Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> There's a libertarian-socialist horseshoe on age of consent laws.

Not really.

First, because “libertarian” and “socialist” aren't opposing poles (libertarian socialism is a thing), and, second, because non-libertarian socialists aren't particularly against (or for reducing the age set in) age of consent laws. And, third, even anarchists, who are the polar extreme of libertarian socialist tend to support age of consent laws, there only consistent opposition to current ones is, as with other laws of current societies, objection to the structural basis on which they are made and enforced, content of the laws aside.

EDIT: Similar things may also be true of libertarians not being as anti-age-of-consent as portrayed as I have noted about socialists; I have had somewhat more contact with broad leftist communities than broad libertarian ones outside of their overlap, so I may be more susceptible to misestimating the prevalence of certain views in the libertarian community because they are highly visible when espoused because of how transgressive they are.

My comment was tongue in cheek, but is based on my experience with both groups, especially as they exist online.

Part of what's strange is how often age of consent comes up in these circles. It's not something most people think too much about. Last time I was worried about age of consent laws was when I turned 18 a few months before my girlfriend.

> tend to support age of consent laws > objection to the structural basis on which they are made and enforced

You'll get a laundry list of reasons why our existing laws are oppressive, passionate assertions that adults and minors can have positive sexual relationships with each other, delineations of pedophilia, ephebophilia, etc. All followed up with a vague caveat that age of consent laws might not be inherently bad, but usually with no attempt whatsoever at suggesting what they should be. Seems a strange place to just stop your little thought experiment.

Then you have people like Vaush who just can't stop saying things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50Cjw7Fq6VA

> Part of what's strange is how often age of consent comes up in these circles.

Age of consent comes up a lot in libertarian (including both right-libertarian and anarchist/libert5-socialist) circles because it's an easy emotional “think of the children” gotcha that the groups are, because of their opposition to status quo government authority subjected to continuously.

It also comes up a lot because libertarian groups (on both left and right) are about fundamentally reorganizing the structure of authority in society, and it's an obvious and (for most) important issue addressed by the status quo system.

People reimplementing (or designing a reimplementation of) a system should spend a lot more time thinking about things the current system treats as a solved problem than end users of the existing system do.

> All followed up with a vague caveat that age of consent laws might not be inherently bad, but usually with no attempt whatsoever at suggesting what they should be.

I've rarely found anyone in either community that wouldn't state their preference on age of consent laws when asked, what they tend not to do is express what they should be for all communities, because they tend to oppose the idea of centralized legal standards for all communities (both left and right libertarians have frequently spoken up to support intervention if the practice in another community is seen as widespread violation of moral consent, but not reducing that to some legalism. I think people have trouble understanding that libertarians have a different view on the relation between morality and law than people who are less libertarian, and therefore mistake libertarian reluctance to demand universal legislation on certain issues with libertine moral neutrality on them.

> Then you have people like Vaush

Vaush is a rather controversial figure among anarchists.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com