Slavery?

[bloomj31]

@E. R. Olovetto

Like I said, it proves absolutely nothing dealing with the purpose of this thread. All types of property rights violations can be separated from “state action”, but it doesn’t follow that somehow libertarianism condones those actions.

I don’t think anyone is saying libertarianism condones slavery. At least I’m not.

[DD5]

@Benjamin

I’m sure I want to hold onto my argument*.* Do you want to tell me about how you fear an entrepreneur kidnapping you and forcing you to work for free somewhere you don’t speak the language?

And if he does speak the language? It’s OK?

Are you trying to argue against freedom because it cannot guarantee the complete elimination of any form of criminal activity? Calling a kidnapper an entrepreneur may gain you some points in the any of the Marxist forums out there where the the reality of scarcity is considered a market failure. Not here.

@Benjamin

The advantage of an airbag is that it can hit you in the face to prevent you from getting hit in the face.

The advantage of an airbag is that its perceived benefits outweigh the costs for most consumers.

[DD5]

@scineram

@Southern

Slavery in the South was the law, enforced by the government. Can you give us an example of slavery that was not supported by the state?

Eastern european sex slaves in western Europe.

Unbelievable! He points us to a thriving slave market in places where there is a sovereign State in order to prove that Slavery would exist in a Stateless world.

I think you and Benjamin should get to know each other. No offense Benjamin.

[E_R_Olovetto]

@bloomj31

@E. R. Olovetto

Like I said, it proves absolutely nothing dealing with the purpose of this thread. All types of property rights violations can be separated from “state action”, but it doesn’t follow that somehow libertarianism condones those actions.

I don’t think anyone is saying libertarianism condones slavery. At least I’m not.

Let me try again. Libertarianism does condone slavery, in its truest sense as I defined it, so long as it is voluntarily incurred. Benjamin just assumes that because such things are theoretically possible, i.e. legal in a libertarian society, that they would become prevalent. DD5 gave a great economic argument against that. Benjamin’s other problem is failing to separate “voluntary slavery” from state-endorsed slavery of the past. Anyone advertising a slave shop openly would be quickly raided.

[bloomj31]

@E. R. Olovetto

Let me try again. Libertarianism does condone slavery, in its truest sense as I defined it, so long as it is voluntarily incurred. Benjamin just assumes that because such things are theoretically possible, i.e. legal in a libertarian society, that they would become prevalent. DD5 gave a great economic argument against that. Benjamin’s other problem is failing to separate “voluntary slavery” from state-endorsed slavery of the past. Anyone advertising a slave shop openly would be quickly raided.

I see. Thanks for clarifying.

[Sage]

@Benjamin

If markets were totally free and unregulated, one type markets which would certainly emerge is slave markets.

Free markets presuppose a system of property rights. Slavery is a violation of property rights. Therefore, there cannot be such a thing as a free market in slavery.

@Benjamin

By slavery, I mean everything from contractual indentured servitude whereby one party voluntarily waives rights for a period of time in an unbreakable contract

Slavery contracts are fraudulent. See this.

[bloomj31]

@Sage

Free markets presuppose a system of property rights. Slavery is a violation of property rights. Therefore, there cannot be such a thing as a free market in slavery.

Who will stop it?

[E_R_Olovetto]

@Sage

@Benjamin

If markets were totally free and unregulated, one type markets which would certainly emerge is slave markets.

Free markets presuppose a system of property rights. Slavery is a violation of property rights. Therefore, there cannot be such a thing as a free market in slavery.

@Benjamin

By slavery, I mean everything from contractual indentured servitude whereby one party voluntarily waives rights for a period of time in an unbreakable contract

Slavery contracts are fraudulent. See this.

Long is incorrect on slavery. See Block’s Toward a Libertarian Theory of Inalienability: A Critique of Rothbard, Barnett, Gordon, Smith, Kinsella and Epstein.

[Southern]

@scineram

@Southern

Slavery in the South was the law, enforced by the government. Can you give us an example of slavery that was not supported by the state?

Eastern european sex slaves in western Europe.

How can that be? We give up our freedom and property to the state so things like this dont exist.

[Sage]

@E. R. Olovetto

Long is incorrect on slavery. See Block’s Toward a Libertarian Theory of Inalienability: A Critique of Rothbard, Barnett, Gordon, Smith, Kinsella and Epstein.

Block does not address the supply-side ethics argument for inalienability.

[Brainpolice]

Walter Block’s alienable rights position is a crock. His “voluntary slavery” devolves into something involuntary or plain old slavery the moment that the contract is perpetually violently enforced with no possibility of opt-out. So-called “voluntary slavery” is the same thing as the social contract in terms of constituting a legally/violently enforced positive obligation based on prior asquiescance to social coercion. Practically the only scenario in which I can imagine it arising is taking advantage of someone’s situation of desperation in order to bind them to your commands for the rest of their lives (which is an unreasonable demand for anyone to make, regaurdless of what your stinkin’ contract says).

But the fact of the matter is that all contracts should theoretically be breakable or non-perpetual and contingent. An individual’s life and liberty cannot be contracted away without reducing rights to meaninglessness. The perpetual enforcement of such a contract is defacto authoritarianism as soon as someone’s will changes and disassociation is barred, and the legal institutionalization of such obligations at the societal level becomes a defacto state.

[Caley_McKibbin]

There is no such thing as an unbreakable contract; therefore, no such thing as contractual slavery. if I sell myself to you for a million dollars and then flip you off five seconds later, the only thing I owe you is the return of the million dollars.

[krazy_kaju]

1. There are already slave markets, despite efforts by governments to stop it. Ever hear of “human trafficking?”

2. “Voluntary slavery” or “contractual slavery” is a contradiction of terms. There can be no such thing as a “voluntary slave.” Any contract can ultimately be broken, so someone could become a slave and then unbecome one just as quick. Thus, there would be no point of calling it slavery.

3. What makes you think that slavery would be legal in an anarchist society?

[E_R_Olovetto]

@Caley McKibbin

There is no such thing as an unbreakable contract; therefore, no such thing as contractual slavery. if I sell myself to you for a million dollars and then flip you off five seconds later, the only thing I owe you is the return of the million dollars.

I’ll give Sage and BP a better answer later, but I suggest that you guys actually read Block’s paper. Ideas like this are dealt with in the first few pages and I need to re-read it if people are actually taking issue with it. You need to realize the difference between will and body. That you can’t transfer your will may only be a technological issue, and not one that I would think will be overcome in the near future anyway, but you can transfer your body.

@Block

What about selling moral responsibility? The denial of this, too, is an attack, at least implicitly, on the doctrine of radical or total alienability. There are several ways to handle this criticism:

1. We need not be able to sell moral responsibility in order to justify voluntary slavery. Voluntary slave contracts have only to do with property rights over humans, not metaphysical issues. If the agents of law witness a master forcibly confining a slave to the plantation and/or whipping him, may they legitimately stop him? This is the real question involving voluntary slavery; matters of guilt, responsibility, etc., are only secondary at best.

2. We can sell moral responsibility. Suppose a mob boss buys moral responsibility from a hit man; the hit man sells his moral responsibility to the boss. This means that if the hit man gets caught for a crime, the boss will shoulder his responsibility. Sure enough, the hit man commits a crime and is caught, so the boss offers to pay the penalty forfeited by the hit man. There is no logical contradiction in this (of course, most bosses will not agree to carry through on the deal, but that is another matter). If he has agreed to bear the hit man’s responsibility, we can force the boss to do so.

But suppose the victim objects. He wants the perpetrator (the hit man) to pay for his crime, not someone else (the mob boss). Does the victim have this right? No. He may only demand to be paid what he is objectively owed; he may not compel specific performance from the guilty party. Suppose that the crime was murder, and that the payment for this crime was the life of the murderer. We happen to have a machine which will transfer the life out of the live murderer, and into the body of the dead victim, such that after the transfer, there will be an alive victim, and a dead murderer. If a life is a life is a life, that is, all lives given up in this way are of equal value, then the victim has no right to object to this substitution. On the other hand, if the hit man is 25 years old, and the boss 75, and what may be transferred is only unexpired life expectancy (such that the hit man can give the victim, say, 55 more years, while the boss can only give 5 more), then the victim certainly has a legitimate complaint. In this case, the sale of moral responsibility could not be consummated, but not because of any intrinsic objection to it. It is just that the boss didn’t have the wherewithal with which to make the purchase. That is, the ages of the boss and hit man are not intrinsic to the case, and may even be reversed, for illustrative purposes, in which case the sale could have succeeded.

The underlying point of the libertarian critique is that if I own something, I can sell it (and should be allowed by law to do so). If I can’t sell it, then, and to that extent, I really don’t own it. Take my own liberty as perhaps the paradigm case of the debate over inalienability. The claim is that if I really own my liberty, then I should be free to dispose of it as I please, even if, by so doing, I end up no longer owning it. Clearly, since I cannot own a square circle, I cannot sell it. If I can own my own ability to give true love, then I can sell it; if I logically cannot own this attribute, then, of course, I cannot give, barter, or sell it to anyone else.

My thesis: No law should be enacted prohibiting or even limiting in any way people’s rights to alienate those things they own. This is “full monte” alienability, or commodification.

[Caley_McKibbin]

@E. R. Olovetto

You need to realize the difference between will and body. That you can’t transfer your will may only be a technological issue, and not one that I would think will be overcome in the near future anyway, but you can transfer your body.

I’m not debating that you can sell your body. I’m saying that the worst consequence of rebelling is having to give the money back. If your owner tried to hunt you down and shoot you for disobedience you could just shoot him first and nobody could care less. Under historical slavery the state would help recapture you and prosecute you for murder.

[krazy_kaju]

@Benjamin

Do you want to tell me about how you fear an entrepreneur kidnapping you and forcing you to work for free somewhere you don’t speak the language?

The idea that this would be a problem in a free market shows that you know absolutely nothing about anarchist theory. If you’re kidnapped, then why wouldn’t a group of lawyers sue the slave-trader in order to get the maximum possible reparation?

[E_R_Olovetto]

@Caley McKibbin

@E. R. Olovetto

You need to realize the difference between will and body. That you can’t transfer your will may only be a technological issue, and not one that I would think will be overcome in the near future anyway, but you can transfer your body.

I’m not debating that you can sell your body. I’m saying that the worst consequence of rebelling is having to give the money back. If your owner tried to hunt you down and shoot you for disobedience you could just shoot him first and nobody could care less. Under historical slavery the state would help recapture you and prosecute you for murder.

OK, this is true about historical slavery. I think that you are wrong still about the consequences of disobedience in some way. I never really thought about slaves escaping, because the whole idea that many people would agree to voluntary slavery is pretty silly after all. I wanted to say you are right here for a second, but why wouldn’t title to the slave pass to the heir of the murdered master?

There is definitely a problem with “being born into slavery” though. I will contend that you are wrong about having to return money, still. This just isn’t a matter of theft. The master can manumit you. Say someone agreed to slavery in exchange for $1,000,000 to pay for a medical procedure for his son. The owner could allow him to phone home and ask for a new exchange. The manumitting is a legal procedure in re. That is, there are no real disputants.