[ycmbntrthrwaway]

> though I believe there ought to be a good debate and scientific and philosophical and psychological investigation into the concept of 'age of consent', and what age that is

All arbitrary ages and numbers should be questioned. What I like about arbitrary numbers and ages is that copyright, patents and "intellectual property" have never been defined without arbitrary ages as it would make an idea of wheel and lightbulb someone's "property". So even if someone believes property is there due to "natural laws", intellectual property is either not a property or not natural, just a privilege and a protectionist measure.

Tough question for anarchists is what age a child is not a child anymore. It is not only the "age of consent", but the age when someone is not considered to be his parents property anymore. What if this age is 0? Is there any reason it is not exactly 0?

[ue_]

I completely agree. One common thread of argument re the age at which one is not one's parent's property is that it's adulthood, the age at which someone can be reasonably expected to make informed and rational decisions for oneself, but arguably even by that (arbitrary) standard 14 and 15 year olds may qualify for example.

An often used justification is that parents usually know what's best for children - to eat vegetables rather than chocolate, to do homework rather than play games all day, to be active rather than sedentary etc. yet again it's an arbitrary measure, and there are many examples where parents do not know better than the children.

Ultimately these questions need decision either at the state level or at the familial level or at some other level of relationship between a parent and child. I don't know what the answers are, but we should most certainly not deny discussion of them.

Intellecutal property is a horrible beast, the idea that because ideas have value by virtue of having them first is silly, and is actually a by-product of the capitalist system where the first entrant into a particular market status is valued. What's worse is the fact that someone can say "I had this idea first therefore I can stop you from doing things with that idea, even if you came up with it independently of me".

The problem is that there is nobody to listen to you. Democracy does not want these arguments (preferring instead silly arguments about tax) and leaders do not want to hear it anyway (for risk of losing power). Even within philosophy, daring and controversial ideas are shunned (on the concept of property, capitalism, copyright, age of consent).

It's unfortunate.