"Precisely. That´s why mere liberties to do as the children please if they can does not make them all free. Making children free requires proactively paying for children whose parents´ financial capabilities are limited and proactively assisting and caring for disabled children.

Now we're talking about the differences between negative rights and positive rights.

No negative right guarantees that someone will have the resources necessary to meet that right. Maybe the party who wants to leave truly has no friend in the world willing to put them up. I doubt it would happen much. But it would happen for some.

However the so-called positive rights forcing others to assist are also no guarantee that they will be there AND have costs that necessarily take away from something else, perverse incentives to resist paying those costs &tc.

I think we can all agree that the present foster care system is designed to be precisely the sort of proactive assistance you have in mind. And how has THAT turned out?

Once the State steps in and agencies and enforcers start coercing the "philanthropic" impulse and forcibly stolen monies start incentivizing those who are not actually interested in a child's welfare, we end up with the kinds of results we see all too often. Further, with all that kind of force brought to bear to "guarantee" an alternative place to go, can we really believe that the State and its agencies doing this would allow any child to choose the streets?

At the very least the demand that people step out of the way and let a child leave, even without any false guarantees, is a recognition of the fact that many children who have seen BOTH the parental ownership option AND the State's proactive solution have decided that they would rather forgo either than give up their agency.

The problem with positive rights is that they necessitate coercive measures and State intervention; and ultimately become subject to political concerns rather than the original good impulse that motivated them.

Promises that nobody will fall through the cracks never accomplish this. They just guarantee some of the very intrusions that negative rights protect against.

Making the freedom to leave dependent upon having a guaranteed place to land means that many will never be allowed to leave. If we placed this restriction upon abused adults nobody would tolerate it. "Honey, there are no beds at the Women's Shelter and you haven't found anyone who will vouch for you. so we'll have to return you to your rapist until you can come up with a plan we approve of."

Dante