The owner still owns the land, but the land is involved in a contract. Like all contracts, such a contract can be broken, and the owner can restitute the other members of the contract for severing their ties.
If you agreed that you wouldn’t sell the property unless the purchaser agreed to certain terms, how does it not fall to you if you don’t follow through with that (ignoring for the moment enforceability).
I asked a question to ascertain your position. It seems clear from your reply that your answer is that the penalty applies to me. Fine - but then you’ll have to agree that it does not apply to the new owner, who can bring all the dogs he wants onto the land.
Not sure if I necessarily agree with that statement, but getting to that decision was the point of the thread. I guess that depends on the nature of the contract. Is it possible that the seller did not have the right to sell the property in violation of the contract, and it would then be like a thief who has no right to sell stolen property, but does so anyway? If so, it could be fraud and the purchaser does not have the right to occupy the property, right?
Under what circumstances does a person have no right to sell property? This brings us full circle to an earlier question - is this contract supposed to be a partial limitation on my ownership, or just on my actions? If it’s just a limit on my actions, I don’t see how my sale can be invalid. It’s different from the thief, because the thief doesn’t own what he sells. If you want it to be the same, then it must be that this contract is partially taking away ownership. I don’t see how to make sense of partial ownership, though.
Well, if it’s a limit on the action of selling it (in a certain way/to a certain person/whatever), then would such a sale be invalid? I guess I might be floating around partial ownership. I think maybe the only way the purchaser would not retain this property is if the seller was to actually lose the property as the penalty for violating a contract, however it was set up to ensure enforceability. In that way, he would no longer own the property so that he could sell it. Does that make sense?
little tip. if you are wondering whether something was a contract or a mere-promising, and you are further considering whether there would be a penalty for violating the contract/promise : you will need to say what property will have been stolen, by the party whom is in violation of the ‘deal’, from the party that delivered in good faith. If you find that you are unable to then this is a sign that it was a promise and not a contract. if you find that you are able then it indicates a contract. example.
if i promise to give you a car. and i dont. ever. i have not stolen a car from you. despite having violated my promise.
if i make a gift to you of a car. and i dont deliver it after i have gifted it to you. or for clarity sake, say i do deliver it, and you take it for a ride, but later i drive it away again. i have stolen a car from you, as there is a car that is yours that i am falsely holding.
what are you supposing in the case of the covenants that you consider?
Well, so far, I can’t think of how such a contract can be made where penalty of violation is loss of the property, but me not thinking of it doesn’t mean much. But I am curious about the $100 example. Because the two situations I described seem to be in the one case a mere promise, but in the second a proper contract - since I took your example of contract and simply applied it to two people. Yet they describe the same arrangement. First of all, am I correct there? Or am I missing something?
rewriting this:
- They each transfer to the other 100$ on condition that no dogs enter the others property in the course of a year.
that is all you would need. here there is no ‘breakage’ as such. there is performance or non performance. performance is no dogs, and money stays transferred. non performance, is the money must go back to the original holder, as otherwise he would have been stolen from, given that it is not possible to undo history and make it so retrospectively no dog did go on the property.
Of course, one might complain, that the verbal difference between {merely promising to deliver some economic good +plus+ merely promising to pay an "‘im sorry fine’ if one does not deliver on the first promise}, and {the present giving of one thing in exchange for another }, is only slight. but the response would be that there is an important difference between doing things, and saying that you will do things/speculating about what you will do. here the difference is critical.
Well, at the risk of being too ridiculous, is the following legitimate?
The two owners trade properties straight up, and then each give the other his newly owned property on the condition that no dogs enter that property. In the case of non performance, the property would go to the other party.
this sounds unobjectionable legally. it presupposes that people feel so strongly about not having dogs on their neighbours property and also that they feel so supremely confident that they wont, neither by neglect, nor misfortune, find a dog to momentarily alight on their property that they would be willing to risk losing a substantial property right…
also i wonder whether they now have incentive to get outside agents to send dogs to the others property, if the other slips up and admits, they get a property transferred back to them…
Ok, let’s say we have a contract saying that I won’t sell my property in some specific way, then I sell it in that specific way. I’d argue that what we had was an agreement about my conduct. I’ve violated that, and there’s consequences. That doesn’t make the sale invalid, though.
Yes, I think that’s correct, but I originally disagreed with you on whether or not such a contract was enforcible. I still say no.
Well, don’t get too involved with the specifics of the dog case. I completely agree it is ridiculous and wouldn’t happen, I am just using it to see if there can be a Rothbardian base to a kind of covenant like was talked about in the article. And if this case between two people holds, it is possible, if many people living nearby each other feel strongly enough about setting up some type of zoning rules, they could make such a contract. If there are X people, person 1 would give his property to person 2, person 2 give his property to person 3, person 3 to person 4… person X to person 1. And then in the reverse order they each give the previous owner’s property back to him under whatever conditions they want to set up, and then they have a covenant.
Of course, the giving then giving back of property would probably be set up to happen simultaneously so that no one tries to keep property given to him after step 1. And then another thing occurred to me. If person 1 violates the conditions, only person 2 acquires that property, so then it wouldn’t work, right? But I think each piece of property could be broken up into (X-1) pieces, where a piece is given to every other person involved, then given back conditionally, so that all members would have an interest in any one lot whose owner violated the contract. I felt like I was risking that the scenario would get too ridiculous, and it may have gotten there with that, if not sooner. However, if this is a legitimate contract, there is even a Rothbardian base for such a covenant, is there not?
If this is legitimate, then why isn’t a contract to pay a penalty for breaking a promise not legitimate since it could always be defined in such a roundabout way. I seem to remember in TEOL that Rothbard talks about an actor who merely agrees to show up at the opening of a movie at a theater is not liable for anything if he does not show up. But if he agrees to show up and signs a contract that he will pay X dollars if he does not, he is liable for X dollars if he does not show up. Do I remember that correctly? That seems to go against how you defined a proper Rothbard contract.
Is the above scenario not enforceable?
I forgot to pose a further question. What about time constraints. Is it valid to contract conditional ownership over all time (life)? So that, if at any point one violates the conditions, he forfeits the property. Or must there be a finite time?
Of course, this is now raising the question of how to deal with such a case when property is given by will upon owner’s death… Maybe I shouldn’t go there.
to bind the covenant one must have received an economic good which would be the forfeit for ‘breaking’ the covenant. you cant wave your hands and say just assume you received some property at the outset of the contract so when you fail the condition fails you have to give it back, if you didnt get the property at the outset…
I was exactly wrong on that, good call.
I’m glad you asked these questions since it has helped me clarify my own understanding (to myself)
Do you see anything wrong with a contract between the X number of people I laid out above? If not, can you enter into such a deal with no time limit? And if you can do that, does that bind you to find a buyer who agrees to the same conditions you agreed to in the contract if you sell?
i’ll be honest and say I didnt fully understand your thought experiment. i might need you to try and elucidate again.
looking at the relationship that obtains between person 1 and person X, it seems that you have
person 1 transfers his property away to person 2 on condition that person 2 live there with no dogs. such that if there was a dog, person 2 would lose the home and the home would go back to being person 1’s home. concurrently, as person 1 has otherwise no place to live, person X gives him a property to live in on condition of no dogs, similarly X lives in (what was formerly) X-1’s property with no dogs etc etc.
if person 2 gets a dog. he is homeless (assuming he has no other homes), and person 1 owns two properties assuming he remains dogless.
is that what you were describing? it seems bizarre… but not illegitimate. .. but bizarre.