Your examples seem disanalogous to me. The key thing here is the claim that people have a lifelong obligation to their parents. Some kind of transactional “you received a bunch of upfront benefits and now have a lifelong debt”, and worse, often a debt that’s considered impossible to discharge
This is very different from an instantaneous obligation that applies to them at a specific time, or a universal moral obligation to not do harm to an entity regardless of your relationship with them, or an ongoing obligation that is contingent on having a certain status or privileges like residency or citizenship and goes away if you give those up/is gained if you acquire those privileges. Eg, I think that many of the obligations you list would not be considered by most to be obligations if someone who grew up in country A moves to country B—this makes sense if the obligations come from ongoing benefits of residency and no sense of its repaying childhood debt.
To me, residency seems analogous to eg still living with your parents. You are choosing to be in that situation, receive benefits, and have some obligations. There’s nothing immoral about moving out, and you have fewer/no obligations afterwards.
Good comment—I agree this is a meaningful distinction, though I don’t think it cuts as strongly as you do.
Firstly, I’m not sure where you are getting ‘impossible to discharge’ from. If you borrow $100, you would typically discharge that obligation by repaying $100 (plus interest). Similarly, if you believed in natalist obligations to parents, it seems logical that an obligation created by your parents investing say 19 years in raising you, could be discharged by through similar amount of investment.
Secondly, many of the obligations I mentioned cannot easily be avoided either. Moving to another country might get you out of paying taxes in one place, but you’ll probably have to pay them in the new place—and some countries like the US will continue to tax you even if you leave! Similarly national service is often based on citizenship, not residency, and obligations like decency and pond intervention cannot be discharged (though I guess you could choose to live in a location with few ponds and very buoyant children).
It’s even the case that many people seem to view leaving, and thereby escaping from location-based obligations, as immoral—see for example brain drain criticism, or criticism of fighting-age men for fleeing their country rather than defend it.
I don’t mean to take a strong stance here defending any particular one of these obligations. My point is just that a lot of people do believe in them.
Your examples seem disanalogous to me. The key thing here is the claim that people have a lifelong obligation to their parents. Some kind of transactional “you received a bunch of upfront benefits and now have a lifelong debt”, and worse, often a debt that’s considered impossible to discharge
This is very different from an instantaneous obligation that applies to them at a specific time, or a universal moral obligation to not do harm to an entity regardless of your relationship with them, or an ongoing obligation that is contingent on having a certain status or privileges like residency or citizenship and goes away if you give those up/is gained if you acquire those privileges. Eg, I think that many of the obligations you list would not be considered by most to be obligations if someone who grew up in country A moves to country B—this makes sense if the obligations come from ongoing benefits of residency and no sense of its repaying childhood debt.
To me, residency seems analogous to eg still living with your parents. You are choosing to be in that situation, receive benefits, and have some obligations. There’s nothing immoral about moving out, and you have fewer/no obligations afterwards.
Good comment—I agree this is a meaningful distinction, though I don’t think it cuts as strongly as you do.
Firstly, I’m not sure where you are getting ‘impossible to discharge’ from. If you borrow $100, you would typically discharge that obligation by repaying $100 (plus interest). Similarly, if you believed in natalist obligations to parents, it seems logical that an obligation created by your parents investing say 19 years in raising you, could be discharged by through similar amount of investment.
Secondly, many of the obligations I mentioned cannot easily be avoided either. Moving to another country might get you out of paying taxes in one place, but you’ll probably have to pay them in the new place—and some countries like the US will continue to tax you even if you leave! Similarly national service is often based on citizenship, not residency, and obligations like decency and pond intervention cannot be discharged (though I guess you could choose to live in a location with few ponds and very buoyant children).
It’s even the case that many people seem to view leaving, and thereby escaping from location-based obligations, as immoral—see for example brain drain criticism, or criticism of fighting-age men for fleeing their country rather than defend it.
I don’t mean to take a strong stance here defending any particular one of these obligations. My point is just that a lot of people do believe in them.