How do contracts work?

[gotlucky]

@FlyingAxe

It seems that if promises are non-binding, then permissions can be non-binding (or non-permitting) as well. For instance, I invite you to sleep over in my house. I tell you that you can eat or drink anything you want. Then I give you a bill for my food, claiming that my permission was not really a transfer of property or a promise, and it was in general, “in the air”, while the food that you ate was really my property, and you caused me real damage.

Okay, so I know I posted these links to you in another thread already, but I really recommend that you read and digest them:

By forum member Clayton:

A Praxeological Account of Law

What Law is

I’ll try to answer your question here anyway though. So, you invite someone to your house and then tell him they can “eat or drink anything” he wants. If you were to try and charge him afterwards, he would not have to pay. Why? It has to do with social norms and expectations. It is not normal for someone to invite you into their home and offer you food and then expect payment. However, with restaurants it’s just the opposite. There is a norm that when you go to a restaurant, you pay for the food you order.

Obviously, if it became normal for people to charge guests to eat and drink in the host’s home, then your situation would hold. But, since it is not normal, your example does not work.