I had these two quotes in mind, which you did not address in your post to Conza88:
But the slave has not committed aggression, so (b) is not a possible justification. Some alienabilists disingenuously argue that it IS “aggression” since the master owns the slave’s body, so it’s trespass (aggression) for the slave to use the master’s property (the slave’s body) in ways the owner (master) does not consent to. This argument is disingenuous because it is question-begging; it presupposes the legitimacy of body-alienability, in order to prove it. So this does not fly . I will say that I get very tired of people who engage in question-begging arguments. They do this all the time in IP – where they label an act of copying “stealing” in order to show that what was “stolen” must have been ownable property. Horrible reasoning. I hope you don’t engage in this kind of dishonest trick.
As for (a); clearly the slave who tries to run away does NOT consent to the force the master wants to apply to him. The only way the alienabilist can get around this is to say that the PREVIOUS consent the slave gave (say, a week before) is still somehow applicable, i.e. that the slave cannot change his mind. Why not? because … well … because … well … because the slavery contract was binding! So we see, yet again, the sneaky and dishonest resort to question-begging; slavery contracts are binding because they are binding . Neat trick, that!
Maybe both sides are question begging: I assume one cannot alienate the body, and you assume one can. But I think Kinsella puts forth very good arguments as to why it is not question begging to assume inalienability, though he does say one can alienate rights in the case of aggression. It seems that not all anti-voluntary-slavery libertarians have the same arguments:
I think a careful reading of Rothbard shows that his view does not rest on “impossibility” (as I used to think). Instead, I think Rothbard was not taling about the case of commmission of crime, but only the narrow context of a would-be voluntary slave who has not committed aggression. Rothbard notes that it is impossible for the slave to get rid of his will, and “therefore” the promise to be a slave is not binding, i.e. his body is not alienable. I think what Rothbard was getting at is this: in the normal, default situation, each person IS a selfowner BECAUSE he has a will: i.e., a direct control over his body. THis direct control is the natural position, and gives the person a better claim to his body than anyone else. Thati s WHY he is a selfowner. Hoppe later makes this argument explicitly: the reason we are slef-owners is that each person has a unique and direct connection to his body: his direct control over it–or, as Rothbard says, his will. Now Rothbard is implicitly recognizing that the slave who promises to be slave still has his will, as he did not literally alienate it. Therefore, he still has the best link to his body, and thus he is still its owner. Now it is true that iti s possible for someone to alienate their rights to their body, despite still having a will: by committing aggression. When you commit aggression you overcome the default presumption that you have the best right to control your body; now your victim has a better right to your body, despite your having the direct link to and direct control over it. But the point is the woudl-be voluntary slave never did commit aggression, so for him, he is able to change his mind.
But anyway, I’m curious as to what you think about Kinsella’s paper, as his argument is still different from this one here.