I assume that a contract between two or more parties is merely binding law of some future action based on the current action of a signature. Yet, what gives the contract validity? What is valid about a signature, or even a name--which was forced onto you by your parents? In a free market is it simply a situation where if you break previous contracts you lose out on possible future exchanges, since individuals will know your exchange history.
Read until you have something to write...Write until you have nothing to write...when you have nothing to write, read...read until you have something to write...Jeremiah
If you break a contract, there may be contractual penalties for doing so.
The rest sounds like rambling. I couldn't understand it.
A signature on a contract is proof that you did in fact agree to the terms in case there ever was a dispute.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
A contract is only as valid as the power enforcing it is. If I were to sign a contract with my neighbor to cut his lawn for $10 an hour, and I didn't, I would be subject to whatever force was behind that contract. If there is nothing it back a contract, it can be broken at anytime with no negative consequences (save maybe an increased distrust).
Jack1769: A contract is only as valid as the power enforcing it is. If I were to sign a contract with my neighbor to cut his lawn for $10 an hour, and I didn't, I would be subject to whatever force was behind that contract. If there is nothing it back a contract, it can be broken at anytime with no negative consequences (save maybe an increased distrust).
I don't see what that has to do with the validity of a contract, however, I do see what that has to do with the usefulness of the contract.
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
Jeremiah Dyke:I assume that a contract between two or more parties is merely binding law of some future action based on the current action of a signature. Yet, what gives the contract validity? What is valid about a signature, or even a name--which was forced onto you by your parents? In a free market is it simply a situation where if you break previous contracts you lose out on possible future exchanges, since individuals will know your exchange history.
It's a verbal agreement decided upon by two freely consenting parties. All civilized societies require a legal system which establishes property rights and defends contractual agreements. Without such a condition, civilization, at least the way we define it today, would be impossible. The pleasure principle and profit motive need to be directed towards productive action in order to prevent theft. This is why I'm not a pure anarchist.
"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."
Esuric:All civilized societies require a legal system which establishes property rights and defends contractual agreements...This is why I'm not a pure anarchist.
Did you think anarchy means "no laws"?
Why anarchy fails
AJ:Did you think anarchy means "no laws"?
My problem with pure anarchy is that I don't understand how these laws would be enforced; by the majority? lol.
Jeremiah Dyke: I assume that a contract between two or more parties is merely binding law of some future action based on the current action of a signature.
I assume that a contract between two or more parties is merely binding law of some future action based on the current action of a signature.
No because you have a right to break a promise. So, saying "Pay me $80 and tomorrow I will give you a lawnmower" does not obligate the speaker/writer to give the lawnmower since he may have been lying (and it would be absurd to outlaw lying). However, saying "Pay me $80 and I will give you a lawnmower which I will deliver to you tomorrow" is entirely different because you are transferring title to the lawnmower in the present. Once the $80 is in your hands, the title has been exchanged and the lawnmower is now property of the person to whom you sold it. If you subsequently fail to deliver what is now his lawnmower, you are aggressing against his property and he may take appropriate action either on his own cognizance or through a court (either way, under law). As Rothbard says in the section of Ethics of Liberty where he talks about this (can't remember what chapter off the top of my head), this might sound like hair-splitting but it is actually a vitally important distinction.
Yet, what gives the contract validity? What is valid about a signature, or even a name--which was forced onto you by your parents? In a free market is it simply a situation where if you break previous contracts you lose out on possible future exchanges, since individuals will know your exchange history.
The signature is just a way for you to indicate your intent in a way that is difficult for others to forge and, therefore, is useful to the recipient as evidence to attest your true intent in a court of law if there were ever to arise a dispute. The signature is not so much a promise as physical evidence. It can later be presented to a court to construct a case of what events transpired in the past. If you signed a contract transferring title to your car to me, then later try to repossess the car claiming I stole the car, my case in court will not be "he promised to give me the car and now he's breaking his promise and going back on his word" but "he transferred the title to the car to me - see, Judge, here's his signature as physical evidence of this event - and his 'repossession' of the vehicle actually constitutes a theft of my property."
Contracts as promises are meaningless in the Rothbardian view. This is why performance bonds are so important, they provide a means to put teeth into contracts by means of conditional transfer of title. "If X fails to do Y, he hereby transfers title to $Z to W." That is not a promise, that is a conditional transfer of title. Crucial difference.
Clayton -
Esuric: AJ:Did you think anarchy means "no laws"? My problem with pure anarchy is that I don't understand how these laws would be enforced; by the majority? lol.
Laws are enforced through the ever-present threat of feud. If you murder my brother and I kill you in retaliation, what court of law is going to find me guilty of murder? And if no court of law will find me guilty of wrong-doing, who can retaliate against me for settling the dispute myself without themselves becoming guilty of a crime? This is the logic of a feud. Feuds are unspeakably costly so it is in the interests of every person to avoid one.
ClaytonB:Laws are enforced through the ever-present threat of feud. If you murder my brother and I kill you in retaliation, what court of law is going to find me guilty of murder? And if no court of law will find me guilty of wrong-doing, who can retaliate against me for settling the dispute myself without themselves becoming guilty of a crime? This is the logic of a feud. Feuds are unspeakably costly so it is in the interests of every person to avoid one.
What if the majority finds you annoying; or what if the murderer of your brother convinces the town that you're insane or a liar?
What Gives a Contract its validity?
Property. Absent of property exchange, a contract is not legitimately enforceable.
Cannot exchange services in a libertarian society?
Good to know.
not services which can not be understood as property.
i.e. laundry service, is the transfmoration of dirty cloth property to clean cloth property, and the transfer of the latter back to he who owns the cloth property and paid for the 'service'
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
scineram: Cannot exchange services in a libertarian society? Good to know.
I think what he means to say is 'title-transfers'. Services require either barter or currency [ something I think he implied by 'property' ]
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael