it’s a promise of consent but as we all know, promises aren’t enforceable, so if woman decides she doesn’t want sex, that’s it. Human will is always higher than paper. You can’t sell your will. Paper only makes a record of that will, so that the damages could be extracted if she fails to comply.
“I don’t care about property…”
What you’re actually saying is you don’t care about people or their free will.
“I just believe that contracts (that were not signed in duress) are voluntary by nature and thus should be enforceable, whatever the conditions of the contract are.”
Then either you can’t tell the difference between suing for damages and rape, or you can tell the difference and don’t care, in which case I would recommend a good psychoanalyist.
“Another insult, and you’ll be given a temp-ban, Birthday Pony.”
But of course. I wouldn’t want to reflect poorly on the civil nature of this community. And I understand how heavy the banhammer can be. It’s a good thing you don’t just let in thugs that will insult women and support rape with no cause. If we stay civil, we can let the civil misogynists take us from A to B in a logical manner.
I repeat my question. How can regulatory agencies in free society work if they can’t require contracts with physical punishment in case of failure?
- A contract that you can not enforce behind relevant power structures of sociological expectations is nothing but a piece of paper and an error of entrepreneurial judgement.
That said what’s all this talk of punishment? Is this a legal question or a moral one - you people seem to be confused. I am pretty sure I have now seen both terms used. Either case you speak nonsense, these things are practiced arts not science, logic, or anything like that.
And once again you are ignoring the fact that rape is by definition illegal, making any thought you had in this logical void , with these unreal people, in this non extant society even more frivolous. Of course I don’t know what universe you created, how the laws of physics work, or whatever - so anyhing is possible I guess.
- Why would you keep badgering someone who is obviously distressed by you? Is that civil?
Are you capable of at least seeing that you are bringing up a reactionary (and it is reactionary), generally repulsive (and hence uncivil), and non pressing (possibly even non extant) position to anything in Austrian science is a bit distressing - and capable of being counter productive to outside enquirers (such as BP)? Honestly. you would do just as good as bringing up conspiracies and Holocaust denial.
Even if you’re a contract or property absolutist, you could draw the line way before rape.
In the event of any contract being breached, the offending party can be taken to court and go through a process of arbitration that can result in the defense paying damages to the plantiff, in some form or another. I even find that position to mock any notion of free will or individual autonomy, but at least it doesn’t justify rape. At that, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen you argue in defense of rape, and that certainly says something about your priorities (and not to mention your respect for people, or possibly your respect for yourself). My guess is that your notion of a “free” society is not one that anyone other than rapists and other psychopaths would recognize as anywhere near ideal.
There is still something to be said about the less “hardcore” solution that doesn’t justify rape as still having only a fleeting notion of what free choice really is. It just looks like a good cop, bad cop game of theory, where at least such-and-such doesn’t justify rape. Although, to be fair, no one here has suggested as much, so maybe no one supports that.
That brings us to the position that the woman in this scenario could just walk away, unharmed with no reprecussion. I agree, but that position does make the foundation of the dominant philosophy here quite a bit shaky. Why the situation isn’t analogous to other contracts (such as labor contracts) where there is no property involved is something that has to be answered to, and why self-ownership is really an accurate description of one’s free will has to be answer to as well.
how can you differentiate between these two things is unknown… If we are talkin about free will as individual autonomy (the right to choose, decide what’s best for you etc.) then rape completely falls into that category, meaning that, anything, that mocks notion of individual autonomy justifies rape, murder and any other personal physical or emotional abuse. But I’d really be interested in your way to mock that 
It’s like being against murder but pro-war… a contradiction. Or like being agains theft but pro-taxes… you get my drift, i hope…
Well, that’s pretty much my point. Even if you have the same position, but instead would like to “punish” violations with a slap on the wrist instead of physical trauma, you’re not really getting the picture. Personally, I’d rather talk with someone with a disastrous theory that still finds rape repulsive, but from a theorhetical standpoint, it’s just cherry picking and playing nice.
Physical violence violating one’s property in himself is worse because without self-ownerhship, no rights to other property could exist. I don’t think you could say theft is worse than rape or murder because both are direct assaults on self-ownership, and self-ownership is a precondition for property. If you didn’t own yourself, then whatever you produced would not be yours, and if what you produced was not yours then it could not be stolen.
To say theft is worse than murder already establishes that you prefer to live rather than die because in order to be stolen from you must be alive. Without being alive, you could not own the property necessary for theft to be possible.
If someone said they valued not being stolen from greater than not being physically violated, it would be contradictory because in order to enjoy property in the first place you have to own yourself (thus not be physically violated), you must regard self-ownership as the highest value. If one did not value self-ownership above all, they could not value property itself (which is a result of self-ownership). Violations against self-ownership are ipso facto violations against any property that someone values. Violtating someone’s right to own themselves would be violating any other property that they own because if they did not own themselves, whatever property they possess would belong to someone else (whoever was the owner of the person).
To say theft is a greater violation of rights than physical violence on one’s own body is to deny the necessary condition for the ownership of property in the first place. If you value not having goods being stolen, you must value self-ownership above the goods themselves. Since murder and rape are attacks directly on the ownership of one’s own self, they are a greater violation of rights then the theft of any property that is a result of self-ownership.
“So here’s the issue: if you rule in favor of the thief’s argument, you either fail to make the victim whole according to how he values the item, or set yourself up in a position to try and claim that the value of the item is objective (trying to justify that it is “actually” worth less than what he values it at). If you rule in favor of the victim’s argument, you have an unworkable system (“I value everything that was stolen from me at $5 trillion”).”
Right. The issue is that there is no perfect solution. Someone could steal a paper clip from me that I would not sell for less than $5 trillion. It would certainly be a misfortune if someone stole an irreplaceable paper clip from me, but I don’t see how any legal system could logically figure out a way to compensate me or even determine how much I valued the stolen property. The point of the theory of punishment and proportionality is an attempt to deal with incidents of injustice as best as one can. It is the most rational, given that there is no perfect solution. No one except the victim knows what it will take to fully compensate him.
What this extra compensation should be it is impossible to say exactly, but that does not absolve any rational system of punishment—including the one that would apply in the libertarian society—from the problem of working it out as best one can. - Rothbard
Since no one answered my question yet, I’ll repeat it:
How can regulatory agencies in free society work if they can’t require contracts with physical punishment in case of failure?
Thanks.
Eugene, I did answer your question. Whether your solution or the alternative to physical trauma can be described as libertarian to any degree is questionable.
“Physical violence violating one’s property in himself is worse because without self-ownerhship, no rights to other property could exist.”
@wesker This is more of a remark on self-ownership alone than it is anything else. The idea of ‘property in yourself’ is probably what leads people to insane conclusions like ‘voluntary’ slavery. The marker of property is that it can be exchanged, traded, and more or less alienated, which is not something you can do to yourself. That the notion of a slave contract contradicts itself is not an argument against slave contracts, but also self-ownership as “property in one’s self.”
If by self-ownership you mean authority in yourself or individual autonomy, then the least signigicant question is if self-ownership is an accurate description, and the more relevant question is how control over yourself leads to alienable control over property.
How can regulatory agencies in free society work if they can’t require contracts with physical punishment in case of failure?
The same way a regulatory agency, or anything else along legal lines wouldn’t work - custom allows it to exist.
How many ways can people phrase that you simply are not asking proper questions, posing proper propositions, or constructing a logical form that one can actually apply to reality. Legalism is not science; reward, contract, and punishment have very little meaning in the void - and there is no way any of us can wrap our heads on how murder or whatever could be legal due to the nature of it’s definition. The phrase “To murder within contract” can only be seen as a contradiction of terms - and in it’s own nature gibberish.
Fun Fact: In terms of juriprudence…we can not say what punishment, contract, or rape are…but that they are.
oh, there are at least few ways (do not remember them all now). Ostracism is one of the peacful ways that I always advocate when have a chance, hehe. have you read Stef’s “Practical Anarchy” for example? It’s very easy to read and understandable, give it a try, it’s free. And there are much more books about how free society can enforce contracts without violence (I mean hear direct physical punishment or putting people in a cage).
Maik, let’s say I owe you 1 million dollars. In order to pay you I have to work all my life, which basically means I will be your slave for the rest of my life. How is that better than prison?
@BP - just curious, why do you think you can’t alienate the self?
@vive - are you suggesting Hoppe’s rights derivations are complete bunk?
Literally speaking, you simply can’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. At all times in all places you are the ultimate authority over your actions, thoughts, and emotions.
Technically true, but who says that you can’t sign the title to someone else? Just because someone steals my TV and flies over to some place in Zimbabwe doesn’t make him the rightful owner. He does have de-facto control over all that it will do, but it doesn’t mean that he is the jut owner.
Control is not the same as ownership. Look at LLCs for a quick examples.
Wheylous, you’ve touched on exactly my point.
Whatever it is that one has over themselves, it’s not ownership. Unlike a TV, humans are only able to perform an action, and answer to the consequeces of that action, by the command of one person: themselves. A TV can have mutlitple users. Nothing moves from the individual without their moving.
Whatever it is that one has over themselves, it’s not ownership.
I don’t see how this follows. I may own a pet fish without being able to fully control it. I may own a roomba without knowing how to program it.
And technically, people can be controlled by sticking electrodes in them. We can even read brain signals and use them to control prosthetic arms. So the ownership/control veil is fading even in practicality.
Until science reaches the point where people (and not their prosthetic counter parts) can actually be controlled, that’s a pretty lame example. That’s not to say that there aren’t very complex methods of control around, but that free will is something individuals always have, or it’s at the very least something that they should rightfully be able to exercise.