Warning! This article was written by me a very long time ago, and no longer accurately reflects my views! I no longer identify as Libertarian, much less an Anarcho-Capitalist. Reader discretion is advised.

I'm a Libertarian, and I guess somewhat of an Anarcho-Capitalist too, if we discount my support for UBI. Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists are sadly the target of deriding memes about age of consent, and how us Libertarians all just want to have sex with children.

That stereotype is obviously false, as one cannot simply make such a generalizing blanket statement about the followers of any political ideology, and even if we did want to abolish Age of Consent laws (we don't), what people are doing is not genuine criticism of our ideas, but rather a knee-jerk reaction, largely motivated out of fear of social ostracism for daring to explore controversial ideas - or just inability to have an emotionally detached rational discussion about anything.

The Raison d'Être of AoC laws

It's commonly said, that children cannot consent. That statement may or may not be true, depending on how we look at it.

Is it true in the literal sense? I'd hate to break it to you, but no. Does it have to be though? Also no.

When we say that "children cannot consent", what we actually mean, is that the power disparity between adult and child is so large, that it renders the child's consent - or lack thereof - irrelevant. When an adult wants to engage in sexual acts with a defenseless child, (s)he is going to be able to do it, whether the child consents or not. And because it's unreasonable to assume that a 6-year old has any idea what's going on, we can safely assume, that the 6-year old child did not consent. And even if they did, there's a high chance of getting physically hurt.

So, when we say that children cannot consent, we don't mean it in the literal sense, but in a functional sense. Sure, they do possess the ability to consent in the literal sense, but functionally, they might as well not, due to the power imbalance rendering it(s absence) irrelevant.

However.... there is just one tiny problem with this logic.

It applies to adults too

We like to think of children as these good-but-ignorant innocent angels to be contrasted with the evil-but-wise adults already jaded and/or corrupted by the world, but in reality, this line of thinking doesn't completely stand up to scrutiny.

Yes, there is some truth to the idea that children are naive and charitable while adults are paranoid and miserable, but to say that children are innocent while adults are immoral is just plain untrue - children are creatures of instinct, which, just like civilized society's norms, has its light side and dark side. But before this segue gets too long, I'll just close it with this remark: children are not as innocent as you may think, and school bullying is the best proof for that.

Where was I going again?

So yes, this whole idea about consent being dubious is not exclusive to children. It applies to adults too.

We say that children cannot consent, because the power disparity between adult and child is so huge that it renders their consent - or lack thereof - irrelevant to whether the sex will happen or not, but there are a lot of situations where such a power disparity exists between two adults as well. Sure, the adult may have a better ability to physically resist rape, and might have slightly more confidence to say no, but what if there are negative consequences to saying no?

Think of cases when a person (usually a woman, but in rare cases a man too) has to sleep with his/her (future) employer to get a job or a promotion. Or when a prostitute (or gigolo) has to sleep with her/his client to make a living, since that's his/her job. Is that consent?

The client or (future) employer isn't exactly holding a gun to the subject to force the sex to happen, and is most likely not forcing themself violently onto the subject either, so you can't call it rape, but it's not exactly a textbook example of consensual sex either.

Of course, if feminists had their way, even regretting sex with someone would retroactively turn the consensual (at the time) sex into rape, but when it comes to calling attention to this kind of power-play, they do have a point. Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day, right?

Sex and work

Some would argue, if the consequences of not having sex with someone are highly negative (e.g. not getting paid, not getting the job, not getting the promotion, etc.), even if that person didn't rape you in the literal sense, functionally, it was rape, or at the very least, dubious consent.

As an anti-feminist, I find this line of thinking highly suspicious, but, the more I think about it, the more it starts to make sense. Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day, right?

But why stop at sex? Why not apply the same logic at other things.... like work?

We think of work as something like death and urination - an inescapable fact of life that we just have to accept - but that logic falls apart when you realize that in certain cultures, having your genitalia mutilated at an early age is also an inescapable fact of life. So what if there's more to work than it just being a fact of every person's life?

No one is forcing you to work in a literal sense. If you live in the developed world - or even in the majority of developing countries - you are not a slave, you are a free individual. No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to find a job and start working.

Just like the self-employed pimpless prostitute who can reject clients at will, you too can reject work.... but what if you do? Then you will have no income, no means of buying food (meaning you starve to death), no means of paying for water and electricity, no means of paying property tax, no means of paying for healthcare, etc.

So sure, no one is holding a gun to your head in the literal sense, but functionally, it might as well be that situation, because the freedom of choice is an illusion, and there is only one viable choice that results in your prolonged existence rather than premature demise.

You could say, that life is holding a gun to your head, and life itself is raping the unwilling prostitute. But what can we do?

UBI: The Great Equalizer

Universal Basic Income is the controversial (but growing in popularity, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic) idea that the state should simply unconditionally give every single citizen above 18 a certain amount of money - like $1000 - every month, no questions asked.

Despite being a quasi-Anarcho-Capitalist who generally opposes the government's very existence and wants to privatize everything, I support it, not just because I'm lazy and spoiled, but also because it's pretty much the only alternative to letting 99% of the population starve to death in a post-automation world.

But besides ensuring our continued survival in a world where Terminator has taken our jobs, it also comes with a few additional advantages:

• It strengthens the weight of genuine consent, for both sex and work.

  • In a UBI-less world, prostitution is often the last attempt of financially desperate women who have ran out of other options to survive. But in a world with UBI, only the genuine nymphomaniacs would sign up for such a job, and even then they would still have the option of declining clients without worrying about their financial well-being.

  • In a UBI-less world, people work to live. Companies would like workers to have some corporate loyalty and live to work, but deep-down, everyone knows that us workers have no corporate loyalty and all, we work to live (to survive), and not the other way around. In a world with UBI, workplaces would be rid of unenthusiastic workers like me, and would be full of willing volunteers who actually enjoy what they're doing.

• UBI would give more bargaining power to workers, because workplaces would have to be really enticing to get people to give up their free time for extra money, if work is made optional.

• UBI would also be beneficial for companies, because it would render welfare, pension, even paid leave and workers' benefits redundant.

• UBI would benefit both landlords and their tenants:

  • Tenants wouldn't have to fear not being able to pay rent, assuming that UBI more or less covers the rent of the average citizen.

  • Landlords would be never taking risks by renting out their houses and apartments, because UBI would ensure that everyone - except the most foolish and financially inept - can always pay their rents, no excuses. If the state gives you $1000 per month, you have literally no excuses for being late with the rent.

    • This in turn would remove the landlords' motivation for charging high prices. In the present-day world, high rent is basically compensation for high risk being taken by the landlord. But with UBI, the high risk disappears, and so will the high rent, since it will literally become counterproductive at that point (renting out your home at a reasonable price that everyone's UBI covers vs renting out at a price no one is willing to pay, and losing money as a result - it's a no brainer, really).

• UBI would benefit big corporations by ensuring that they will continue to have a steady stream of consumers even after all their jobs get destroyed by automation.

• Making waged work optional would be a godsend for all the non-profit good samaritans, who just want to cook soup for the poor, plant trees, and whatnot.

• UBI would also make copyright even more redundant than it already is. Once you have your recording equipment, your survival no longer depends on you being able to sell or license your works. Hell, with UBI, you may even get more patronage then ever.