@vive - are you suggesting Hoppe’s rights derivations are complete bunk?
Yes, at best it simply isn’t morality or anything but a language qualifier to either dispel nonsense or detect if someone is speaking “libertarian”. I don’t thibnk it even fits the technical definition of ethics or legal theory - it is simply a means to an end to achieve something…though I don’t feel like arguing that second point because I don’t really care if Hoppe is technically in an already useless category.
Look, it is best to dispel and cast off any and all talks about rights, morality, and the “right kind of legal theory”. It is drifting so far out into loopy territories any college prof, acadmation, liberal(which we are), philosopher, legal theorist, or whatever is going to look at you like your nuts, and rightfully so…because all of this stuff has been disproven 1000 different ways since Prothagoras and has been mainstream (and correct) thought for over 200 years. You can have no philosophy or theory hinge on such notions.
There is not a syllogism or category that exists that is pertent to reality, as we are outside of science. I can promise you this is for the best; Paul Krugman, Knight, Arrow, Hayek, Mises, Menger, Schumpeter, Milton Friedman, and on and on with liberal economists of various stripes would look at you like you were from the 9th floor of the hospital if you used this as the linchpin to your thinking.
Let’s just take the Misean and traditional liberal way and worry about radical empiricism in an inter-subjective world (which is Human Action) and look at the logical structures and consequences of the actions - concerning ourselves with what can and can not be said (interestingly this is all proably going to be a type of synonomous language for neodarwinian thought by default - so anyone looking for economics to fit into evolutionary structures already has it wrong and backwords - it should automatically alaign because that is just how the world “is”) . There is no profit or sense in creating empty universes and situations in your head that don’t exist…and there is certainly no good to come out of worrying about empty “buzz words” and sensationalism if one is here to learn about Austrian methods and ways of thinking with it’s application to science, and hence the real extant world.
@BP - you still need to provide reasoning behind control being the same thing as ownership. Just because I may be able to control your chainsaw while murdering you doesn’t mean that I own it.
@vive - “There is no profit or sense in creating … situations in your head that don’t exist”
“you still need to provide reasoning behind control being the same thing as ownership. Just because I may be able to control your chainsaw while murdering you doesn’t mean that I own it.”
I’m not saying that control is ownership. I’m saying that humans are not comparable to chainsaws.
I can write a novel about unicorns, or sell unicorn insurance. However a unicorn doesn’t fit into any language that science can support and if people said unicorns existed on a scientific biological level there is nothing in epistemology or ontology that would support the claim on any intersubjective level.
Aside from the fact that the concept of “work” is purely arbitrary, I will tell you this: I as a consumer in the economy can base my future decisions on how other people deal with the contracts they make – regardless of whether breaches of those contracts are enforced in any particular way.
In other words, if I see somebody violate a contract, I may choose to never do business with him nor any of his business associates nor with his family nor with his friends. I do not care about how the contract violation is handled. My future decision will be the same.
So, such a society may “work” simply by making contract violations publicly known. That could be enough. To tie this in with the OP, I would say that is how most people deal with such problems. I mean, who wants to date a person who has a neurotic track record of marrying for money and or having kids with people they do not love? People are ostracized based on their baggage whether they like it or not. It works for some.
What if I post a sign on my door saying that everyone who will be caught stealing will be shot. That would be an implicit contract with a physical punishment clause. Would that according to you be illegal?
However, if you put up that sign, I think it would work. It would work to warn people to stay away from you and never do business with you. How you would possibly be able to survive as a hermit, I can not imagine but being a hermit is not illegal.
God forbid you should actually shoot somebody! People would actually hear it and know for sure that they should stay away from you!
So on a free planet, one’s ability to rape and murder would only be limitied by his ability to move away from the localities that are about to ostracize him for it?
In a positive sense, that is correct, z. However, if you are asking in a normative sense – i.e., Is it morally correct for you to rape and murder and torture and pillage if your ability to move away etc. etc.? – I would of course say no.
I am not claiming it is morally correct behavior for a libertarian. All I am claiming is that it could work and I explained how it could work. The purpose of my response was to clue in to the Eugene how it might work whereby nobody initiates aggression even though this sign is still posted on this wacko’s front door.
From an analytical stand point, this wacko and his sign are essentially non-actors or inanimate objects. We would be wise to treat them as if they were wild animals. Thus, the latest question posted by Eugene is no more complicated than asking: What if I post a sign on my door saying that this house is not structurally sound. Everyone who enters will likely fall through the floor and die crashing to the basement. That would be an implicit contract with a physical punishment clause. Would that according to you be illegal?
A transfer of title in the future necessarily means that no transfer of title has occurred yet. So I fail to see how, under a contract where two parties agree to exchange both the property titles and the properties themselves in the future, that contract is enforceable in the absence of any transfer of ownership. Keep in mind that a transfer of ownership involves, at the very least, a transfer of title.
Regarding that thread, I think a good conclusion for it is in Clayton’s last post there:
The key thing to remember here is that possession does not necessarily entail ownership. In fact, possession is neither a necessary nor always a sufficient condition for it. But regardless, Clayton’s phrase “[i]f I give you the title to my car” refers to transfer of title in the present, not in the future.
With this in mind, a key innovation - which makes things like performance bonds possible - is the notion of the conditional title. Basically what a conditional title does is change the nature of the ownership, such that it falls to one party if a (simple or compound) condition is met and falls to the other party otherwise. So in the case of a performance bond, this is like saying “the ownership of this $100,000 is now such that the contractor owns it under successful completion of the contract and the contractee owns it otherwise”. Maybe a better way of expressing this is transformation of title rather than transfer of title.
Performance bonds are a very ancient concept, first attested around 2750 BC. They’re really just a form of surety bond. Another way of looking at surety bonds (including performance bonds) is that they’re essentially contract insurance. However, I think the word “bond” is instructive, because a bond is a debt obligation. Technically, people who enter into rental agreements often enter into performance bonds, except in that context they’re called “security deposits”.
Just because they’re old concepts it doesn’t mean they’re a good thing. I’m thinking of how to frame them in terms of property contract theory.
For example, I wonder whether you can make “conditional back contracts” (what I call them). As in “I will have given all of my possessions to my son if I die”, which goes back in time and creates a transfer or property in the past.
Don’t get me wrong - I wasn’t making an appeal to tradition. But you were wondering how they came about, so I thought I’d give you some information there.
I think a more accurate way to put it would be “My ownership of my property is now such that it will pass to my son in the event of my death.” So again we see that wills are just another form of conditional title.
@Euguene “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?”
It is likely that someone who is making a $1,000,000 transaction with you would make sure you had insurance. Your insurance would pay the victim, covering all or part of the cost. There are ways to encourage you to pay them back without violence.
If you owed someone one million dollars where no contract was made (theft or property damage), you would find it impossible to get insurance coverage without working out some sort of agreement to pay the victim back. Someone that is impossible to insure would effectively be ostracized since no one would have any guarantees when doing business with him.
“let’s say I owe you 1 million dollars.” and other extreme situations are irrelevant, just as life boat situations. Too little information on how you went in such huge debt, why I borrowed you 1 million at all and many other factors… Also, you have to put this situation in context. What society we are talking about, statism or market anarchism? Too many variables. I can assume, you would be required to re-pay the money in small steps in for example, 10 or 50 years. Slavery would be if I forced you to give all your earnings and kept you chained in my basement. Otherwise, it’s just voluntary debt, your personal failure at life. Bad for you.
Sure, I can forgive this debt, but I am not required to. Now, you are either responsible for your actions or you are not and wait for some higher authority to decide how this must be done.
