More Anarcho-capitalism reductio's

Economics Political Theory
1

Ok, I have more anarchy reductio ad absurdum’s I was wondering if you guys had answers to…

Let’s say there’s a society based upon contracts a la Chaos Theory.

Now, imagine a crazy billionaire opens a store and on the entrance of the store he has a typical contract stating, "By entering this establishment you hereby agree to not steal, kill me, blah blah blah… Then at the very end of the contract it says in small print I hearby reserve the right to extinguish your life forces for no reason whatsoever if you enter this building.

So, a person aged 40 walks up to the front of the building. This person has an IQ of 85. They are smart enough to live on their own and fend for themselves and thus have the capacity for self-ownership (unlike children if that’s your position).

Before entering the builing, the person reads the contract but when they get to the end they are confused by the terminology “extinguish your life forces.” Curious as to this provision of the contract, the person walks inside to inquire about it and is shot in the face with a shotgun.

Our sadistic billionaire had been waiting three months for this moment. No one else would come in the store because of what the contract said, but that was ok because the billionaire had plenty of money to fund the small business for a few years while he waited every day from open to close.

Now, my intuition tells me that the crazy billionaire deserves to be punished. However, a market anarchist society that is run by the libertarian credo can do nothing because of what the contract said on the entrance, that is, by all accounts the person seemingly voluntarily agreed to the conditions set forth. In fact, the survailence video that caught the act on tape shows the person standing at the front of the store and reading the contract. Since you cannot read their thoughts, there is no proof that he didn’t voluntarily agree to the conditions. Only government could look at the video and charge the crazy billioniare with a crime after looking at the survailence video of the person being shot for nothing. Therefore, we need a minarchist government.

Ok, I’ve already thought of something you guys are going to say. You’re going to say that this event will be very rare and we shouldn’t have a state just to make sure we can punish people for a once in while occurance. That the non-existance of the state outweighs the benefits of punishing crazy billionaires.

But wait, the crazy billionaires have a much grander vision.

A consortioum of crazy billionaires devolope a plan in which they want to kill as many people as they can in a completely legal way. Here’s what they come up with:

The billionaires are the head of a number of sucessful fast food chains, numbering over 12,000 locations nationwide. All their businesses have typical contracts stating, “By entering this establishment you hereby agree not to kill, steal, cause distruptions, ect…” But at the end of the contract it says, “This notice is subject to change.”

Over the years the contract never really changes, and if it does always in ways in which are considered to be improvements for the consumer, but this happens seldomly. All the patrons of the fast food resturants around the country come to expect the contract posted by the door to be reasonable and not have any fine print that may aflict them with an odd provision like the one that the poor person with an 85 IQ had stumbled into.

But then, one early morning before opening, the contract changes. It now states in fine print, “We can kill you.”

So, one morning, as the regular patrons come in for their usual cup of coffee, the moment they enter the door they fall through a trap door and into a pit of spikes. To bad for them they didn’t stop to read the contract, but after all who’s going to stop and read the contract every single time? That would get a little ridiculous.

How can they keep this up before someone catches on? 10, 20 people? After all, in the earl morning people kind of just trickle in, so they may not get caught for a while. Surely they can get a few.

Let’s say this is happening at all the stores. Even if each store only traps 5 patrons, thats 60,000 people killed.

What can the libertarian do? They all agreed to the contract by entering the builing, and the contract has said from the beginning that it can change.

The billionaires don’t care if you make them social pariahs and refuse to do business with them from now on. They’ve built up a mighty warchest of items that they can use to survive on their private island for many years to come.

Only government can make sense out of the fact that you shouldn’t be able to kill someone just because they walked into your building without forcing their way in, or looking like they are about to attack you. The person who asserts that all law should be based upon contracts cannot.

2

“Absurdum” being the operative word. Please tell me this is a joke!?

3

He doesn’t understand very simple concepts like, “fraud” and “initiation of force”. Both of which make the stupid arguements presented in his “contracts” invalid.

4

A proper reductio ad absurdum has to logically follow a principle to an absurd conclusion. You can’t do a reductio ad absurdum of libertarian principles by first bastardizing said principles. Even in a case of defending one’s person or property, there is a principle of proportionality - you can’t simply kill someone for trespass if lesser measures would suffice to remedy the situation. In the given scenario, simply asking the obviously confused gentleman to leave the premises would almost certainly be adequate; therefore “extinguising his life” is a violation of his own right of self-ownership.

In the case of this supposed “contract,” it would seem there is obvious intent to deceive, making a pretense of inviting people into the establishment while attempting to disguise murderous intent. I doubt that many companies providing justice services in an anarchistic market would consider a contract in which a party’s life is to be forfeited to be legitimate and binding without explicit consent, not merely implicit or assumed. It seems most likely that this sort of thing would be considered both fraud and murder.

Nice try, but not even close.

5

Now wait a minute gentleman, whenever your reading philosophy don’t you love it when they come up with the silliest hypothetical situations to show that some concept is false because there is a possible world in which there are conditions for which it does not apply? Gettier situations are especially like this.

After all, who would think that someone would erect fake barns along the road, and then you would just happen to point to the one real one and proclaim it a nice barn, thus satisfying the traditional necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge but yet lack it? Pure silliness, but still useful!

waywardwayfarer, there is no such thing as an objective principle of proportionality in an anarchist society. There’s only one principle in libertarianism: It’s only ok to use force in self-defense of property rights. If a contract says that I’ll kill you for sneezing on my property then that’s what it says. You just don’t go on the property if you don’t like it. The best that you can say about a principle of proportionality is that the market would select for a justice service that gives punishments that fit the crime according to the values of consumers, and that most contracts will not specify a punishment but will instead refer to said justice service.

However, any conditions in a voluntary contract, no matter how perverse, are legitimately allowable according in a anarchist-libertarian world.

Is the changing of the contract in my scenario fraud? Why do you think it would be if the contract always said, “Please make sure you are familiar with the contents of this notice. This notice is subject to change at any time. Any harm from the failure to read the contents of this notice are not the responsibility of the owner of the property. Thank You.”

It seems to me that in an anarchist society, people would start to get comfortable with the contracts, and not really read them anymore. Kind of like when you install new software and just click “yes i agree to the terms and conditions,” without really reading them. This will leave open opportunities like the one I came up with.

6

No, I don’t love it.

Hmmm, seems that, in “For A New Liberty”, Rothbard said that a crime is committed (in which case self-defense of property would apply) when a, “violent invasion of someone else’s person or property” occurs. Nothing about sneezing. Nothing about being able to use fraud as a means of initiating force.

The use of force is only legitimate in self defense. Any contract that violates that principle is not legit. Any “fine print” that gets someone to waive basic rights is not legit. It is an act of fraud for sure and probably would be seen as an act of aggression.

Maybe.

I don’t do that.

C- at best.

7

IrishOutlaw, is assisted suicide un-libertarian? Is beating someone because they derive sexual pleasure un-libertarian if they give you permission? I say no, and no. Therefore, if you give someone permission to kill you for sneezing on their property, there is no violation.

Also, do you really read the terms and conditions when you install software? You’ve got to be the only person in the whole world that does that.

8

Assisted being the key word? You do understand the concept of “consent”, right?

Once again, we are talking about a consentual act. Your examples are more akin to rape.

Again, did you consent to it, or was the “permission” aquired through fraud?

Yes I do. How many viruses do you “allow” them to put on your computer by not reading them? Do you know? Of course, I guess someone installing a trojan into their software and using the information they get from your computer to access other personal accounts you might have is perfectly legit to you. As long as you press the “I Accept” button, right? I mean, if they find banking information on your computer and empty your account, you would be fine with that, wouldn’t you? You did push the button after all.

Could be, doesn’t matter to me if I am or not. Of course, if you check the box that says you have read them, and you hit the button that says “Accept”, but you didn’t read them, wouldn’t that be committing an act of fraud? Hmmmmmmm, libertarians are opposed to fraud.

Gonna have to drop it to a D.

9

Does it make you feel big and manly to insult me? Can you feel your brain swelling as it grows larger and larger because you are of such immaculate intelligence? Your not my teacher and I don’t need you talking down to me as if I’m a child - grading me.

If you offer defeaters to my arguments, I have no problem conceding defeat. I have more than once on this board already. It’s called intellectual humility. But you don’t need humility, do you? Why have humility when your always right.

I apologize for my ingnorance. You know, perhaps you are just born of better stock than I. Intelligence after all, is partially determined by genetics. Perhaps I cannot help that I am wrong so often? Did that ever occur to you? That I am sincere, but unable to to muster much in terms of true belief? Does that not give you any pity for me at all?

10

Non sequitur. More appropriately, the billionaire in committing harm cannot consistently argue against being punished (see Kinsella’s estoppel approach); it is incumbent on him/her to prove that no such harm took place should they be accused.

I agree largely with IrishOutlaw, but even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have to concede your argument - one might say why did you walk into the store in the first place? As IrishOutlaw said it is fraud, but in the event that it wasn’t, your reductio proves absolutely nothing.

11

So every time you fail at something, people are picking on you? I didn’t know you were a fragile little flower that needed to be protected from stringent disagreements, I will keep that in mind. Sorry.

I am not always right. But I don’t post things looking for an argument either. Its ok to be wrong, less OK to try to hammer inconsistency into an argument against something I am as capable of finding answers to as anyone else though.

Apology accepted.

No, but maybe it should have. It would be fairly inconsistent with these types of posts though, maybe your an exception.

I usually reserve pity for those that are incapable of doing something, not for those that are capable but take the easier softer way.

But now that I know your fragile sensibilities, I will not grade your posts anymore. It gets late, I get mean, cranky and intolerant.

12

What I really can’t understand is your apparent definition of “voluntary.” In order for a contract to be voluntary, both parties must understand and consent to the provisions of the contract. If someone is tricked by complex or convoluted wording, that’s fraudulent, not voluntary. Deception by playing upon a person’s reasonable expectations (for example, that the conditions of entering an open business will be relatively minor concerns, and that violating them will result in nothing more than being asked to leave the premises) is a type of fraud as well. Granted, there is sometimes a difficulty in determining intent to deceive, and in determining when someone was actually deceived or merely claiming to be in order to break a contract he no longer considers to be to his benefit, but that’s an issue of standards of evidence (see below.) Fraud is fraud, and always unacceptable and un-libertarian.

Since the body of common law in an anarchist society would be determined by the market, it’s quite probable that justice agencies would adopt standards of evidence to protect their customers from this sort of fraud. Most people have certain reasonable expectations about what various types of contracts will entail. A justice company might have a low standard of proof for contracts with very ordinary and common provisions (those that a person of ordinary faculties would naturally expect them to contain,) and those of relatively little consequence - just verbal consent or ticking the box might be enforceable. A contract containing radical departures from those reasonable expectations, or provisions of very great consequence might well require tangible proof that both parties were aware of the unusual clauses and their very explicit written consent in order to be considered voluntary and consensual. A contract for assisted suicide would be of the “great consequence” type, and one stipulating forfeiture of one’s life as a condition of entering a business that is ostensibly open to the public most certainly qualifies as both very unusual and of extreme consequence.

13

Maybe there are some contractualists who would say that any contract entered into voluntarily is enforceable, but I don’t think that AC is itself strictly contractualist. As Rothbard said, you cannot alienate your will. If you cannot reasonably enter into a slavery contract, you certainly can’t enter into a contract to be voluntarily killed. You may be able to get someone to assist in your suicide, but I don’t think it could be contractually enforced if your assistant backs out. Who would penalize someone for NOT killing someone else?

In any case, as the others have pointed out, your examples really involve involuntary consent, not voluntary consent. You say they have the appearance of voluntary consent, but reasonable investigation would not bear that out.

14

Now, I think such an objection is not so far out as some of the above defenders of anarchy have made it out to be. Hasn’t anyone ever heard of Walter Block’s “Murder Park”? However, where I think these potential situations fail is that you have to clearly and obviously alert people when something ridiculous like, “I can kill you without cause” is a rule on your property. If your crazy billionaires made it very clear to everyone entering their property that they are surrendering their rights while on the property, then I would see no problem with it. But using confusing or unclear language and making unnoticible additions to an already existing and sizable proclaimation on the property rules does not meet the requirement. Under a system where it must be clear and obvious what rights you surrender upon entering the property, it is just as consensual as a theatre which allows the yelling of “fire!” - something which I would hope all the anarchists join me in supporting the legality of?

15

Language is vague, so it is impossible to enforce correctly. Under contractualism, people would self censor “unreasonable” contracts, so I don’t think your case is a problem. This limits innovation and promotes corruption, since the “reasonableness” can be abused. We are abusing contracts all the time, we just don’t notice it. We are always forced to enforce an agreement without formal contracts.

16

If language is so ‘vague’ what is one to make of minarchist constitutions?

17

The real question is under what conditions should contracts should be interpreted literally? Contracts themselves are a means to an end; the end being the cooperation over the use of property. What the billionaire did was to purposely pervert the the nature of contracts in order to be able to murder someone legally. It may be that some court would hold the billionaire innocent (although I’d serious doubt that), but if so it does not call into question the philosophy of market anarchy (which relies on contracts as a means), but rather the court system that made such a judgment.

In fact, market anarchism guards against such absurd court decisions very well, since any such decision would be a sign to competitors that the court’s market share was ripe for the picking.

18

People would abuse contracts such as write a long terms & conditions so people do not have the incentive to read that long of a thing. Of course, near-perfect competition would createst short contracts.

Murder and property abuse is subjective. Every individual has different subjective opinions of what is considered murder. Therefore, to collectively compete on a definition of murder would be absurd.

19

I’d imagine if weird stuff like ‘billionaire killers’ started occuring there might emerge some sort of pre-emptive, ubiquitous contracts. People would join contracts en masse that covers all of the sorts of rights a sane person would expect to have (like a Bill of Rights) and they would be non-negotiable. (Any negotiable terms would require a certain procedure that would make the new terms clear) They would present their card or contract to anyone whose property they’re planning to enter. If the land/property owner doesn’t agree to this contract, the contract holder will not enter the premises. After a while, the business owners would either have to accept these pre-emptive contracts or go broke. Also, I’d imagine it would become popular for land owners to only sell properties to persons that respect such preemptive contracts or ‘bill of rights’ or risk being ostracized, boycotted, etc.

P.S. I think another thing that would help with general contracts is if contracts had proper names. Maybe the one which I mentioned above would be named, The Commonsense Contract. I guess you could start adding numbers to the names, but fraud could creep in. Maybe if they limited it to 1 change or set of changes per year. January 1st the, The Commonsense Contract 2007 would become, The Commonsense Contract 2008 and people would know they need to read it each year. But, simpler is almost always better.

20

I think his claim about language being “vague” falls under Mises’ claims about human behavior being uncertain.

Language is vague. You have to admit that was one thing the positivists definitely proved. See their contributions to Linguistics, such as Godel’s Incompleteness Thorem:

Once you fully understand the full scope of what Godel’s theorem means, then you can try to defend the idea that language is perfectly clear and can be objectively interpreted – an idea not held the majority of philosophers and mathematicians today.

Mises himself acknowledged that human behavior is not mechanistic. His followers frequently seem to forget this.

So, to say, “Under Anarchism X would happen” or “Under Minarchism X would happen,” is self-contradictory – not that I’m saying the same isn’t true of Statism. My point is simply that if you truly accept Austrian uncertainty, then that implies that the establishment of Anarchism and Minarchism doesn’t guarantee a particular society, because it is always made up of individuals who are free to act however they want.

If they decide individually to be mostly bastards and coerce eachother, Anarchism and Minarchism will break down because, to some degree, even Minarchism and Anarchism rely on the majority of people actually practicing contractualism and actually respecting property rights.

Political theories based strictly upon economics – which currently Minarchism and Anarcho-Capitalism seem to be – is largely a mistake because “human action” is not strictly economic. Mises understood the power of culture, hence he appreciated the work of Weber – at least from what I’ve read.

So, despite being a Libertarian, he still supported the Austrian monarchy, for instance, as a pragmatic defense against Nazism – even though the Austrian monarchy was in opposition to liberty as well.

Similarly, I see no contradiction in Minarchism, for Minarchists to see “Government” as a pragmatic defense against violation of property rights, even though government violates property rights themselves.

The organized, orderly theft of government in the form of taxation may in fact be preferable to the roving chaotic mobs of violent gangs that may emerge from Anarchism. Since human behavior is so uncertain, the precautionary principle seems to apply.