In response to Cohen’s argument for Parent Licenses summarized in Adam Gurri essay
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as:
“Because children don’t have the power to pick who their parents are, and there’s no similar competitive mechanism to make sure they’re more likely to end up with good parents, he argues that parenting should be licensed for the sake of children’s safety.”
Martin Brock replied:
“A state is a monopoly definitively; therefore, no competitive mechanism makes sure that a child ends up with a good state either, and every child subject to a bad state suffers the bad state while only the child subject to a bad parent suffers the parent.
So a consequentialist must ask, “What’s more likely? That a randomly selected child is subject to bad parents or that the child is subject to a bad state?”