There you go again…
Anddddddd? lol.
I’d suggest pointing out / highlighting Stephan Kinsella’s contribution / exchange added more value than the majority of what else has been posted.
Go cry me a river seriously.
And to think that you were wondering why people don’t give you the benefit of the doubt…
Thanks for the source, Conza. I’ll now address your quote-wall directly.
I certainly agree with Kinsella that a hypothetical slave who tries to run away, changes his mind, or disobeys an order has in no way committed aggression against his master. Indeed, I can’t imagine anyone - certainly no libertarian - who would argue otherwise, so I think it’s a moot point. That leaves the issue of whether the slave’s prior consent to be visited with violence under certain conditions (such as disobedience) is still valid if he changes his mind later.
Unfortunately, I think Kinsella misunderstands the issue there. Whether the slave is able to change his mind (and he clearly is able to) is irrelevant. A slavery contract doesn’t have to stipulate that a slave cannot (i.e. is physically unable to) change his mind, and any such stipulation would be absurd. But I don’t think that’s the point. As I see it, the point is whether the actions taken against the slave under certain conditions (e.g. disobedience) are legitimate. If the slave agreed to them beforehand in a binding contract, then whether he changes his mind later makes no difference. The same is the case for a loan contract, for example - the borrower can change his mind later on about paying off the loan, but the lender would still be considered to be within his rights to recover the money owed to him under the contract, by force if necessary.
When it comes to simply making a promise, i.e. saying “I promise to do X”, there’s no enforceability. It’s not legitimate for a guy to hit his girlfriend after she withdraws her prior promise to let him kiss her whenever he wants to. That’s because she didn’t give him any right to hit her in that event.
I certainly agree with you (and Rothbard, and Kinsella, etc.) that to enforce a promise would be to employ aggression - if it were even posible to enforce a promise.
Right, it depends on what’s considered to be a valid binding contract. Typical requirements include a written record of the agreement and absence of duress on all parties involved.
My point was to highlight how the phrase “enforce a promise” is nonsensical, if “enforce” is taken to mean “to obtain by force”. Unfortunately, the term “enforce” seems to be used with two different meanings in the modern vernacular. One is the “to obtain by force” meaning already given, and the other is “to inflict punishment in the case of disobedience”.
Okay, I think what he’s saying is that it’s impossible for someone to have the right to do something which is (currently) impossible to do. However, as rights exist solely within the mind, there’s nothing (in theory) stopping someone from believing he has the right to do something which is nevertheless (currently) impossible to do. For example, a person can believe he has the right to control someone else’s will. That doesn’t mean he’ll actually be able to do it. Again, this is a case of “is” and “ought” being orthogonal “dimensions”.
Essentially, then, the only way for Rothbard’s argument to logically follow is if one accepts the following premise: “It’s impossible for someone to have the right to do something which is (currently) impossible to do.”
I wrote a post earlier in this thread about the differences between indentured servitude and slavery. It seems that what you are describing here is more in line with indentured servitude, that if there is an exchange of title (such as in the case of loans), just because you change your mind doesn’t mean you can opt out of the contract. But this is entirely different from slavery. The most famous instances of indentured servitude were people having their passage over the Atlantic to America paid for, and then they were indentured servants for 7 years. This is an example of a contract between the two parties. There is an exchange of title. I am not convinced that the historical practice of indentured servitude was in line with libertarianism, but the principal of indentured servitude certainly is.
But slavery is involuntary by definition, and it requires aggression. Slavery is not compatible with libertarianism even in principle.
Right.
Well the written aspect of it is meant for accurate record keeping and to prove it to other people. Rothbard explains that the principal difference between a promise and a contract is the exchange of title.
Yes, I see your point.
Well, I think this is probably the main point. You cannot alienate your will. I suppose if it were possible to do it, then one could make contracts with the devil and sell their will to others. But the whole point is that this is not possible, and from what we know about the mind/brain/body, this will always remain impossible. I suppose something could come along to change that, but I strongly suspect that it is not the case.
Sure. You don’t have a right to fly unaided. You don’t have a right to breath underwater for 6 hours unaided. Etc. Theoretically, if it were possible, then sure. But it is not.
In that case, any and all “service contracts” are invalid contracts, as there’s no exchange of title. There may be a one-way transfer of title, in the case of paying for a service (as opposed to providing one service in exchange for another), but that’s as far as it goes. I don’t see where the service to be performed carries any title with it.
My point is that whether it’s actually possible for one to alienate his will has no necessary connection to whether one can believe (or does believe) that he has a right to someone else’s will. The former concerns “is” while the latter concerns “ought”.
I don’t consider a right to be the same as an ability. (A physical ability, that is.) So again, whether one is able to breathe underwater for 6 hours unaided (“is”) has no necessary connection to whether one can believe (or does believe) that he has a right to do so (“ought”).
What do you mean by “service contract”? I imagine you mean “exchange of a service”, but I did a quick search and apparently there are a few things it can mean.
Anyway, I think you mean in the case of building a house or a website. Let’s suppose I hire you to build a website for me for $2,000. Let’s keep it simple, and I pay you the entire sum up front. You then fail to deliver a website. Well, at the very least, you owe me $2,000 or a website. Perhaps there could be a case to be made for more if the contract stipulated that it needed to be done by a certain date or else. But the important part is that there was an exchange of title (the $2,000), even if that was the only exchange of title.
Well someone can feel free to believe he has a right to another’s will, but there is just no way he can ever actually exercise this right.
I agree with this for the most part. It is true that rights are not the same as abilities. But rights have to do with who can be said to have been acting in the right. If humans categorically cannot fly unaided, then it cannot be said that humans have a right to fly unaided. This particular action simply isn’t possible, so there can be no legal dispute about it. Therefore, there are no rights regarding unaided human flight.
But just to be clear, just because an action is possible, it does not mean that humans have a right to it. For example, most humans have the ability to harm other humans (there are some that physically cannot). But just because A can kill B does not mean that A has a right to do it. But it also means that A might have a right to do it. It all depends upon context. Who was acting in the right? If A aggressed and killed B, then it was murder and A had no right to kill B. But if it was in self-defense and it can be shown that A’s only course of action was to kill B, then he was in the right to do it.
But it makes no sense to talk of rights about actions that humans categorically cannot do. The disputes simply don’t arise. It makes no sense to talk about someone having a right to someone else’s will because he simply cannot ever exercise this so called “right”.
Sorry, I mean any contract where one or both sides agrees to provide a service rather than transfer property.
I don’t think there was an exchange of title, as you didn’t get any title from me. There was a one-way transfer of title involving the $2,000 you gave to me upfront.
What about a contract for, say, a massage? In that situation, there’s nothing delivered per se.
Believing someone has a right and actually performing the action that the right legitimizes are two different things.
It certainly can be said that humans have a right to fly unaided. Humans have a right to fly unaided. There, I said it.
As I see it, a right to do something simply means that any use of force that stops, or attempts to stop, someone from doing it is illegitimate. There doesn’t need to be a legal dispute for that to be the case.
Strictly speaking, it also means that humans don’t have a right to it. Rights and possibilities are independent of one another. Again, “is” vs. “ought”.
Maybe paraphrasing BloomJ31 will help here. I think it still makes sense (grammatically and logically speaking) to talk of rights about actions that are nevertheless impossible for humans to perform, because whether it’s possible for them to perform is irrelevant to whether one believes they (nevertheless) have rights to perform them. However, whether one believes he has a right to do something which is impossible for him to do is pretty much irrelevant, as he can’t actually do it.
Well I suppose then that they shouldn’t be valid legal contracts. I don’t see a problem with this so long as no title has been transferred.
You are correct. Rothbard calls it the Title-Transfer Theory of Contracts for a reason. My mistake.
I’m not sure I follow regarding the contract for a massage. If you pay for a massage and don’t receive one, then you have been stolen from. If you mean that you haven’t yet paid for a massage but have agreed to receive one in exchange for money, then it’s still only a promise.
This part of the conversation doesn’t make much sense unless we look at what’s rights are. Rights are just another way of saying who is in the right in any particular situation. For instance, if you have a right to free speech, what does that even mean? Where do you have this right? Well, there are different ways we can look at it - legal rights, just rights, and moral rights. These are all separate categories but depending upon someone’s worldview, they can either overlap or be entirely separate.
Let’s look at a possible exchange between a father and son:
Does the son have a moral right to insult his father? Maybe, his father did insult him first. Maybe not, someone might believe it is never moral to insult another. Does the son have a legal right to insult his father? Maybe. After all, if the son cannot be legally emancipated from the house (maybe the son is 11), then the father cannot throw him out. So in that sense, the son does have a legal right to insult his father. What if the son is 18? Then the father could throw his son out, in which case the son really does not have a legal right to insult his father in his father’s house. Now, what about just rights? Well, this depends upon an individual’s sense of justice, but as libertarians, we base our sense of justice on the NAP. As libertarians, we can say that the father has every right to evict his son, even at age 11.
So, when we look at the case of a son insulting his father, we have 3 different ways to decide who was acting in the right. But what happens when we look at claiming another’s will as your own? In what manner can we determine who is acting in the right? There is no way for you to actually possess another’s will, so there is no way for anyone to be acting rightfully in this situation. To say that you can rightfully possess another’s will is nonsense.
I see what you did there.
See above.
Right, that is why I said it had to do with the context of the situation:
Grammatically and logically, we can talk about humans performing impossible actions. In this way, it is different than talking about square circles, which we can only talk about grammatically. At best, we can only talk about the possibilities of who could be said to be acting rightfully in these hypothetical scenarios. In other words, given that we could actually transfer someone’s will to another, would those contracts be valid? Sure, why not?
But in the real world, it cannot be that anyone is acting rightfully in such a scenario.
Re: “Thanks for the source, Conza. I’ll now address your quote-wall directly.”
No worries. Here’s another then .
Re: “blah blah… As I see it, the point is whether the actions taken against the slave under certain conditions (e.g. disobedience) are legitimate. If the slave agreed to them beforehand in a binding contract, then whether he changes his mind later makes no difference.”
And what on earth makes it a binding contract? Wait for it… lolz.
- "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!"
Re: “The same is the case for a loan contract, for example - the borrower can change his mind later on about paying off the loan, but the lender would still be considered to be within his rights to recover the money owed to him under the contract, by force if necessary.”
Nope.
"In a loan contract, the creditor conveys title to money (the principal) to the debtor in exchange for a present agreement to a future
transfer of money (principal plus interest) from the debtor to the creditor. For example, Jim borrows $1000 now from Bank to be repaid in a year with $100 interest. Analyzed in terms of title transfers, Bank transfers title to $1000 of its money to Jim in the present, in exchange for (conditioned on) Jim contemporaneously agreeing to a title transfer to future property; and Jim’s future title transfer is executed in exchange for the contemporaneous $1000 title transfer.
“In other words a labor contract may be viewed as an exchange only economically, but not legally. Economically, the employer gives up title to money, in “exchange” for you performing some action. But legally, it’s not an exchange at all, it’s just a one-way transfer of title: a conditional transfer of future title to future money, conditioned on the occurrence of a certain event happening (namely: that the “employee” does a certain action). The performance of the action triggers the transfer of money from the employer, but the action is not literally “sold” because the employee did not “own” his labor, and the employer does not own it after it is performed. We have to stop thinking sloppily and overusing metaphors.”
“A contract in which payment is to be made for the performance of a service, such as an employment arrangement, is not an exchange of titles because the employee does not transfer any title. Although it may be referred to as an exchange of title for services, such a contract is better viewed as a unilateral, but conditional, future transfer of title to the monetary payment, conditioned upon the specified services being performed. That is, if you mow my lawn, then title to this gold coin transfers to you. Again, the transfer of title in this case is both expressly conditional and future-oriented. Title to the coin transfers only if the lawn is mowed, and I still own the coin.”
Stephan Kinsella, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract”
And in response to the inevitable:
Enforcement of Promises: pg 24.
“Although a variety of contractual arrangements can be constructed using conditional transfers of title, there would seem to be no way to compel someone to perform an agreed-upon action, such as a service. The only way to actually enforce a promise to perform a given action…”
And the section goes on to address your concern. However, I’ll cut straight to the conclusion for those who couldn’t be bothered learning about contract theory from a legitimate (libertarian) perspective:
“In sum, conditional title transfers can be used to provide for damages payable upon nonperformance of a promised service. This provides for almost the same type of enforcement mechanism used in modern legal systems, in which contracts are widely used and relied upon.”
What about an agreement that stipulates a monetary “penalty” if one party or the other fails to deliver his service as agreed upon? Something like “should X fail to render service Y within Z period of time, then A is entitled to recover $B from X”.
That’s okay. I thought Rothbard referred to transfer of title rather than exchange of title, but I was too lazy to look it up, lol.
My point was that a website can be represented in a persistent form. A massage can’t. So it’s hard (at least for me) to imagine how a massage can be considered property.
I think you mean to say that your definition for “rights” is “a way of saying who is in the right in any particular situation”. There’s no correct definition for the word “rights”.
I think my own definition for “rights” is similar to yours: “a claim that a particular action is legitimate”. But in this context, I’m not concerned with legal rights (i.e. rights which the government “gives” to “its” people), and I equate just rights with moral rights.
There are, in fact, an infinite number of ways to decide who was acting in the right. The distinctions between “legal rights”, “just rights”, and “moral rights” are arbitrary.
As I see it, to determine who is acting in the right depends on one or more premises concerning the legitimacy of different actions. But that in no way requires one to only make (and believe) claims of legitimacy about actions that are (currently) possible. Just because it’s (currently) impossible to possess another’s will doesn’t mean claiming that it’s nevertheless right to do so is nonsense. Certainly we can comprehend such a claim, even if it’s (currently) impossible to fulfill.
I wasn’t trolling, in case you suspect that.
Sorry, I meant to write “it also doesn’t mean that humans don’t have a right to it”. That is, A’s ability to kill B has no necessary bearing on whether anyone thinks A has or doesn’t have the right to kill B.
I’m sorry but, as far as I can tell, you’re once again trying to bridge the chasm between “is” and “ought”. External reality (that is, the reality outside of our minds) has nothing whatsoever to say about whether anyone is acting rightfully in any scenario.
That was part of the earlier quote-wall you posted, so I already read it. Do you agree that any valid contract is by definition binding? If so, then the only remaining issue is whether a slavery contract can be said to be a valid contract.
It seems that Mr. Kinsella doesn’t view a labor contract as even an economic exchange, given the quotations he puts around the word “exchange”. But I don’t see how this refutes my point about loan contracts. When discussing what constitutes a valid contract and the rights that parties to a contract can legitimately possess, we are in no way adopting a value-free or descriptive attitude. Our attitude is entirely normative. Economic considerations, then, are irrelevant. See below as well.
Just so you’re aware, snide language such as that you’re fond of using will not intimidate me in the slightest. I suggest you not expect otherwise.
Now then, I never said that I believe promises to be somehow enforceable - I’ve said the opposite. So I completely agree with the part of the quote that says “there would seem to be no way to compel someone to perform an agreed-upon action”. However, paying a certain amount of money within a certain period of time can be an agreed-upon action, and I think it’s easier to look at it that way rather than as a conditional future title or somesuch, which seems much more cumbersome. So if we look at it as an agreed-upon action (in a loan contract, for example), then there’s no way to compel payment. Obtaining the money owed by force does not constitute payment, as the latter requires the borrower to provide the money of his own free will. Thus it doesn’t constitute enforcement of a promise, which remains impossible.
Rothbard covers that in Property Rights and the Theory of Contracts:
There’s more, but this is the most relevant material from that chapter. I agree with him on this.
Well, it’s a service, and you may or may not be happy with the service you receive. But if you don’t receive it at all, then you most certainly have been stolen from. If you expected a truly wonderful massage and received a bad one, then I guess that’s tough luck. Don’t go back. Maybe if there is a way to show that some part of the contract had been broken, then you were stolen from, but barring that foresight, if you receive a service that you are unsatisfied with, that is tough luck. Do better research about masseuses next time.
Well, I think wikipedia hits the nail on the head:
If someone defines “rights” differently, then they are not talking about the same concept. Your definition that “a claim that a particular action is legitimate” is the same as mine, “who is acting in the right or rightfully”. If someone defines “rights” differently from this, then they are simply not talking about the same subject matter. Suppose someone says they have a right to healthcare. They are saying that if they take healthcare by force (or if someone takes it by force on their behalf), they would be acting rightfully. Of course, I disagree with the positive rights viewpoint, so I would say he is not acting rightfully, that he does not have a right to healthcare.
My view of moral rights does overlap a lot with my view of just rights, but I do separate the two because I do see differences on occasion. For example, I might say that it is immoral to lie and renege on promises, but I would also say that it is your just right to do so.
I don’t see any other possible distinctions. I’m pretty sure that legal rights, just rights, and moral rights cover all the possibilities. Could you provide an example of another category?
Okay, it’s nonsense in the sense that it isn’t true, but not in the sense that it is literally “non sense”. Before there were airplanes, no one had right of way in the sky. There were no property rights assigned to airplanes, who can own them, fly them, ride in them, etc. So, in ancient Rome, if someone claimed that he had right of way in the sky, that anyone who passed him when flying in the sky would have to move aside for him, it would be an absurd claim. The fact of the matter is that no one had right of way regarding the sky back then.
Sure, they could have say down and posed theoretical questions like “If there were devices that could make you fly, then who would have right of way?” But the fact of the matter is that no one can have been actually acting in any of these imaginary scenarios. No one in ancient Rome would have actually been flying with planes, so no one would have been acting at all, rightfully or wrongfully.
But there is an important difference between planes and wills. Even if there were no planes in ancient Rome, they could still come up with a theory of property rights that accounts for the property rights of planes and right of way in the sky. Murray Rothbard certainly demonstrated that it is possible to apply the NAP to all kinds of situations, many of which most people assumed it wasn’t possible (e.g. property rights regarding radiowaves). But the problem with the will is that it really is nontransferable.
We could say, supposing it is possible to actually transfer one’s will, would it then be a valid contract? Well, the will’s inalienability seems to be the only objection to it being a valid contract, so sure. And if we were to take it as a given that it is possible to alienate the will, then we could come up with all sorts of property rights regarding this fact.
But it is not a fact. The will is inalienable. And until such a time that it is possible to alienate it, any such contract regarding the alienability of the will is not valid. Anybody is free to imagine a scenario where it is possible and then come up with rights regarding such a scenario, but it has no impact upon who is acting rightfully in the real world.
Oh I didn’t think you were. 
Right, that’s what I had said in that paragraph. I’m also adding that if no one possesses a certain ability, then there are no rights at all regarding this nonexistent ability. No one can be acting rightfully in a situation regarding nonexistent abilities, as no one can even act in such a situation.
I don’t see how I’m even attempting to derive an ought from an is. I’m just saying that there are no rights regarding nonexistent possibilities.
I hate to derail in some way from the topic, so feel free to not respond to this if it is too much of a detur.
gotlucky, I really liked Rothbard quote above, where he talks about performance bonds. In my view, it’s a much valid contract addition. But then the IP issue hit me. Can’t movie creators, for example, state on the buying agreement that by buying this dvd you agree to not copy it, else, if proven guilty, you will have to pay, say, double of what you paid. Would this fit in the performance bond concept? Would it fit in the libertarian contract theory? I’m prone to think it is, but then again, once you buy the dvd, you are the full proprietor of the dvd. But, in Rothbard’s example, the actor is the full owner of his money as well, even though he agreed on giving his money if he did not show up. Any thoughts?
Rothbard first brings up the performance bond regarding the movie star and the theater owner. The reason the theater owner requires the movie star to sign a performance bond is otherwise the theater owner isn’t going to agree to the contract. He would be taking on too much risk if he didn’t require it. So the movie actor signs the bond so that he can get the contract, but now he has an incentive to follow through on the contract.
Why would anyone buying a dvd agree to a performance bond? Furthermore, all it would stop is maybe the first person who bought the dvd. Anyone who copied it after would have nothing to do with the contract. Performance bonds would have little to no effect as an IP alternative.
True, I agree. Thanks for clarifying that to me.
Sure, np.
You cannot alienate the will.
I agree. It is impossible to alienate the will.
No one else can possibly have the right to control your will. They physically cannot do it. There is just no way for someone else to possess the right to control your will.
I agree. No one can have the right to control your will because it is impossible for them to do so.
But slavery (voluntary or involuntary) has nothing to do with controlling another person’s will, which is impossible. Slavery has to do with controlling another person’s body, which is entirely possible.
“No one can have the right to control your will” is a claim about something being physically impossible.
“No one can have the right to control your body [i.e. own you as a slave]” is not a claim about something being physically impossible. So then, I presume it is an ethical claim. You are saying that no one should have the right to control another person’s body (own them as a slave). And my question is, why not? What ethical principle are you invoking in rejecting voluntary slavery?
I’m assuming it’s the non-aggression principle, but I fail to see how there’s any aggression involved in voluntary slavery.