What do you mean by “natural right”?
That can be found in Webster’s Dictionary.
You said that I was allowed to alienate my right to life. So I assume that you’re okay with this person agreeing to the contract.
My point is that it isn’t a very happy happening.
Wow, we have a regular Webster over here. Was he banned for murder of the English language?
Also, I don’t see the big difference between a murderer agreeing to paying all of his salary for X number of years or else Y, and someone agreeing to be a slave for X number of years or else Y.
Though slavery implies that there was no initial agreement as opposed to “indentured servant”, and therefor wouldn’t be permissable among libertarians. A contract to be a slave is a bit of an oxymoron. I highly recommend using the phrase “indentured servant”.
I’d appreciate the definition you’re using, if you please.
Yeah, I know what your point is. But whether it’s a “very happy happening” or not is a matter of opinion, isn’t it? You don’t have to like it, but I don’t think it’s up to you to decide whether someone else is allowed to alienate his right to life.
Alright. I agree with you there. For the purposes of argument, I’ll call a contract where the individual must, effectively, remain on the work site or get blown up by a bomb they agreed to be implanted (or some contractual penalty), “vassalage”.
As Rothbard proved, children are parent’s property until they try to run away. Therefore, parents may decide what contracts their property enters into, including hereditary vassalage.
Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines unalienable as “not alienable; that cannot be alienated; that may not be transferred; as in unalienable rights” and inalienable as “cannot be legally or justly alienated or transferred to another.” The Declaration of Independence reads:
“That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”
by natural law i was going by that definition here,
the document then calls the right to life unalienable
if someone does alienate their right to life, and breaks that unalienable right, so what?
so my thought is we each get the right to alienate our rights, and the right to give up our rights.
if suicide is intention, there are plenty of ways to die without the intention, just with irrationality.
Correct. Your ultimate control over your limbs, over your body, over your own movement, cannot be transferred. Your mind will always force your arms to move, if they move, and no other’s will can be substituted for your own. You will control you, or else your body will be dead and no one will control you.
Thus, it is impossible to give up your will on your body. Every act you take, including those you’ve contracted for previously, happens only because the individual wills it to happen.
At that point they are dead.
Rights cannot be bought, sold, or transferred. They are inalienable. You seem to not understand the concept. Life is a necessary precursor to rights, and only the living have rights. Die and you have no rights. You’ve not alienated yourself from them, there is no longer a self at all.
Anemone, I’m not talking about abrogating rights. Here is my last example:
You assume we would deny that contract. Here’s how this would play out.
They sign the contract and begin working. The surgery is performed, implanting the bomb.
The libertarian at this point is looking for signs that something involuntary has occured, or an abridgment of rights. None so far.
Now, from here either one of three things can happen.
either A: The worker remains on the plantation rest of his life, happily, voluntarily, and dies a natural death.
B: the worker leaves the plantation and is killed by the bomb going off. The owner of the plantation, after some investigation, is brought up on murder or manslaughter charges (which is why a contract like this is unlikely in the first place, besides of course the worker’s own interests meaning extremely few would volunteer for such a contract).
or C: the worker contacts the outside world and says he’d like to break the contract and wants help extricating the bomb or deactivating the trigger system so he can break the contract without dying, in which case a libertarian society would likely help him extricate himself from that situation now that he’s no longer voluntarily submitting to it.
In A, libertarians are not denying him any right to anything, though we’d probably call him foolish for submitting to such a contract, and if the plantation owner used threat of the bomb as a means of keeping him in the contract, then he’d be liable for a whole host of charges including false imprisonment, assault, and perhaps much more.
In B, the worker may leave on his own, or during a medical condition be taken off against his will, or perhaps the system malfunctions, only thinks he’s left the island, and the bomb goes off killing the man and perhaps injuring people or property around him. The plantation owner is brought up on murder charges, and promptly displays his contract in which the man willingly submitted to having a live bomb implanted, and he’s instead charged and convicted with manslaughter. Or perhaps the charges are dropped, depends on circumstance. He’d also be liable for any other injuries caused to the ambulance or w/e.
In C, the plantation owner is not entitled to specific performance if the man wants to leave the island and remove the bomb, etc.
My issue is with case B. The plantation owner did not kill the worker. The bomb did. By your reasoning, any actions party 1 takes which contribute to party 2’s death are grounds for prosecution of party 1. If party 1 smokes and party 2 dies of secondhand smoke, then according to your reasoning party 1 commited homicide.
Ok, you make a good point. The plantation owner may not be culpable in case B, especially if he can prove the bomb was placed willingly. Such would be closely akin to assisted suicide.
However, if the man fainted and was accidentally taken off the plantation by people who knew nothing of the bomb, then plantation owner could be culpable for manslaughter for not taking reasonable care that the man’s life wouldn’t be threatened by accidental removal from the plantation.
I think that provides the just reasonable ground.
Glad we’re in agreement. As mentioned before, I had described a potential Case B scenario as “vassalage”.
Incorrect. Not only does Rothbard not saying that parents own children, he says the reverse in your own article:
“Even from birth, the parental ownership is not absolute but of a “trustee” or guardianship kind. In short, every baby as soon as it is born and is therefore no longer contained within his mother’s body possesses the right of self-ownership by virtue of being a separate entity and a potential adult. It must therefore be illegal and a violation of the child’s rights for a parent to aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc.”
This is precisely my view. A parental ability to make decisions for a child is not absolute but still limited by the requirement that they make decisions in the interest of the child. A parent cannot reasonably, for instance, decide to have limbs amputated off their child. And they certainly could not obligate the child to lifelong, much less hereditary, vassalage.
This quote too would invalidate vassalage:
“No man can therefore have a “right” to compel someone to do a positive act, for in that case the compulsion violates the right of person or property of the individual being coerced…As a corollary this means that, in the free society, no man may be saddled with the legal obligation to do anything for another, since that would invade the former’s rights; the only legal obligation one man has to another is to respect the other man’s rights.”
But what if the bomb is secured to the outside of the body (not requiring amputation or whatnot) and vassalage is in the interest of the child? That’s an arbitrary determination.
Vassalage as defined isn’t a legal obligation, merely a contract that can be broken at any time.
@Anenome
I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that an indentured servant could just end the contract and then be under the rightful protection of another entity. It’s the same as declaring ones debt gone, you can’t just expect to get away with that in any society, especially a libertarian one.
There could be arbitration that could lessen terms of the indentured servant to avoid violence, but that’s about the most one could expect.
(Yay! I was hoping one day I’d disagree with you on something.)
Lol 
If you’re talking about his point on contractually making a kid into an indentured servant, I don’t think it would be just to force a kid to fulfill a contract his parent took out on him, especially not one for lifetime, hereditary service. I don’t think any court could consider that just.
If an (adult) indentured servant wanted to break their service contract, I think they should be able to and the remedy should be a monetary judgment, rather than specific performance. Obviously that wouldn’t be akin to walking away from a debt.
Rothbard certainly did not consider children to be the property of their parents until they (try to) run away. That would conflict with his belief in the self-ownership principle. Indeed, Rothbard says in that very link you posted, “Even from birth, the parental ownership is not absolute but of a ‘trustee’ or guardianship kind.” I also don’t think that parents own their children. My position is that parents can’t legitimately alienate any rights that their children are considered to already have, which certainly includes the right to life. So no contract stipualting hereditary vassalage would be legitimate in my view.
Nope, talking about adults.
If I agree to a contract wherein my failure to comply would forfeit my life, why is it that I could end this contract at will with no notice and then object to forfeiting my life?
Why ought the terms of the contract be remitted to a monetary settlement, especially if no amount of money is satisfactory to the offended party?
It would be just for the offended party to kill the offender. No contract would be broken, no rights would be violated, and the Non-Agression-Principle would be upheld.
Auto, Rothbard’s article is clearly talking about limitations on parental ownership after birth, not unborn children’s self-ownership. The child does not assume self-ownership until they are born, and the parent has the right to enter this property into contracts.
what about involuntary movement?
what about others controling someones mind?
even if every act is a act of will, not every act is a act of free will
with life we have rights, with death there are no rights, so the person kills themself, they are dead, and that is the end of it.
if we have free will to live, we have free will to die, otherwise our will is not free and we are forced to choose life