“But it doesn’t make sense to simply presume that any slaveholder waving a slave-contract actually has rightful ownership of his slaves”
Like any contracts, there are going to be questions about what “really happned”. I still don’t see this as a unique problem for slave contracts.
A slave is involuntary servitude. How does one voluntarily enter into involuntary servitiude?
No, there is no such thing as a voluntary slave contract.
Actually I defined slavery above correctly. This type of semantic trick is a failure.
Besides a contract between two parties, I could in re (judicial action not between two or more disputants) make it known that the first comer can do with me as he pleases. My juridical status is then similar to an animal or rock.
What those who deny total commodification are doing is saying their is a limit to how much one owns themself. The only legitimate boundary to a willing person’s actions is where those actions affect other people and their property. These are the societal boundaries of order.
One legal tradition from the days of illegitimate, involuntary slavery that would still be valid, should anyone even try voluntary slavery contracts, is that the slavemaster would assume responsibility for his slave’s actions. This would be another reason to suspect that nobody would even do this were it legal.
I would definitely own slaves if it were legal. Probably females.
Why take on all that responsibility when you could just get a new hooker every day?
I dunno, I guess it depends on the cost. If the girls were cheap, why not just own them? It’s like going to Blockbuster. If you really like the game, why not buy it?
And there’s the answer to the why libertarians are a bunch of white guys thread.
It highlights the credibility problem that populist liberalism faces with the mainstream public - odds are that people who are “opposed” to government are not so much opposed to any government whatever as they are opposed to any government they’re not running. This is why it is so important to highlight that liberty is not an absence of law, it is an absence of a dual-law system where some people are subject to different laws than other people.
Clayton -
There is a built-in conflict of interests. If you sue me and I’m too poor to hire a lawyer, I might get screwed over. That’s life and just one of many ways in which life sucks. But if you’re the reason I’m too poor to hire a lawyer, then there is a conceptual problem with the whole situation. You are representing both sides of the dispute, that is, there is no dispute and cannot be any dispute. Saying that this is as it ought to be is equivalent to saying that the only resolution to false enslavement should be violence which seems obviously false to me. To say that this is equivalent to any other contractual dispute is simply false.
Clayton -
I would definitely own slaves if it were legal. Probably females.
Haha. Seconded.
I wouldn’t just have black slaves. I’d be an equal opportunity slave owner. I bet there’d be plenty of people from any number of different races that would own slaves if it were legal.
Ignore white guilt objections. Every single race has and/or is currently engaged in slavery. It’s just no longer economically viable or preferable on the scale & scope it once was.
Although I have to admit, democracy is proving to be quite the reinvention of slavery, especially under the guise of “humanism” (which ironically veers into totalitarian territory quite frequently).
As for the voluntary slavery, I think very little people would find this workable. At best, a form of indentured servitude maybe, but even in a state-society, one could easily find better opportunities without resorting to being a slave.
The point is that the option should not be “humanistically” enforced against, if a given individual might find such an arrangement to their benefit.
For instance, the homeless mentally challenged (or even just plain homeless) might greatly benefit from such a relationship if they have explored other options or have no other options.
But again, I do not forsee market forces ever favoring slavery again, unless at some point someone hits the red button & we are sent back a few hundred or a thousand or so years due to rebuilding in the aftermath.
The majority of women in this country are currently tied up in a voluntary slave contract; it’s called marriage. Women sell their bodies to men in exchange for financial security. It’s the oldest contractual relationship.
LOL
Slavery destroys the labour market’s flexiblity, because it is the ultimate long-run rigid price-fixing contract (this case, concerning wage and occupation).
Proof:
Here’s a Mises style utilitarian arguement. Slavery is against free market because it causes increasing rigidity in wage prices, with all the problems for the information allocating role of the market.
There is no such thing as unemployment in a slave-owning society, but neither is there a flexable labour market where wages dictate what industry should have more people allocated to it.
Slavery is not in anyone’s interests, unless you want a stagnationist society with huge business cycles.
Any land-lease contract creating a basis for a free market customary law would require agreement against slavery contracts in the same way it would require people not to form a communist government if they decide to.
Edite: Oh; and marriage is not slavery. There is divorce. And so on.
All contracts can be broken. There is a penalty, but the same is true for divorce (usually costs the man 50% of his wealth).
It is a contradiction. A person cannot own anything if he does not own himself. There is no “someone” who could own “something” if that someone does not own himself. It is already physically impossible: there would be no means to exercise property ownership if there is no means to exercise action.
This is visible by the types of slavery used in history: (almost) pure slavery in ancient ages meant no ownership for the slave, only positive rights. Serfdom had limited slave obligations and limited ownership.
So in effect, for “slavery” to be excgange and the would be slave to retain capability to own anything, it would have to be wage labour of some degree, not slavery. Moving closer to slavery would take away the capability to own and thus not be exchange any more.
Not praxeologically wrong(which is nonsense in the first place), but not a category of exchange.
I didnt read the whole article but the would be example of slave exchange is not exchange. The would be slave would not gain ownership rights to anything through this, as such it would not be exchange. His child getting the cure would be an externality, not exchange in the praxeological sense.
Again, not exchange. Giving up the rights to the property that allows to exercise property rights means giving up capability for exchange, as property rights are a precondition for exchange.
Aren’t you the romantic.
What makes you think you can’t? Go to BDSM/TPE forums, instead of here, though…
Esuric replied on Sat, May 1 2010 8:56 AM
The majority of women in this country are currently tied up in a voluntary slave contract; it’s called marriage. Women sell their bodies to men in exchange for financial security. It’s the oldest contractual relationship.
haha, the best comment, so far
As such, it is no contract at all.
That is how contracts work. Of course, if one breaks his word too often, who will enter into contracts with you anymore?