(To be clear, my main point in this comment was to make the ethical distinction between sacrificing yourself and sacrificing your child, not to talk in detail about the ethics of either of them.)
I agree with you directionally relative to where I think modern western culture lands. I do also think there are cases where I’m willing to say “yup, if you made that trade, you and your trading partner would be better off; no, I don’t think you should be allowed to do it”. Sometimes for collective-bargaining reasons, sometimes for other externalities reasons, sometimes for “this is too hard for the law to distinguish from other cases” reasons, maybe sometimes also for other reasons that I’m not thinking of now. The cases where I’m willing to say this vary depending on the surrounding economic circumstances.
The parents of a child hold legal rights over them that are, at least while I’m squinting, comparable to the control and authority a master wields over a slave (albeit with very different incentives).
I guess here I was thinking of “selling your child into a worse situation than the one they’re in now”, but I do admit that sometimes, selling them into indentured servitude might improve their situation.
...but even then, if they don’t want it, I think you should have a much higher bar for it than for selling yourself into indentured servitude.
(To be clear, my main point in this comment was to make the ethical distinction between sacrificing yourself and sacrificing your child, not to talk in detail about the ethics of either of them.)
I agree with you directionally relative to where I think modern western culture lands. I do also think there are cases where I’m willing to say “yup, if you made that trade, you and your trading partner would be better off; no, I don’t think you should be allowed to do it”. Sometimes for collective-bargaining reasons, sometimes for other externalities reasons, sometimes for “this is too hard for the law to distinguish from other cases” reasons, maybe sometimes also for other reasons that I’m not thinking of now. The cases where I’m willing to say this vary depending on the surrounding economic circumstances.
I guess here I was thinking of “selling your child into a worse situation than the one they’re in now”, but I do admit that sometimes, selling them into indentured servitude might improve their situation.
...but even then, if they don’t want it, I think you should have a much higher bar for it than for selling yourself into indentured servitude.