Since there is some discussion of ‘self-ownership’ that always seems to pop up in these forums, here is my post on 'self-ownership: what kind?’ I find that nobody ever seems to specify what kind of ownership they even mean when they talk about self-ownership.
I lol’ed
“I reject any kind of mind/body dualism, I don’t believe there is a ghost in the machine.”
It has nothing to do with a ghost in the machine. It has to do with the fact that your “property” is smart, and can run away, and can fight back if you try to get it back, and that there is no one that will try to get the person back for you.
I think slave owners would hire PDAs that would go hunt down runaway slaves if the need arose. I mean that’s what I’d do.
Pardon if someone else already inquired about this, but is it possible to sell a future good? To be precise, is it possible to sell one’s future labour? Surely one can promise future goods, but they could still opt out and return any goods they had received previously, no?
The employment of future goods is often called production (though not always). The return to the employment of future goods = factor prices (rent, interest, wages). A wage earner can opt out of an employment contract if he so chooses. So again, to be clear, labor is a future good in itself, that is, it produces products which come to fruition in the future (another example would be a ticket to a Broadway show).
The entrepreneur or the firm transforms, over time, future goods into current goods, the same way that the ticket, over time, yields a current good.
Yes, the bad (and good) thing about freedom is that people will use it to do things we think they shouldn’t and that we find repugnant. Voluntary slave contracts would be allowed in a free market.
You see, this is why I have some trouble grasping the concept of a slave contract. Would it not essentially be a contract of perpetual employment, as opposed to a contract in which one sells their body? In the former case I fail to see much trouble in the existence of a slave contract, for one still reserves the right to demand reprisal for assaults against their person, i.e. An employer could not kill a perpetual employee, as they only have ownership over the person’s labor, not their body. In the latter case, the issue breaks done. Legally the employer would have the right to kill the slave, is not the slave his property afterall? The employer too would have the legal legitimacy to hire a third party to retrieve their property, should it attempt to steal itself (?).
Which two variations of the slave contract are we discussing?
P.S. Not to diverge the topic, but if one may sell their body via contract, are mothers the owners of their children’s bodies?
P.P.S. Thank you reminding me of the theory of wages (?) Esuric. It helped sort out what I was trying to put into words.
Ah yes, the infamous lame PDAs idea. First of all, there will not be so called PDAs in a free society. Second of all, the reason there won’t be is because the runaway would hire their own PDA to fight your PDA. No, I am sorry, but it would be up to you to go get your servant, not anyone else.
“The employer too would have the legal legitimacy to hire a third party to retrieve their property, should it attempt to steal itself (?).”
No. Contracts can be invalidated at any point by either party. And no, creditors are not always entitled to fully recoup all costs. If someone is stupid enough to pay someone a lump sum up front to have someone be their servant for the rest of the servants life, and the servant decides to terminate the contract and does not have any of the money left, the buyer of the servant loses it all.
Just as children are not owned by their parents’ despite being a product of thier labor, so too is one still the proper owner of one’s own self even if in the past you signed a document claiming otherwise. You had no more right to sign yourself away into slavery than you had the right to sign Joe into slavery.
Two totally different situations.
You cannot own your future body, your future self owns your future body by the natural facts of nature. Your future self has a unique connection with his body that you cannot sever and this unique connection supersedes any contracts that his past self may have made.
Here is a video I recently found on the subject:
Reasoning, if what you say is true, then NO contracts are legally binding. If your present self makes a contract that requires payment in the future, then when the time comes to pay up he can claim that he is under no such obligation (because his past self had no right to bind him to this agreement in the first place, because only the present self can make that decision). Do you retract your past statement or do you believe that no contracts are binding if they require payment in the future?
“Reasoning, if what you say is true than NO contracts are legally binding. If your present self makes a contract that requires payment in the future, then when the time comes to pay up he can claim that he is under no such obligation because his past self had no right to bind him to this agreement in the first place.”
I believe Rothbard has the answer you are looking for, as he often does:
"In contemporary America, outside the glaring exception of the armed forces, everyone has the right to quit his job regardless of whatever promise or “contract” he had previously incurred.3 Unfortunately, however, the courts, while refusing to compel specific personal performance of an employee agreement (in short, refusing to enslave the worker) do prohibit the worker from working at a similar task for another employer for the term of the agreement. If someone has signed an agreement to work as an engineer for ARAMCO for five years, and he then quits the job, he is prohibited by the courts from working for a similar employer for the remainder of the five years. It should now be clear that this prohibited employment is only one step removed from direct compulsory slavery, and that it should be completely impermissible in a libertarian society.
Have the employers, then, no recourse against the mind changer? Of course they do. They can, if they wish, voluntarily agree to blacklist the errant worker, and refuse to employ him. That is perfectly within their rights in a free society; what is not within their rights is to use violence to prevent him from working voluntarily for someone else. One more recourse would be permissible. Suppose that Smith, when making his agreement for lifelong voluntary obedience to the Jones Corporation, receives in exchange $1,000,000 in payment for these expected future services. Clearly, then, the Jones Corporation had transferred title to the $1,000,000 not absolutely, but conditionally on his performance of lifelong service. Smith has the absolute right to change his mind, but he no longer has the right to keep the $1,000,000. If he does so, he is a thief of the Jones Corporation’s property; he must, therefore, be forced to return the $1,000,000 plus interest. For, of course, the title to the money was, and remains, alienable."
“I believe Rothbard has the answer you are looking for, as he often does”
And he’s wrong on the slave contract issue. Just as he was on intellectual property.
"You cannot own your future body, your future self own’s your future body "
I was going to reply to this, but by the time my reply is posted you will have disappeared and I don’t want your future self to know what we were talking about.