given the existence of other forum members in this thread, its hard for me to see how you perceived that. Challenging my ideas is different than advocating the inverse of them. However, ignoring arguments against slavery while asserting that a slavery contract could legally justify the nonconsensual torture of individual actually does resemble a kind of advocacy. However I dont consider you “pro-slavery” and I apologize for the misunderstanding.
Human action is purposeful, how exactly is one supposed to agree to transfer social permissions and obligations without intending to do so? Is the pattern of ink on the paper really that powerful, or do we pay attention to the meanings of words and sentences because they correspond with thoughts and ideas?
I’m probably not a rothbardian, btw.
I’m sorry but I can’t tell whether this is a sarcastic comment or not. Could you please clarify?
I think what B has done there is more than conveying intent. I think he’s literally alienated his right to not be whipped by A if he disobeys A. Conversely, one could say he’s given A the right to whip him if he disobeys him.
Yes, you recall correctly.
B possessed that right originally and then gave it to A, so it now belongs to A. Hence A has the stronger claim. The fact that it’s B’s nerves that transmit impulses to B’s muscles makes no difference.
Consider an situation where the access rights concern a house instead of a person. So I make a contract with you whereby I give you the right to enter and exit my house as you please for the next year. Six months later, I decide to change my mind. Would you still say you’re allowed to enter and exit my house as you please for six more months? Why or why not?
I didn’t say the contract gives A powers of B’s physical determination. As I said before, the contract isn’t about ability, it’s about legitimacy.
I’m sorry but I have no idea what you mean by this. I don’t see why a contract must convey intent.
How/why can’t a contract actually convey rights? Even Rothbard thought contracts convey rights, just certain kinds of rights (namely property titles). I also don’t see how the rights under consideration have to be conveyed constantly, as seems to be implied by your last sentence. Otherwise, your last sentence seems to contain a non sequitur - it doesn’t follow from the future being uncertain that it’s impossible to understand something.
What do you mean by “punish”? What do you mean by “enforcement of a slavery contract”?
As I see it, it means that anything you do to prevent me from picking tomatoes from your garden is now illegitimate. You’re nevertheless free to no longer permit me to do so later on.
I think including expressions like “HURR DURR” in your posts is clearly mockery. I don’t see any need for it, and I would appreciate it if you would stop. You don’t see me mocking you, do you?
Now with all due respect, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here. It’s not at all about transferring one’s will to another. That’s impossible (at least for the time being). Hence obedience can’t be enforced in the same sense as a transfer of property can be enforced. Rather, it involves whether it’s legitimate for one person to hurt another (i.e. whether he has the right to hurt him). If it is, then that means any retaliation by the latter against the former is illegitimate. This in no way constitutes “enforcing obedience” unless one equivocates over the word “enforce”. Nor does it constitute “selling one’s body” - as you correctly note, doing so requires alienating one’s body, which is also impossible (at least for now). But I don’t think either alienating the will or alienating the body is relevant here at all. It’s simply about who is allowed to do what to whom.
I accept your apology. What I meant by “advocate” was “proclaim something as good and encourage it”.
I think the contract embodies the transfer/assignment itself - it’s not an agreement to transfer/assign one or more things. So by signing the contract, one is considered to actually make the transfer/assignment.
its not sarcasm. The contract could literally mean anything, the only measure of what it means is what people think it means. If we sign a contract that specifies that you are permitted to pick tomatoes from my garden, so its in writing for everyone to see, and then I refuse to let you inside my fence, saying “I only conveyed the right to pick tomatoes frm my garden, I never said I intended to allow you to exercise that right” then I have committed fraud.
I dont consider that right to be alienable. Since there are no objective rights for us to look at to see who is right, I guess we will have to agree to disagree. But if you think that such a contract is legal, I dont see why you would object to being considered “pro-slavery.”
no, I dont think I would be allowed to enter and exit your house after you changed your mind and said you no longer intended to permit me ingress and egress of your domicile. This is because the piece of paper no longer represents a meeting of the minds. I might seek damages, however.
I consider the initiation of violence on a nonconsenting nonaggressor to be illegitimate, so a piece of paper isnt going to change that, even if that nonaggressor was foolish enough to “sell” “his” “body.” the person who attempted to buy nontransferable goods would be entitled to damages, but not entitled to commit assault.
the things that “masters” typically do to their human chattel when they get uppity, I consider it assault, battery, torture, and abuse. In descriptive terms, physical contact with a nonconsenting individual, typically with the intent of modifying that person’s behavior.
is it illegitimate merely because I said or wrote something, or is it illegitimate because I meant something when I said/wrote it?
I’m sorry to have offended you
I agree, and that is central to our dispute. I believe that consent to being hurt or injured must be intentional and can be withdrawn. Hurting (nonaggressive) people without their consent is wrong, in a descriptive sense, as in I wouldnt want to live somewhere that was seen as legitimate.
In that case I apologize if I misattributed arguments to you.
Well, if we say labor is inalienable (which mutualism says), renting of means of production is illegitimate because it would constitute theft by considering someone else’s labor one’s own. Renting of other products some mutualist consider ok, some mutualist consider that all rent is illegitimate because it is unearned income, and because rent is a contradiction between de facto abandonment, and de jure continued property; between ius ad rem (possession) and ius in re (property), and that possessions is more important then property being that “possession is a fact, and property is a theory”.
There is another point of view, that says that renting is not ok because it is a product of the lack of (economic) freedom, namely- one would never rent from someone something he needs (maybe some people would rent in rare cases when they want, not need, to) in a free economy- because in free economy, with free banking, interest would fall near zero, and no one would rent stuff he needs when he could easily borrow money and buy it.
You homestead a piece of land and you have usufruct rights until you abandon it. No need to deciede anything.
No need for it to be distributed. What you occupy-and-use without employing anyone, you have usufruct over that land.
I don’t think it really matters so much whether we call it communal or unowned. Altough it does matter to Georgists.
Haven’t really thought about that term in a general way..
Labor is inalienable, too. Just as only I can control my body, only I can control my labor, and thus- no one has the right to consider my labor his own.
Thet’s not alienating one’s labor. Employment is alienation of one’s labor, providing a service isn’t.
I don’t see what this false analogy has to do with anything.
If I sell you something, then later I change my mind and take it back, thats theft, and the force you use to stop me is a reaction to theft, not aggression.
Whether that something is my car or my body doesn’t change the fact that the force you use is reaction to theft, not aggression.
Saying that slavery by selling oneself is illegitimate because enforcing a sale like that is aggressive is invalid, because enforcing any sale is reactive, not aggressive.
Saying that slavery by selling oneself is illegitimate because the body is unalieanalbe can be valid (and I do accept that), but in order to be consistent one must accept that if the body is unalieanble, so is labor, which means that not only slavery, but also employment is illegitimate.
You appear to believe that employment is invalid in that your labor is your own, that employment somehow claims that the labor isn’t your own, yet at the same time believing that providing a service is legitimate. A employer, upon hiring the employee, has the employee sign a contract whether explicitly and implicitly, that the employee will be paid for his labor. This means that the employer has never claimed that the employee’s labor is his own, for if the employer genuinely believed that then he wouldn’t pay the employee at all, after all why would you pay someone for something that is your own?
The slaveowner, upon buying the slave, can have the slave sign a contract wherer explicitly and implicitly, that the slave will be paid for his body (by having his, or his family’s debt payed off, or money given to his family, or whatever).
Actually it does. When I do a service for you, I get money from you for the service in which I have put my labor into. But when I’m an employee of someone’s and do a service for you, I don’t get the money for the service in which I have put my labor into, my employer gets the money from you, and then he gives me a part of that money. The difference is very clear, when I do a service I get the full product of my labor, when I do a service as an employee, you don’t give me money for my service, you give my boss the money, and I don’t get the full product of my labor.
So your problem with it is that you don’t get paid enough for your labor? Other things would need to be taken into consideration, like marketing (Which the employer must handle), the risk of the product not selling (Which the employer must bare, while the employee doesn’t need to worry about if the product sells or not, since the employee will be paid regardless), and the fact that the employee is using the equipment of the employer in order to make the product. If you still see employment as a problem why not start your own business? You might still think it unfair, it isn’t something that is unavoidable, in that the person chose the unfair arrangement from the beginning.
Edit:
Comparing employment and slavery might seem appropriate at times. Consider that some people would rather prefer slavery. (BDSM for example.)
No. The problem is I don’t get paid for my labor, my boss get paid for my work, and then the boss gives me a small conpensation for me alienating my labor.
No, there is no such a “must”, other workers can handle that.
I don’t know i what world you live in, hundreds of thousands of people do not get payed for their work because the firm eg. goes bankrupt, I personally am a worker, troughout my working life, I have more then a year of unpayed labor, a few months not being a consequence of firm’s bankruptcy (which the owner/employer doesn’t even notice, he doesn’t have to sell his villas or cars to pay the firm’s debts and unpayed wages, whereas I had to sell my car so could buy food) but purely a product of employers blackmailing me by the fact that I have no alternative job. But that’s basically irrelevant, it’s an externality.
Which is based on the theory of private property which alows rent, and which I reject as illegitimate.
Because there is no real competition in crony capitalism.
Just like the slave might think it unfair, but it wasn’t unavoidable, he didn’t have to plegde himself agaist a loan, he could have had started a business, bla bla bla.
It’s irrelevant what people prefer, but what is legitimate.
Well the way I see it, I’m “pro-slavery” in the same sense that I’m “pro-drug-addiction”. In the latter case, I think it should be legal for people to use drugs, and even become addicted to drugs, but that doesn’t mean that I think they’re good things to do or that I’m going to encourage people to do them.
Anyways, why don’t you consider that right to be alienable?
Why would you be entitled to damages? If the contract just represented a meeting of the minds, and that meeting of the minds no longer exists, then you haven’t been deprived of anything, have you? And if you haven’t been deprived of anything, then you’re not entitled to any damages.
See above about entitlement to damages in this case. Otherwise, do you see legitimacy as requiring consent? Why or why not?
Keep in mind that using “enforcement” in that way contradicts the use of it in the context of a contract that involves title transfer. In the latter case, “enforcement” means forcibly obtaining what one is entitled to by the contract. At the very least, I think we both agree that obedience can’t be enforced in this way, and any contract which claims otherwise is null and void.
If I understand you correctly, then I’d say it’s illegitimate because you meant something when you said/wrote it.
It’s okay, as long as you don’t engage in mockery from here on out.
I think two even more fundamental issues here are 1) whether rights can be broken down into smaller component rights, and 2) which rights are considered to be alienable. I’ve recently come to take a broad approach with both: I think rights are basically infinitely divisible, and I think all rights are alienable.
I take it that by “labor” you mean something like “the bodily actions that undertaken to produce something”? In that case, labor is indeed inalienable, because actions are inalienable. However, I don’t think that has anything necessarily to do with whether rent is considered to be legitimate. As I see it, there’s also the question of prior ownership of the things that a person uses in his labor. While a person’s bodily actions are inalienable from him, he may not own the things he undertakes those actions on. Either way, were it not for those things, he wouldn’t be able to undertake those actions in the first place.
What do you think constitute abandonment? Do you think there’s an objective way to determine that? Also, I don’t think it’s a question of possession per se - if it was, then there’d be no talk about theft, vandalism, etc. Those things involve legitimacy. So the question to me is about legitimate possession, which is at least part of what I think makes up property/ownership. Finally, the notion that fact is more important than theory is itself a theory.
How do you think a free economy and free banking necessarily lead to interest falling near zero? Also, isn’t borrowing a form of renting, namely renting of money?
Okay. That’s different from what Proudhon says in that link you gave me, though. Again, what do you think constitutes abandonment?
What do you think constitutes occupation and use? For example, I own a house that’s nearly 2,000 square feet “under air” (i.e. discounting the garage, porch(es), etc.). But at any given time, I occupy only a fraction of that square footage - if I occupy any of it at all. So I’m not sure whether you’d say I actually have usufruct over my entire house.
Well, given what you describe above, it seems you don’t see a need for a “community” to ultimately decide who gets which parts of the land. I’ll just note again that this seems to disagree with Proudhon. That’s fine by me though.
I’d appreciate it if you did so and got back to me.
No, you are missing the point. The ethic of reciprocity is about reciprocal justice. It is based on retribution, not restitution. The vast majority of people would prefer restitution over retribution if possible, but the theory of justice (in terms of reciprocity) is based on retribution.
The NAP is the ethic of reciprocity but applied to the realm of law. “Do not aggress against others or their rightful property”, or “Respect me and what is mine, and I will respect you and what’s yours”. If A doesn’t respect B’s home, then B won’t respect A’s home. If A burns down B’s home, then B burns down A’s home. If A does not respect the “voluntary” slave contracts of B, then B won’t respect the “voluntary” slave contracts of A.
Whether or not A claims to own B is irrelevant. What is relevant is the reciprocal aspect of it. Most people would rather restitution than retribution, but (libertarian) justice is based on (either equal or double) retribution. You threaten the criminal with (equal or double) retribution, and you get him to pay restitution. Most people would prefer this. If a criminal burns down your house and all your possessions, would you rather see his house and possessions burned, or would you rather that he pay to restore your house and possessions? I imagine most people would choose the latter, but you threaten the criminal with retribution in order to receive restitution.
And now it is time to look at Clayton’s claims about the origin of law, and how it might look in a decentralized society. Essentially, the parties to a dispute go to court in order to settle their dispute without further violence. If A murders B, the only reason A agrees to go to court with B’s family is to avoid further violence. Very few murderers would go to court and then agree to their own execution. A murderer goes to court in order to pay off his victim’s family.
So, what happens with a man who violates his “voluntary” slave contract? Well, he and his owner have a dispute. There are some options: the owner can drop the issue, the slave can agree to go back to being a slave, they can fight it out, or they can go to court. We are not interested in the first two options. Now, if they fight it out, the slave may end up winning and killing his master. The slave has more incentive to fight it out than the master, as the slave is fighting for his freedom. The master is fighting for what he considers a piece of property. He has more to lose.
So let’s say they go to court. Well, the slave is never going to agree to becoming a slave again, as the whole point of going to court is so that he may not be a slave. So, whatever deal they come up with, we can be sure that the slave will be freed, even if he pays some sort of penalty.
I really don’t know what to make of this. You quoted the end of my post, so presumably you read the whole thing. So if you read the whole thing, you would see that the libertarian concept of property is derived from reciprocity. “Respect me and what is mine, and I’ll respect you and what’s yours.” That is the positive form. The negative form is the NAP: “Do not aggress against others or their rightful property.”
So, I guess all I can say to your response is, “Reread my post.”
Then it’s a good thing that this is not my argument.
I’ll respond by topics, quoting some people in the process.
“Voluntary” Slavery
First off, I think voluntary slavery is only a good term to facilitate the understanding of the possibility of a person wanting to act as a slave of someone else. In that case, said person would act just like a slave, but wouldn’t be a slave, because slavery by definition is involuntary.
I do think that, given todays technology, the will is inalienable. This is a point that even the people advocating the legitimacy of voluntary slavery (Autolykos, Minarchist and Papirius) agree on, as I could perceive from their posts. The fact that the will is inalienable is easily empirically verifieable, so I won’t even try to prove it. Now, let’s imagine that Bob would like to be Alice’s slave (I copied these names from Clayton, I hope he don’t mind ;D ). So Alice creates a contract that stipulates that Bob will be her slave, forever, and Bob signs. I say this is not compatible with libertarianism, but not because the will is inalienable. As the guys I mentioned above pointed out, the fact that the will is inalienable doesn’t impede Alice to remain control over Bob’s body, even without his consent. The reason why voluntary slavery cannot be enforced through contract in a libertarian society, in my opinion, is because the moment Bob withdraw consent this violates the NAP. Simple as that. The moment that Bob stops consenting being a slave, Alice is now agressing against Bob’s will. Is important to mention here that the will and the body are aspects of the same being. The will doesn’t exist without the body, and the body without the will is either dead or in a vegetative state, both useless for being enslaved. So Alice would be agressing against Bob when he stops consenting, thus violating the very base of libertarianism, and even a contract could not violate the NAP in a free society. “But I want to be Alice’s slave!”, says Bob, furiously. Well, Bob can still be Alice’s slave without signing a contract. He can be her slave for 50 years, but at the end of this 50 years, if Bob changes his mind, he can walk away as a free man, or he can continue to be her slave for one year more, until he dies, or whatever.
Again, no such contract in a libertarian society could be enforceable, not because the will is inalienable, but because it would violate the NAP, in the case the slave changes his mind.
Another argument that I have is that, obviously, humans are entirely different subjects than other objects. It starts here, see? Subjects and objects. I’ll quote Minarchist:
The question is, can a car will itself into motion?
A car is entirely different from a living human being. Even inanimate objects are handled differently than others in the market, when it comes to the act of trade. Can you mortgage a bag of chips? No, even if you want to. But the majority of people who buy a house have to mortgage it. It is only natural then that a living human body, being a unique kind of property, is treated differently than other kinds of property. In the libertarian case, it is untradable due to the NAP.
In short: bag of chips=!car=!house=!body
Employment as ilegitimate
This one is to respond these quotes from Papirius:
and
To begin with, being an employee is a voluntary action, so (in a libertarian society) it’s legitimate. You can quit whenever you want to. But I want to analise this case a little further, so let’s ignore the voluntarity of this action for the time being.
Mowing lawn is a service. Working for an employer is, too, a service. The real problem you are raising is when you mow lawn for someone you get the total money for the labor you’ve done. When you work for someone, you only recieve a part of it. In other words, the problem here is the amount of money. Now, consider these two cases:
1-Bob mows Alice’s lawn with her manual, half-working lawn mower.
2-Bob mows Alice’s lawn with her automatic lawn mower (those that look like a tractor).
The service provided is the same in both cases. The output is the same, the lawn is mowed. But in the first case, Bob is likely to earn more money than in the second case. Why is that? Does Alice in the second case is not paying the “total money” that Bob’s labor is worth? No, it is because the means of production used were different. That leads me to this point: wage is directly correlated with the means of production, and with supply and demand. There’s nothing written in a stone about what is the “total money” worth of this and that labor. It all depends on the factors I highlighted above, in other words, it all depends on market prices. Moreover, if Bob brought his own lawn mower to mow Alice’s lawn, he would be paid more than in the examples above, because the means of production in the example above were Bob’s labor (the reason why he is being paid. This is important to remember) and Alice’s lawn mower. If Bob brought the lawn mower the means of production would be his own labor and lawn mower, thus, his reward would be higher.
To sum it all up, employment is voluntary. Just as “voluntary” slavery, employment would be legitimate in a libertarian society. But, just like anyone is free to quit his job if he wants, a voluntary slave could quit his enslavement if he wants.
for a variety of reasons, likely stemming from difficulties with enforcement and my distaste at slavery, not mention my belief in human rights and my general opposition to violence. I’m going to try to address this in paragraph form, now that I have thought about it some, which means I’ll be abandoning the quote/response format. Please let me know if you feel like I have missed something.
first of all, if someone can waive their legal status, as in becoming an outlaw, it stands to reason that they can be subject to conditions of slavery with no legal remedy. Prohibitions on slavery would have to be of the type of law as community ordinances, laws that predate an individuals residence in the community and are enforced based on their willingness to continue living there, meaning they require the consent of the governed.
secondly, alienable property is alienable because the subordinate claimholders can be physically separated from it. An attempt to gain unauthorized control would require aggression against property. But the will cannot be separated, so the previous claimholder cannot relinquish his physical control, meaning no aggression is required to re-establish physical control. Indeed, physical control never left that person’s hands. In order to deny this person’s claim we have to remove his legal standing, in effect refuse to recognize his existence. Well, the legal system was created to settle disputes without violence, by legally sanctioning slavery we have abandoned that goal in two ways. First, by refusing to recognize claims put forth by a supposed slave, we have forced that slave to choose between abandonment of his claim and violent pursuit of it. Secondly, we have turned our faces from the violence imposed by the owner upon the slave, since he “isnt a legal person” it doesnt really count. One wonders why we even have courts if we are going to allow one human being to legally beat another into submission.
in a vacuum, you may be right that rights are infinitely partitionable and always alienable, but that might lead to more disputes and even more violent disputes, that are more difficult to resolve. If I understand you correctly, and rights exist because we say they do because we want to live in a world where rights exist, then infinitely divisible/always alienable rights would lead to more violence and less wealth, at least in the near term (Imo).
I have avoided any statement as to the reification of contracts or our disagreement about their nature because I havent formed my response yet.
you can perform a service for someone and be compensated for that service. That service can be to labor on someone’s behalf at a regular schedule. Explain why I can mow lawns for my neighbors, and get paid, and its cool, but I cant mow a bunch more lawns for a bunch more people while renting someone else’s lawnmower and contracting with another person to line up the lawns for me.
explain the difference.
Labor is alienable. When someone mows a lawn for pay, they left the calories in the lawn, in the form of chopped grass and entropic heat.
Before continuing with the voluntary slavery discussion, I want to reply to the OP.
What is property?
Property is any thing (in the broadest sense of the term: res) which is owned.
What does it mean to own a thing?
To own a thing is to have the exclusive right to use that thing, and in any way, and at any time, that one pleases.
What kinds of things can be owned?
A thing can be owned if it is impossible for more than one person to use it at the same time. This applies to all physical things.
What about mental things (thoughts)?
Well, for it to be possible to have the right to use a thought, it must be possible to use a thought. What could it mean to “use” a thought? What can one do with a thought? Everything one can do with a thought falls under the name “having (i.e. thinking) the thought.” To use a thought is simply to have it. So, if I sell you my thought, I sell you the right to have my thought.
We can consider thoughts in two ways.
(a) If two people have the same thought, we can say that one thought exists, which both people are having. In this case, an infinite number of people can have the same thought at the same time without any conflict, and thus thoughts cannot be property.
(b) If two people have “the same” thought, we can say that two thoughts exist; as even if they are perfect duplicates, they are distinct simply in virtue of the fact that two distinct people are having them. This I think is a better ontology (as the other ontology necessarily gives thoughts existence independently of anyone thinking them, which is absurd). What are its implications on the question of whether or not thoughts can be property?
I sell you the right to have my thought.
Since “my thought” is defined as “the thought I have,” it is impossible for you to have it. If you have “my thought” you are having your thought. Any thought you have is your thought. This is not a technological problem: even if there were a device which allowed my thoughts to be “beamed” into your mind, “my thought” would still be your thought because you’re the one having it.
Since only the thinker can have his thoughts, it is impossible for a dispute to arise over who will have his thoughts. Hence there is no need to assign property rights over his thoughts, as the only function of property rights is to prevent and/or resolve disputes over the use of things.
Thus, we see that a contract whereby I sell you my thought (i.e. the right to have my thought) is a contract whereby I sell you nothing, as no such right exists.
However, earlier we made this rule: “A thing can be owned if it is impossible for more than one person to use it at the same time.” It is impossible for more than one person to use a thought at the same time - but we know from the argument above that thoughts cannot be property. Hence I propose this modification of our rule.
A thing can be owned if it is impossible for more than one person to use it at the same time, but possible for A to use it at time T and B to use it at time T+1.
Thoughts cannot be used by more than one person at one time, but nor can they be used first by A and then by B: i.e. they can only be used by the person having them, the thinker. They cannot be used by anyone else subsequently.
Note that all physical things do meet the requirements of the new rule.
Will do. In the meantime, I’d like to take a look at the phrase “enforcing a contract”. To me it means “exercising one’s contractual rights, by force if necessary”. What does it mean to you?
Just so you know, I share your distaste with slavery, but just because I find it distasteful doesn’t mean I think it should be illegal. There are many other things that I find distasteful, such as drug addiction, foot fetishes, and black licorice, but I don’t think those things should be illegal for that reason (if for any reason).
You bring up a good point about outlaws, in having alienated all of their rights, being subjectable to slavery without legal remedy. On the one hand, that also means they can be killed outright without legal remedy. On the other hand, I think that makes outlawry even more of a deterrent.
What are these “communities” you speak of? If an individual purchases land within a “community”, does he then own it, or does the “community” somehow still own it (maybe without telling him)?
With all due respect, I think you’re once again barking up the wrong tree with this. I have not asserted that the body is somehow alienable, and I don’t believe that to be the case (at least not yet). As I see it, B alienating his right to not be hurt by A if he disobeys A (for example) in no way involves B alienating his body. He’s simply alienating a right that he’s considered to possess. His physical control of his body is irrelevant IMHO.
At this point, and in all honesty, I don’t think legal systems originally arose to settle disputes without violence. I think they originally arose simply to settle disputes. Another way of putting this is that they arose to determine whose actions - past, present, and/or future - are to be considered legitimate. Note that this includes violent actions. I think the historical trend away from violent resolutions of disputes is a separate issue, one driven more by economic considerations (i.e. violence is more economically destructive than non-violence).
Finally, I think you’re making quite a hasty generalization - to the point of setting up and attacking a strawman - by saying “[one] wonders why we even have courts if we are going to allow one human being to legally beat another into submission”. You make it sound as though that sort of thing would be allowed all the time. I don’t see how that follows at all from anything I’ve said.
On what basis do you make this conclusion?
That’s fine. I don’t see how I’m reifying contracts, however.
So Alice creates a contract that stipulates that Bob will be her slave, forever, and Bob signs. I say this is not compatible with libertarianism, but not because the will is inalienable. As the guys I mentioned above pointed out, the fact that the will is inalienable doesn’t impede Alice to remain control over Bob’s body, even without his consent. The reason why voluntary slavery cannot be enforced through contract in a libertarian society, in my opinion, is because the moment Bob withdraw consent this violates the NAP. Simple as that. The moment that Bob stops consenting being a slave, Alice is now agressing against Bob’s will.
Aggression is defined as a violation of property rights.
The will is not property.
Thus it is impossible for Alice to aggress against Bob’s will: in the same way that it would be impossible for her to aggress against Bob’s opinions, attitudes, ideas, memories, soul, etc.
You quoted me saying:
If you can own a car without having the ability to will it into motion, then you can own a human body without the ability to will it into motion.
“Control” is not a requirement for ownership.
You responded:
The question is, can a car will itself into motion?