yes, true slavery by definition.
Slavery is defined as involuntary servitude to a person or persons. If it is voluntary then it is not slavery.
Actually, the applicable definition here is “right to punish in any way”.
Yeah, I’m going to disagree with Block on this one. Not all contracts are valid, any contract lacking the option to opt out isn’t valid and shouldn’t be upheld. Or as Jan Narveson put it " What we probably should say is that people may enslave themselves to others for as long as they want to, but beyond that, we should not uphold the contract." Now, maybe, if you could actually remove ones will from ones body it would be valid, but until then…
There has to be repercussions for squelching on one’s deals. None of these objections are new and all are covered in the paper I linked:
Further, the voluntary slave agreement is not a “mere” promise. Rather, it is a bona fide contract where consideration crosses hands; when it is abrogated, theft occurs. If you pay $1 million for the right to enslave me, and I spend it, work for a week at your plantation, change my mind, escape, and the forces of law and order refuse to turn me over to you, then I have in this manner stolen that amount of money as surely as if I broke into your vault and absconded with it. It is difficult to see why this commercial arrangement does not meet the specifications of Rothbard’s own “title transfer” theory of contracts.
So party A (you) has a say as to the content or validity of a voluntary contract between parties X and Y? By what justification? Isn’t that a slippery slope?
Further, the voluntary slave agreement is not a “mere” promise. Rather, it is a bona fide contract where consideration crosses hands; when it is abrogated, theft occurs. If you pay $1 million for the right to enslave me, and I spend it, work for a week at your plantation, change my mind, escape, and the forces of law and order refuse to turn me over to you, then I have in this manner stolen that amount of money as surely as if I broke into your vault and absconded with it. It is difficult to see why this commercial arrangement does not meet the specifications of Rothbard’s own “title transfer” theory of contracts.
That doesn’t equate opt out at all, if he has to pay back the money (+ interest/damages/etc…) then its valid, but then it wouldn’t be a slave contract.
So party A (you) has a say as to the content or validity of a voluntary contract between parties X and Y? By what justification? Isn’t that a slippery slope?
No more of a slippery slope than saying an assassination contract is valid. Party A (as in arbitrator!) obviously has a say in what contracts are valid and invalid.
Why would an opt-out clause be required for selling one’s body (permanently), but not an apple or a car? In each case a decision is made by the individual to transfer title to something which He has untrammeled ownership of. I could just as well regret my decision to sell my tasty apple or favorite car and have to resort to criminal action to “get my stuff back”, in the case of slavery “stuff” being freedom from punishment.
Also, how would you enforce any sort of indentured servitude or employment agreement without the concept of detrimental reliance on the part of the employer? If a contract specifies the right to demand specific performance on th epart of either party, such is known to both at the time of title transfer. A hypothetical voluntary slave contract could include such clauses.
Then there is the problem of involuntary but justified slavery when people are convicted of crimes. A convicted murderer is, in the same sense of “slavery” we are talking about, owned by the heir(s) of the victim.
That doesn’t equate opt out at all, if he has to pay back the money (+ interest/damages/etc…) then its valid, but then it wouldn’t be a slave contract.
It’d basically be fraud, wouldn’t it? Trying to sell something you could never in principle deliver upon.
Hm, good point. Gotta think about it more.
Why would an opt-out clause be required for selling one’s body (permanently), but not an apple or a car? In each case a decision is made by the individual to transfer title to something which He has untrammeled ownership of. I could just as well regret my decision to sell my tasty apple or favorite car and have to resort to criminal action to “get my stuff back”, in the case of slavery “stuff” being freedom from punishment.
Because you are selling your services, not simply your body, which cannot be transferred like a car or an apple.
Also, how would you enforce any sort of indentured servitude or employment agreement without the concept of detrimental reliance on the part of the employer? If a contract specifies the right to demand specific performance on th epart of either party, such is known to both at the time of title transfer. A hypothetical voluntary slave contract could include such clauses.
You can’t, thats the point. Contracts can be breached (its just costly), a contract that has a clause saying “if you breach this contract, you are still a slave” isn’t any more valid than a slave contract without said clause.
Then there is the problem of involuntary but justified slavery when people are convicted of crimes. A convicted murderer is, in the same sense of “slavery” we are talking about, owned by the heir(s) of the victim.
Who agreed to that?
You don’t have to attack anyone.
No, but the entrepreneur has to attack their servant if their servant tries to leave before the contract is up - otherwise it’s unenforcable.
Enforcement of contracts is not “aggression”. It is merely coercion. These are the voluntarist definitions, which you have to use in order to critique voluntarism. Otherwise you’re just erecting a straw man…
Enforcement of contracts is not “aggression”. It is merely coercion.
Exactly my point! Any extreme of aggression can be redefined as “not aggression” by voluntarism, as long as some piece of paper was signed or some word sounds made at some point in history.
My contention is that word sounds and pieces of paper in no way change people’s fundamental rights; that the person who waives rights in contract is committing fraud, and the person who enforces an unjust contract is committing aggression.
Shylock is an aggressor.
Increasing liberty means making conditions voluntary in the present tense, voluntary contract theory is only concerned with whether they were voluntary in the past tense.
Shylock is an aggressor.
how so? what was the nature of his act of aggression?
Demanding a pound of flesh. Trying to get someone’s foot off with a butcher’s knife is aggression whether or not you can point to a fancy piece of paper or some word sounds made in the past.
You should see Shrek IV, it does a really good send up of aggression via contract, the main villain is Rumplestiltskin.
Again this is all covered in Block’s essay… “Ownership” = “legitimate control”
Let us begin with self-ownership (in so doing, we will ignore the issues of whether contract is incompatible with property rights, and what justifies contracts). Gordon maintains that to give or sell yourself (not merely your physical property) to someone else would be a per se violation of self-ownership. I claim, very much to the contrary, that to forbid this and to fail to legally enforce such contracts would violate the rights of self-ownership of the person. If you really own something, whether an unimportant piece of your property (such as a car or house) or an important part of your property (such as your own person), then you should be able to sell or give it away. The extent to which you cannot do with yourself what you will is the extent to which you do not really own yourself.
We consider the charge that the voluntary slave case implies an abnegation of property rights in favor of contracts (in this discussion, we avoid the issue of whether this doctrine is false per se, and again the justification of contracts themselves). I have no disagreement with Gordon insofar as his main contention is concerned. Property rights are, indeed, logically prior to contract. Be the latter ever-so-important for libertarian theory, they must of necessity rest on the bedrock of property rights, for in engaging in commercial arrangements, one can legitimately only do so with one’s own property. To do so with that properly belonging to someone else is hardly compatible with the freedom philosophy.
But why is it thought that the voluntary slave contract transfers property which is not owned, or illegitimately owned? The slave is transferring the right to control himself; and who, if not this person himself, has the right to do so? Surely, there can be no one else with this right. There is no third party C in a position to protest that the sale of A to B is a violation of C’s rights.
See also the points on the body/will dichotomy and how our inability to transfer a “will” is, for the sake of a theory of commodification, but a technological or ontological consideration.
All scarce objects can be physically controlled. Neo-Lockean homesteading (or some other theory) assigns legitimacy to certain modes of coming into control, then the word “ownership” applies versus mere control. In a pseudo-libertarian legal schema which forbids this form of voluntary interaction, some 3rd party, C, has a legal claim to interfere in the affairs of A and B. By the law of the excluded middle, there is no true self-ownership in place, instead a subtle communism, with public control over certain forms of trade.
You can’t, thats the point. Contracts can be breached (its just costly), a contract that has a clause saying “if you breach this contract, you are still a slave” isn’t any more valid than a slave contract without said clause.
The problem with this is that such clauses are used in contracts, although less frequently. I might not care about the ability to command specific performance when I sign a contract with you to have you sing Happy Birthday to me. For one thing, it would be past my birthday by the time I tracked you down, for another you might sing the song, but poorly in an annoying falsetto. The remedy for breach of contract tends towards monetary remuneration for such reasons, but clauses enabling the demand of specific performance can be and are used throughout the history of common law.
Whatever we would call a fully voluntary contract of total slavery (right to punish in any way) is possible to be carried out. The terms do not involve some impossible soul-transfer. It is just the right to exert physical force on another’s body, to restrict their movement or to inflict pain in order to direct their actions.
Then there is the problem of involuntary but justified slavery when people are convicted of crimes. A convicted murderer is, in the same sense of “slavery” we are talking about, owned by the heir(s) of the victim.
Who agreed to that?
Does a murderer have to agree with his captors in order for them to punish him? Only the intersubjective justification amongst those holding a balance of power matter for whatever form of “justice” to be carried out. The subject of an aprioristic doctrine of right’s legal schema conforming to the nature of Man’s preferred pattern of societal cooperation, versus the incoherent legal doctrines stemming from such ideologies of divine right or democratic civil legislation, is another matter entirely.
Nonsense. Do you consider yourself a socialist (of some form)? Your username is that of a communist murderer.
Define “just contract”. Would it be a “just contract” for an employer to hire scabs at a correct market price, i.e. less than a striking union is willing to accept?
I’ve also been surprised when researching the middle ages, how much of the bad stuff comes from the idea of ‘rights as property.’
Hereditary serfdom was justified because the children or serfs were born serfs - freedom was something you inherited, like property. You could be “born free” or “born into serfdom.”
Likewise, “titles of nobility” were just that - titles to land. The king’s son would inherit the kingdom because the the king owned the land of the kingdom, and passed on the land to his son, and with it the right to create and set law, declare war and peace, etc. Political rights were just property to be inherited, like any other property.
It seems like it’s a slippery slope from thinking of rights as property - which can be waived by contract - to medieval serfdom.
Demanding a pound of flesh. Trying to get someone’s foot off with a butcher’s knife is aggression whether or not you can point to a fancy piece of pa??per or some word sounds made in the past.
demanding anything by merely pointing to a fancy piece of paper or some word sounds made in the past is legitimate because…?
I don’t see how shrek is relevant at all.
I speculate that a court would find that shylock is owed money in lieu of the (alienable) flesh that is denied him, and this would entail the seizure of assets and garnished wages etc.
It seems like it’s a slippery slope from thinking of rights as property - which can be waived by contract - to medieval serfdom.
afraid i dont see an argument, just an illusion…, something seems like something and it all seems pretty bad.
well, ok.
Well, you are arguing against some people who might claim to be defending ‘voluntarism’ but they are not. You are indeed correctly debunking their position, but you are not attacking real voluntarism, only a perverted version of it.
Yep.