 10:41am
Because I think people should be allowed to drink beer at age 18. Ronald Reagan’s caving to MADD was one of his bad decisions as president.
Andrew_FL
May 21 2025 at 10:56am
IMO the real mistake was lowering the voting age to 18 instead of raising the service age to 21 (and abolishing the draft in any case)
Student
May 21 2025 at 1:41pm
We could debate 16, 18, 21, etc… When does the age of reason or free will begin? Hard to say but I also agree that its about 18 years old.
For fun… an excerpt pseudo related to the post… from Rerum Novarum:
“12. The rights here spoken of, belonging to each individual man, are seen in much stronger light when considered in relation to man’s social and domestic obligations. In choosing a state of life, it is indisputable that all are at full liberty to follow the counsel of Jesus Christ as to observing virginity, or to bind themselves by the marriage tie. No human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage ordained by God’s authority from the beginning: “Increase and multiply.”(3) Hence we have the family, the “society” of a man’s house – a society very small, one must admit, but none the less a true society, and one older than any State. Consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State.
13. That right to property, therefore, which has been proved to belong naturally to individual persons, must in like wise belong to a man in his capacity of head of a family; nay, that right is all the stronger in proportion as the human person receives a wider extension in the family group. It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten; and, similarly, it is natural that he should wish that his children, who carry on, so to speak, and continue his personality, should be by him provided with all that is needful to enable them to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this mortal life. Now, in no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children by inheritance. A family, no less than a State, is, as We have said, a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father. Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty. We say, “at least equal rights”; for, inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well in idea as in fact, to the gathering of men into a community, the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the community, and founded more immediately in nature. If the citizens, if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire.
14. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them. But the rulers of the commonwealth must go no further; here, nature bids them stop. Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has the same source as human life itself. “The child belongs to the father,” and is, as it were, the continuation of the father’s personality; and speaking strictly, the child takes its place in civil society, not of its own right, but in its quality as member of the family in which it is born. And for the very reason that “the child belongs to the father” it is, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, “before it attains the use of free will, under the power and the charge of its parents.”(4) The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home. “
Craig
May 22 2025 at 9:38am
Now that I am over 50 I’m pretty sure the voting and drinking age sgould be 49.
nobody.really
May 22 2025 at 12:30pm
Fair point. But why don’t they lower the draft age–to about eleven?
Knut P. Heen
May 21 2025 at 12:42pm
This is a slippery slope. What if the big difference in decision-making capabilities is at an IQ of 125 or more? Many courts have come to the wrong conclusion because they make unacceptable logical errors, for example the base-rate fallacy.
Isn’t it much worse that a jury (with an average IQ above the mean due to selection) makes a stupid decision regarding the innocence of the defendant than if someone with an IQ of 50 do something stupid to himself?
Politicians also make stupid decisions affecting other people’s life.
We should start by banning stupid decisions affecting other people first. When that goal is accomplished, we can discuss doing stupid things to oneself.
June Genis
May 21 2025 at 1:59pm
What about emancipation? If someone under 18 can convince a judge (judges?) that they are capable of mature reasoning and decision making should they be declared emancipated and be able to make decisions about surgery and other treatments for themselves?
David Henderson
May 22 2025 at 9:37am
Sounds reasonable.
Here’s what I wonder, June. What if a kid can convince a judge that he’s capable of mature reasoning and, therefore, should be able to take heroin? Would you say that’s alright? This isn’t a “gotcha.” You’ve got me thinking that this is a reasonable way to go.
steve
May 22 2025 at 3:38pm
I live in an area with a lot of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Its not uncommon that a judge will need to make a ruling about a child’s care and if the kid is capable of testifying the judge will not uncommonly decide that the kid is able to understand the issues and follow their wishes. I dont see them ruling that they are mature enough to do illegal stuff.
Steve
Monte
May 22 2025 at 4:28pm
Thanks for posting on this, David. I think it’s an important issue that’s going to get increasingly more coverage as the MAHA movement gains momentum and continues to influence public health polices at all levels.
Monte
May 22 2025 at 4:41pm
Aside from the debate about what the age of majority should be, I suspect most libertarians would agree that government intervention is sometimes necessary to mitigate negative externalities in the form of indirect costs to society, but that it should seek to internalize those costs through the market before resorting to bans or mandates.
Monte
May 22 2025 at 6:51pm
Circling back, what about the age of consent? Here in the U.S., it currently ranges from 16-18. Should a child under the age of 16 or their parents be able to make that decision? Can you say “Pandora’s Box.?
Roger McKinney
May 23 2025 at 11:30am
Clearly, there is no objective standard for the age of consent. But our society has chosen 18 as the appropriate age for many things, like military service. So it’s probably the most reasonable age of consent.
Monte
May 23 2025 at 2:51pm
I agree, but in recent years, there’ve been proposals to lower the age of consent to 15 or even 14 arguing, in essence, that existing statutory laws are based on outdated Victorian-era sensibilities and that teenagers today are more self-aware and emotionally mature. Alongside of this are those who argue teenagers as young as 16 should have the right to gender-affirming care if they so choose.
The push against societal norms is moving at warp speed. Roles will have to be more clearly defined.
dmm
May 25 2025 at 2:48pm
There is no need for a single age. Individuals are different. The decision should be an agreement between the parents and the child. In case of disagreement, arbitration.
Until that decision, parents are responsible for their children’s welfare. If they are negligent or abusive, the responsibility passes to the community.
Comments are closed.