Voluntary Slave contract?

[RogueMerc]

@pairunoyd

What if the master contracts with you for entertainment? He pays you to act like the best slave ever. And if you protest and decide you want out of the contract then those protestations are actually part of the entertainment. So no matter what the slave says or does its all part of the slaves act. He’s not really a slave, hes just acting like one.

You bring up a good point.

[nirgrahamUK]

Admittedly the dictionary is not the source of all knowledge, yet accordingly there are different senses of ‘slavery’ in the common parlance, it can be involuntary servitude certainly! (although there are other meanings, such as simply, really tough/hard servitude).

if we accept the more damning definition, then we can throw out Blocks arguments on that semantic level. As BrainPolice pointed out. and rightly.

However, Block could simply swap in another word for , the harsh servitude he is trying to describe is mislabeled ‘slavery’, he might call it total servitude, i will here coin a phrase, ‘Tervitude’ and then the issue of voluntary/involuntary, would be decided by the manner in which the Tervitude was brought about.

If slavery as a word, could be interpreted as ‘total servitude’, we wouldnt need that step, the slavery means involuntary argument will have misfired.

Ladies and Gentleman. Tervitude.

[nirgrahamUK]

@wombatron

Wage labor?

kinda Womby, a wage labour i dont think anyone i know would agree to; given labour productivity and bargaining power, but in essence…

[nirgrahamUK]

further point, from Wikipedia.

@wikipedia

In its narrowest sense, the word “slave” refers to people who are treated as the property of another person, household, company, corporation or government.

note, this doesnt have an involuntary conceptual element embedded in the definition

so, under that definition we dont need Tervitude, and Slavery. as Block used it, will do

[liberty_student]

@wombatron

Wage labor?

Lame.

[Brainpolice]

I believe I’ve already comprehensively deconstructed this nonsensical notion:

@Brainpolice

Walter Block’s voluntary slavery notion is a contradiction in terms (slavery is involuntary by definition), and is inconsistant with Rothbard. Rothbard, like all natural rights theorists before him, believed in unalienable rights. This means that you cannot alienate the will from the body. All contracts must have some kind of way to opt out of them, even if there are consequences for opting out of a contract (such as debt withstanding). A perpetual contract that you cannot opt out of (and that you are presumed to have consent to for merely living in a certain area and such) IS the basis for the social contract argument. If you accept the idea of perpetual contracts, or contracts that are enforceable onto 3rd parties of people who did not explicitly consent to them, then you are accepting the basis for the social contract, and must accept the implications of your position on a larger scale - which is statism. I find it increibly disillisioning that so many libertarians are confused about this.

For the reasons I give above, all slavery contracts are inherently null and void by libertarian standards of justice.

I await a rational refutation that doesn’t assume what it must prove.

[wombatron]

@liberty student

@wombatron

Wage labor?

Lame.

I seriously wasn’t trying to score points. What he was describing, sounded a lot like wage labor.

[liberty_student]

@wombatron

I seriously wasn’t trying to score points. What he was describing, sounded a lot like wage labor.

I don’t know if that is funny or sad.

[nirgrahamUK]

@Brainpolice

Walter Block’s voluntary slavery notion is a contradiction in terms (slavery is involuntary by definition), and is inconsistant with Rothbard.

@Brainpolice

I await a rational refutation that doesn’t assume what it must prove.

you are begging the question over whether slavery has involuntariness implicit or not. you have not argued for this. just assumed it. certainly you go beyond the definition cited by wikipedia.

[nirgrahamUK]

@Brainpolice

All contracts must have some kind of way to opt out of them, even if there are consequences for opting out of a contract (such as debt withstanding)

is this true? if we have a contract that you give me money, and i give you a boat. then i have the sellers remorse, can i break the contract? (*after the exchange)

[krazy_kaju]

@Brainpolice

Walter Block’s voluntary slavery notion is a contradiction in terms (slavery is involuntary by definition), and is inconsistant with Rothbard. Rothbard, like all natural rights theorists before him, believed in unalienable rights. This means that you cannot alienate the will from the body. All contracts must have some kind of way to opt out of them, even if there are consequences for opting out of a contract (such as debt withstanding). A perpetual contract that you cannot opt out of (and that you are presumed to have consent to for merely living in a certain area and such) IS the basis for the social contract argument. If you accept the idea of perpetual contracts, or contracts that are enforceable onto 3rd parties of people who did not explicitly consent to them, then you are accepting the basis for the social contract, and must accept the implications of your position on a larger scale - which is statism. I find it increibly disillisioning that so many libertarians are confused about this.

For the reasons I give above, all slavery contracts are inherently null and void by libertarian standards of justice.

Epic win.

[wombatron]

@liberty student

@wombatron

I seriously wasn’t trying to score points. What he was describing, sounded a lot like wage labor.

I don’t know if that is funny or sad.

@**nirgrahamUK

**"if slavery is an agreement to perform various behaviours on command, and to refrain from other behaviours (such as complaining). then one can have voluntary slave contracts.

Add in “and you are paid for the time that you are work”. What is wage labor, if not trading your time and labor for money? Obviously what he is describing has no monetary component, but for someone to agree to it, they are either being coerced (in which case it wouldn’t be voluntary), or they are getting a psychic profit of some sort.

[nirgrahamUK]

i understand why LS, made that reaction, obviously and for good reason slavery has a bad rep, and it could be seen as trying to slander the capitalist wage earner paradigm as being one of master to slave, marxists love to do this. but here we are all more sophisticated than that ,ne?

[Brainpolice]

@nirgrahamUK

@Brainpolice

Walter Block’s voluntary slavery notion is a contradiction in terms (slavery is involuntary by definition), and is inconsistant with Rothbard.

@Brainpolice

I await a rational refutation that doesn’t assume what it must prove.

you are begging the question over whether slavery has involuntariness implicit or not. you have not argued for this. just assumed it. certainly you go beyond the definition cited by wikipedia.

You are ignoring the rest of my argument and singling out the linguistic aspect of it.

[wombatron]

@nirgrahamUK

i understand why LS, made that reaction, obviously and for good reason slavery has a bad rep, and it could be seen as trying to slander the capitalist wage earner paradigm as being one of master to slave, marxists love to do this. but here we are all more sophisticated than that ,ne?

Yeah, and I understand that, especially given my LL affiliation. However, I really wasn’t trying to make a point about “wage slavery” or anything like that; I was merely remarking that what you were describing resembles wage labor.

[Brainpolice]

@nirgrahamUK

@Brainpolice

All contracts must have some kind of way to opt out of them, even if there are consequences for opting out of a contract (such as debt withstanding)

is this true? if we have a contract that you give me money, and i give you a boat. then i have the sellers remorse, can i break the contract? (*after the exchange)

Yes, but I am liable for the terms of opting out. Obviously, if I agree to the contract, and then don’t pay you, but maintain possession of the boat, that’s theft. And if you agree to the contract, and I pay you, and you don’t give me the boat, that’s fraud. But if we agree to the contract, and I then turn around and decide I don’t want to be part of the contract anymore, so long as I let you keep the boat or give you back the boat, I can opt out of the contract. But if you proceed to try to enforce the contract on me to perpetually extract money from me into the future, despite the fact that I’ve given up the boat, that is simply extortion. So here we have clearly identified the nature of theft, fraud, extortion as it relates to contracts. None of this justifies the notion of a perpetual contract that you cannot opt out of. In this case, the terms of opting out is not maintaining possession of the boat.

[nirgrahamUK]

@Brainpolice

You are ignoring the rest of my argument and singling out the linguistic aspect of it.

well, you also mention, 3rd parties, and what does that have to do with it…

[nirgrahamUK]

@Brainpolice

But if we agree to the contract, and I then turn around and decide I don’t want to be part of the contract anymore, so long as I let you keep the boat or give you back the boat, I can opt out of the contract. But if you proceed to try to enforce the contract on me to perpetually extract money from me into the future, despite the fact that I’ve given up the boat, that is simply extortion.

i think you are close to agreeing on me as horrible as that sounds.

surely you agree, that if both bparties agree to the exchange, the exchange is conducted, the goods are transferred. there is no sense in which the contract can be ‘broken’ ??

if someone volunteers to transfer their body ownership to another, once an exchange is conducted, perhaps there then also is no sense in which the contract can legitamatly be broken. (unless you imply that the body property transfer is a continuus process and not a single act of title transfer)

[Brainpolice]

@nirgrahamUK

@Brainpolice

But if we agree to the contract, and I then turn around and decide I don’t want to be part of the contract anymore, so long as I let you keep the boat or give you back the boat, I can opt out of the contract. But if you proceed to try to enforce the contract on me to perpetually extract money from me into the future, despite the fact that I’ve given up the boat, that is simply extortion.

i think you are close to agreeing on me as horrible as that sounds.

surely you agree, that if both bparties agree to the exchange, the exchange is conducted, the goods are transferred. there is no sense in which the contract can be ‘broken’ ??

if someone volunteers to transfer their body ownership to another, once an exchange is conducted, perhaps there then also is no sense in which the contract can legitamatly be broken. (unless you imply that the body property transfer is a continuus process and not a single act of title transfer)

After the exchange has taken place, for all intents and purposes the contract has ended because its terms have been mutually fulfilled by all parties privy to it. The contract is only temporary for the purposes of the exchange. If after the exchange has taken place, I try claim I can get more boats from you, that’s theft. If after the exchange has taken place, you try to claim you can get more money from me, that’s extortion.

Body ownership is not something that can be exchanged. Your will is part of your body. This nonsensical voluntary slavery notion depends on a false mind/body dichotomy. Hence, monism is also an argument against voluntary slavery. Technically, we do not own ourselves, we are ourselves. What self-ownership is meant to imply as an ethical concept is personal sovereignty - that others cannot own you. Morally speaking, humans are not mere objects to be used as a means.

In your example, as soon as this person decides that they no longer want to work for you, the contract becomes null and void. If you continue to demand labor from them and use violence to get them to keep laboring, this is no different from chattel slavery. Hence, the libertarian context I provide for a wage contract to be legitimate is precisely what distinguishes wage labor from chattel slavery.

[nirgrahamUK]

i suppose you will qualify that to live body ownership is not something that can be exchanged, as dead body ownership can obviously be exchanged.

is will part of the body, if will is part of the mind, which is merely genereated by the body, as the body generates heat into the air around it then its no big deal. you can own my body, but you dont necessarily own the heat emenating out, or the ideas in the mind etc.