Greetings.
A few conclusive comments.
Mr. Rowlands: Now collectivism. Stolyarov is desperate to cling on to a political view of collectivism, in the hopes of avoiding his own defeat. But notice the tactic. "That's not what collectivism means!". He doesn't try to say that I'm not right about the way people treat marriage. He has to deflect it with word games.
Mr. Stolyarov: The distinction is this; I do not advocate relationships that can be collectivistic even potentially. Some of these relationships do have a degree of altruism to them; this is a mere potential depending on the nature of people involved (existing, but not metafysically significant in terms of a systematic understanding of marriage), but collectivism, and the state-based coercion element is absent from marriage. People are free to choose to marry or not, and they are free to divorce or not under my system, so long as they are the only individuals affected. The word-equivocation between altruism and collectivism that Mr. Rowlands used was another tactic to misconstrue my position as statist and collectivist, when in reality I am only offering individuals the choice to marry, and, within that relationship, the choice to be selfish and happy, or altruistic and miserable.
Mr. Rowlands: Now, are you suggesting that racism doesn't exist if the government doesn't enforce it? I'm very curious. If someone goes around screaming obscenities at any particular minority, you would refuse to call them a racist? Very interesting.
Mr. Stolyarov: The individual might be a racist by his personal persuasion, and might believe in the need for collectives and collectivism. But he is not a collective in himself! You need to distinguish between a collective and a collectivist. When I asked whether, according to your definition, one person could constitute a collective, you seem to have now answered affirmatively; a racist is now a collective, says Mr. Rowlands.
Vladimir Lenin was married. He also believed in the doctrine of collectivism. Lenin was a collectivist. But this did not make him or his marriage a collective!
Jeremy: Never mind that an entire segment of the population--single parents--would be punished for the sins of some of their kind--deadbeat dads, specifically. Never mind that some people might be rabid social libertarians (Oh My Word!) and not exactly relish the idea of registering--making "official"--their lives and their children's lives with the State.
Mr. Stolyarov: Any individual who lacks a legally enforceable guarantee of parental obligation can abandon his/her child with impunity. You have still not answered why this state is desirable; why people should even be given such an option. Some people will pursue it, others will not, but the latter will still treat the child’s de facto RG as a privilege, and not a right, yet, according to the principle of parental obligation, an RG is a child’s by right.
Moreover, I do not punish all single parents. If a parent is single at the time of adopting a child, nothing needs happen but a legal validation of custody; if one parent dies while a child is raised, no remarriage needs to occur; the only instances I am targeting are those where parents knowingly conceived a child out of wedlock, have kept the child, and have refused to grant him an RG by right instead of as a privilege. As for their hesitation to “register their lives,” all they have to do is sign a marriage license! Not too many libertarians have scorned that much in the status quo! (This is a contract enforceable by the state, but not implying that it is registered somewhere, or that any names are held in any government database; the individuals concerned may hold copies of the contract and their possession and need merely be able to produce them before a court of law.)
How would deplaintiffication occur, then, under such a lack of centralized registries? Simple. If an illegitimate parent tries to sue in a civil court, he/she will be asked to produce a marriage contract; if he/she fails to do so, he/she will be denied the prerogative to sue. And that is it! No centralized supervision, no State snooping, no special corrective programs—the State is purely a responsive agency in Stolyarov-World (Sounds like a nice place, by the way J).
Jeremy: With or without your "contractual marital obligation" and whatever it entails, though only the State might know, children can be neglected. They can also be loved, provided for, dedicated to, cherished. I don't need to sign my name on anything to prove to anyone what my intentions are--most notably in personal matters!
Mr. Stolyarov: But if you violate the rights of your children, your signature to a contract will serve as warrant to legally, non-arbitrarily penalize you in court. You would not want the government to practice arbitrary penalization, now would you?
Absent your signature, you are legally free to neglect (though not actively abuse) your children however you wish, and the court can take no action; the child cannot prove that you are responsible legally for its autonomization.
Jeremy: We are all very creative people, G. I can imagine ten nightmare scenarios in a matter of minutes. Have you bothered trying to imagine one? I've also thought about some nightmare scenarios involving neglectful parents, and not once have I come up with one that your "solution" would prevent.
Mr. Stolyarov: Every time you presented a viable “nightmare scenario” I had to clarify, specify, or modify my position in order to assure you that it would not happen. Moreover, it is not my burden to prove the negative: that bad things will not happen in absolutely all cases. Here is a nightmare scenario: Al Qaeda terrorists might have children under my system and be able to produce legal contracts demonstrating custody—thus, the children are officially theirs, and they can mold them into violent fanatics all they want; these fanatics will initiate tens of school shootings, blow up private homes, and form terrorist gangs in every town in America. Or my laissez-faire system of voluntary contracts not registered in a central database might be used by one of them to marry an American national, get permanent residency, and be able to calmly plan future attacks. Nightmarish enough for you? Simply because we can imagine a scenario does not mean that it will happen, and it is one’s burden to prove the positive, i.e. that it will happen, if one wishes to argue along these lines.
Jeremy: Single parents aren't given a trial, so they aren't exactly prosecuted. Persecuted then?
Mr. Stolyarov: No: nothing happens to them unless they try to initiate a civil suit themselves; then, they will simply be denied the opportunity to do so.
Moreover, I respond to a few points made by Mr. Trusnik, who, by far, has been my most civil adversary in this discourse.
Mr. Trusnik: Are you implying that the only ways in which a man and a woman may interact on a romantic basis is either long-term in marriage, or spur-of-the-moment outside of marriage? If so, I find you absolutely mistaken. How people choose to plan their lives with respect to others has absolutely nothing to do with the sorts of vows they are taken.
Mr. Stolyarov: My argument was also that plans which are merely spoken are liable to be forgotten or distorted; no man’s memory is perfect, yet this need be no impediment to a successful relationship. The reason contracts are desirable is that they are written elucidations of principle. In Stolyarov-World, a couple can make a large variety of choices w.r.t the content of its marriage contract; there could be a unique “Preamble” of shared values, a list of desirable expectations, a list of shared obligations, a list of material responsibilities, etc. The possibilities for such a contract are as wide as a rational individual’s imagination.
Mr. Trusnik: To claim otherwise is a claim that the union somehow endows the couple with a new ability to plan on the long-range together; before the ceremony, the most they could do was plan spur-of-the-moment.
Mr. Stolyarov: Recall, if you will, Rand’s “crow epistemology.” Man’s mind can operate with only so many conceptual units in at the same time. Unless the sum total of the desirable aspects of a relationship can be integrated into an explicit, workable conceptual unit, some parts will inevitably be lost to an individual’s recognition at any given moment; he cannot operate with all of them at once. However, if the explicit integration via the contract is made, all he needs to do is remember the words “According to the contract…” and his recollection of the contract’s nature and intention will finish the job. Then, the contract becomes a single workable entity within an individual’s mind; it can focus on fulfilling the obligations therefrom, and on a few other things at the same time.
People tell me I have an excellent memory, yet I would not, in any capacity, be able to retell you the entirety of the contents, nuances, applications, and implications of even this treatise of mine from sheer memory. Having it in writing means I can always refer to it when needed and moreover work with it as a single unit at times. I can say, “According to my treatise…” or “According to my position…” and be able to both furnish the point I wanted to make and expand upon it. Contracts work just like this. This is why I recommend informal contractualization of any romantic relationship long before marriage. Otherwise, however well-intentioned you may be to plan in the long term, you will inevitably find yourself falling short J.
Mr. Trusnik: The design of the machine is either faulty or functional. Having a blueprint won't change that fact.
Mr. Stolyarov: But not having a blueprint will greatly magnify your chances of failure even with a functional design. True, it will not correct a faulty one, but then I suggest that optimal compatibility cannot be had with every person by far; this is why an individual must be extremely discerning and discriminatory before even entering a relationship of any sort. (There are many filters to this; I need only to hear a snippet of conversation from most people to reject ever considering a relationship with them.)
Mr. Trusnik: I think you missed the entire point of Joe's argument (although I encourage him to correct me if I'm wrong). He said nothing about barring such contracts.
Mr. Stolyarov: I beg to differ. Mr. Rowlands wrote: “Imagine the friends decide to contract their friendship. They sign something that says they have to be friends forever. They're not contracting for specific services, but a permanent continual obligation. Once signed, you have to go to movies whenever the other person wants, you have to listen to their problems, you have to go on vacations with them, etc. You're signing yourself into perpetual slavery. And you can't leave without the other person's permission. You've literally signed yourself into slavery.” And he has stated that he agrees with Mr. Howison’s contention that “you can’t sell yourself into slavery.” Thus, he would use the coercive power of the state to bar binding relationship contracts, but especially permanent contracts. Note the bias here. Anything that asserts the remote possibility of an individual’s lasting happiness is rejected as not only vile but suppressible by law.
Mr. Trusnik: Again, if I understand Joe correctly, you've missed the point. The point was, at the moment what she "gave" the money to her husband, it was no longer her money to give; she was no longer the sole owner of it.
Mr. Stolyarov: She chose to give her husband the money by the act of signing the marriage contract, which is really a multitude of choices affirmed by a single document.
Mr. Trusnik: However, whether or not a parent has an obligation toward a child that s/he chose to have (obviously, being against abortion, you negate the notion of "choosing" to have a child...unless you support sex for procreation purposes only) is another issue.
Parents and guardians are legally responsible for the welfare of the child, unless they legally transfer that responsibility to another agency (such as in the case of adoption). The parents, in this scernario, cannot abandon the child to the elements, but they can choose to relinquish custody to another.
Mr. Stolyarov: We agree on legal responsibility. But how can there be an obligation on the behalf of the parent if the child does not have the right to be beneficiary of this obligation so long as it is in the parents’ custody. The two are inseparable corollaries.
Mr. Trusnik: But, does a child have the right to be brought up in a specific manner? No.
Mr. Stolyarov: It depends on what you call a “specific manner.” Branden’s article lists basic necessities that a child can expect by right. I also claim that intentionally depriving the child of an existing RG (resource guarantee) is not a parent’s prerogative. This means that, if a child is born in an extremely wealthy family that lives in a mansion, the parents cannot decide to spontaneously cast the child out, put it in a hovel with the bare minimum needed to lead a subsistence that is “not unhealthy.” An existing RG has been arbitrarily deprived. But if a child is born to a poor family living in such a hovel, the hovel’s standard of living is its sole existing RG. The parents do not have the obligation to give him anything more, and, if they do, it is an act of optional generosity on their part.
Mr. Trusnik: Mr. Stolyrov, you have completely avoided the entire argument that Joe was making. His entire point was that diminishing returns DO exist, but the fact of their existence does not make one an altruist.
Mr. Stolyarov: His point was more specific: that diminishing returns in romantic relationships inevitably exist and that they are good. I have presented multiple examples and arguments to the contrary, and then stated that how his idea of diminishing returns w.r.t. chocolate is a faulty comparison to the situation existing w.r.t. relationships.
I do not grant that diminishing returns in relationships must exist or that they are good. I rather claim that they are avoidable via an active lifestyle, and should be avoided thus.
Finally, my own summary of the debate.
In the legal realm:
- I have demonstrated how my utilization of government to defend marriage implies absolutely no positive, initiatory coercion whatsoever. My opponents keep tossing words such as “slavery,” “fascism,” “communism,” “statism,” and “collectivism” around, when my genuine position is to empower the state to enforce voluntary contracts without undertaking any precautionary registration or surveillance; the state becomes a mere arbiter of disputes, and is such only if the individuals decide to take recourse to the state and fail to harmoniously resolve their own problems. The state can annul the marriage contract in such extreme cases, or punish negligent parents if appealed to by the children or anyone else representing the children.
- Much fuss has been made over my proposal about “deplaintiffication.” I repeat that it entails no positive surveillance, no active “persecution,” no registration with the state. If illegitimate parents wish to sue in a civil court, they will need to produce a privately held marriage license. If not, they will be denied the prerogative to sue. For this grand liberalization w.r.t. the status quo, I am damned as a fascist, etc.
- To turn the tides around, my opponents have conceded that they would wish to outlaw binding relationship contracts that have a permanent personal commitment as their component; i.e. anything that does not address solely property. This is a desire to abolish traditional marriage in its essence. It is a proposal for denying individuals the choice to be permanently bound by a contract; it is state intervention into private lives, and private lives of the noblest caliber.
- The moral debate, which is more fundamental in this discussion than the legal debate, and to mask the implications of which much of the legal debate has been initiated by my opponents in the first place, has revolved around the issue of whether lasting happiness is possible, desirable, or filosofically significant in a romantic relationship. My opponents say no. Mr. Rowlands predicts the inevitability of diminishing returns (a good thing, according to him), and elevates the potential problems emerging from joint property to filosofical necessities. I, on the other hand, claim that all of these negative aspects are avoidable, cite historical examples for this, and demonstrate that an active mindset and fortitude of character are necessary to sustain a happy, permanent relationship. I do not see happiness and permanence as opposites. In bad hands, a permanent relationship may not be happy, but a truly happy relationship will be permanent. I hold that the happiness to be found is inexhaustible; my opponents claim it is capped. I demonstrate that it is not. Their response? Blank-out.
- This is also a debate about value-premises. Some of my opponents seek to enshrine as homo filosoficus the mentality that does not thoroughly discriminate before entering into romantic relations and that is willing to partake in fysical intercourse outside marriage with anyone who is remotely “liked.” This licentious lifestyle, a model for impermanence, is what is equated with “happiness” under some of my opponents’ creed; of course, they admit that the happiness is mere transitory, spur-of-the-moment sensory lust, and claim that its diminution is, again, a good thing. They live in a malevolent universe, asserting that no higher, firmer, more enduring happiness is possible, despite the fact that many in the real universe have found it. I, on the other hand, speak for the Randian “heroic man,” who does not see any of the obstacles to the sort of life I propose and my opponents scorn.
- This has been a debate about the benefit of contracts and explicit elucidation of value premises in a personal sense; my opponents have claimed that they bring no values whatsoever. I, however, have demonstrated the contrary, in my arguments about long-range planning and the crow epistemology.
- A lot of this debate has been a crude rehashing of the same things said many times over; especially w.r.t. ad hominem attacks. Among the ones not already mentioned, I have been accused of “religious conservatism” and “rationalization.” I have proved that my position is not equal to that of the religious conservative, and that I differ with the typical religious conservative on many conclusions and just about all derivations, though this does not nullify my respect for certain eloquent and consistent religious conservatives. As for “rationalization,” with much help from Mr. Tingley, I have also been able to turn the accusation around; it is my opponents who desperately want to believe that a libertine lifestyle is superior to a committed, married one, and seek to enshrine this desire on the pedestals of filosofy and law. I have demonstrated how this desire inevitably runs into obstruction by periferals and betrayal of the fundamental principles of Objectivism; this means the desire is flawed, not the principles, and I will oppose such a ploy on my opponents’ part so long as my fingers can still move on a keyboard.
Let the members of the audience henceforth form their own judgment as to the outcome of this debate. Let no bullying, intimidation, or pressure to conform to the orthodoxy deter them from consulting their inner Reason, which must reign supreme within any man who seeks life as it can be and should be.
I am
G. Stolyarov II
 
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