Wheylous: It's rape when there is no consent. The contract gave consent. The question is whether you may take away consent from a contract like you can without a contract. As in, in life you can say "well, I've changed my mind" right before you start. If the contract says "I agree to do such and such", then it is akin to real life, where you can agree but later retract your agreement. I don't know what an un-retractable consent would look like in a contract...
It's rape when there is no consent. The contract gave consent. The question is whether you may take away consent from a contract like you can without a contract. As in, in life you can say "well, I've changed my mind" right before you start. If the contract says "I agree to do such and such", then it is akin to real life, where you can agree but later retract your agreement. I don't know what an un-retractable consent would look like in a contract...
it's a promise of consent but as we all know, promises aren't enforceable, so if woman decides she doesn't want sex, that's it. Human will is always higher than paper. You can't sell your will. Paper only makes a record of that will, so that the damages could be extracted if she fails to comply.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
"I don't care about property..."
What you're actually saying is you don't care about people or their free will.
"I just believe that contracts (that were not signed in duress) are voluntary by nature and thus should be enforceable, whatever the conditions of the contract are."
Then either you can't tell the difference between suing for damages and rape, or you can tell the difference and don't care, in which case I would recommend a good psychoanalyist.
"Another insult, and you'll be given a temp-ban, Birthday Pony."
But of course. I wouldn't want to reflect poorly on the civil nature of this community. And I understand how heavy the banhammer can be. It's a good thing you don't just let in thugs that will insult women and support rape with no cause. If we stay civil, we can let the civil misogynists take us from A to B in a logical manner.
I repeat my question. How can regulatory agencies in free society work if they can't require contracts with physical punishment in case of failure?
1) A contract that you can not enforce behind relevant power structures of sociological expectations is nothing but a piece of paper and an error of entrepreneurial judgement.
That said what's all this talk of punishment? Is this a legal question or a moral one - you people seem to be confused. I am pretty sure I have now seen both terms used. Either case you speak nonsense, these things are practiced arts not science, logic, or anything like that.
And once again you are ignoring the fact that rape is by definition illegal, making any thought you had in this logical void , with these unreal people, in this non extant society even more frivolous. Of course I don't know what universe you created, how the laws of physics work, or whatever - so anyhing is possible I guess.
2) Why would you keep badgering someone who is obviously distressed by you? Is that civil?
Are you capable of at least seeing that you are bringing up a reactionary (and it is reactionary), generally repulsive (and hence uncivil), and non pressing (possibly even non extant) position to anything in Austrian science is a bit distressing - and capable of being counter productive to outside enquirers (such as BP)? Honestly. you would do just as good as bringing up conspiracies and Holocaust denial.
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
Even if you're a contract or property absolutist, you could draw the line way before rape.
In the event of any contract being breached, the offending party can be taken to court and go through a process of arbitration that can result in the defense paying damages to the plantiff, in some form or another. I even find that position to mock any notion of free will or individual autonomy, but at least it doesn't justify rape. At that, this isn't the first time I've seen you argue in defense of rape, and that certainly says something about your priorities (and not to mention your respect for people, or possibly your respect for yourself). My guess is that your notion of a "free" society is not one that anyone other than rapists and other psychopaths would recognize as anywhere near ideal.
There is still something to be said about the less "hardcore" solution that doesn't justify rape as still having only a fleeting notion of what free choice really is. It just looks like a good cop, bad cop game of theory, where at least such-and-such doesn't justify rape. Although, to be fair, no one here has suggested as much, so maybe no one supports that.
That brings us to the position that the woman in this scenario could just walk away, unharmed with no reprecussion. I agree, but that position does make the foundation of the dominant philosophy here quite a bit shaky. Why the situation isn't analogous to other contracts (such as labor contracts) where there is no property involved is something that has to be answered to, and why self-ownership is really an accurate description of one's free will has to be answer to as well.
Birthday Pony: Even if you're a contract or property absolutist, you could draw the line way before rape. I even find that position to mock any notion of free will or individual autonomy, but at least it doesn't justify rape.
I even find that position to mock any notion of free will or individual autonomy, but at least it doesn't justify rape.
how can you differentiate between these two things is unknown... If we are talkin about free will as individual autonomy (the right to choose, decide what's best for you etc.) then rape completely falls into that category, meaning that, anything, that mocks notion of individual autonomy justifies rape, murder and any other personal physical or emotional abuse. But I'd really be interested in your way to mock that ;) It's like being against murder but pro-war... a contradiction. Or like being agains theft but pro-taxes... you get my drift, i hope...
Well, that's pretty much my point. Even if you have the same position, but instead would like to "punish" violations with a slap on the wrist instead of physical trauma, you're not really getting the picture. Personally, I'd rather talk with someone with a disastrous theory that still finds rape repulsive, but from a theorhetical standpoint, it's just cherry picking and playing nice.
mikachusetts: Wesker1982:Are you asking me to explain why rape is worse than theft, or why murder is worse than stealing bubble gum? Well, yes. I want to know why those things are objectively so, and not subject to individual valuations.
Wesker1982:Are you asking me to explain why rape is worse than theft, or why murder is worse than stealing bubble gum?
Well, yes. I want to know why those things are objectively so, and not subject to individual valuations.
Since no one answered my question yet, I'll repeat it:
How can regulatory agencies in free society work if they can't require contracts with physical punishment in case of failure?
Thanks.
Eugene, I did answer your question. Whether your solution or the alternative to physical trauma can be described as libertarian to any degree is questionable.
"Physical violence violating one's property in himself is worse because without self-ownerhship, no rights to other property could exist."
@wesker This is more of a remark on self-ownership alone than it is anything else. The idea of 'property in yourself' is probably what leads people to insane conclusions like 'voluntary' slavery. The marker of property is that it can be exchanged, traded, and more or less alienated, which is not something you can do to yourself. That the notion of a slave contract contradicts itself is not an argument against slave contracts, but also self-ownership as "property in one's self."
If by self-ownership you mean authority in yourself or individual autonomy, then the least signigicant question is if self-ownership is an accurate description, and the more relevant question is how control over yourself leads to alienable control over property.
The same way a regulatory agency, or anything else along legal lines wouldn't work - custom allows it to exist.
How many ways can people phrase that you simply are not asking proper questions, posing proper propositions, or constructing a logical form that one can actually apply to reality. Legalism is not science; reward, contract, and punishment have very little meaning in the void - and there is no way any of us can wrap our heads on how murder or whatever could be legal due to the nature of it's definition. The phrase "To murder within contract" can only be seen as a contradiction of terms - and in it's own nature gibberish.
Fun Fact: In terms of juriprudence...we can not say what punishment, contract, or rape are...but that they are.
Eugene: Since no one answered my question yet, I'll repeat it: How can regulatory agencies in free society work if they can't require contracts with physical punishment in case of failure? Thanks.
oh, there are at least few ways (do not remember them all now). Ostracism is one of the peacful ways that I always advocate when have a chance, hehe. have you read Stef's "Practical Anarchy" for example? It's very easy to read and understandable, give it a try, it's free. And there are much more books about how free society can enforce contracts without violence (I mean hear direct physical punishment or putting people in a cage).
Maik, let's say I owe you 1 million dollars. In order to pay you I have to work all my life, which basically means I will be your slave for the rest of my life. How is that better than prison?
@BP - just curious, why do you think you can't alienate the self?
@vive - are you suggesting Hoppe's rights derivations are complete bunk?
Literally speaking, you simply can't. It's not a matter of opinion. At all times in all places you are the ultimate authority over your actions, thoughts, and emotions.
Technically true, but who says that you can't sign the title to someone else? Just because someone steals my TV and flies over to some place in Zimbabwe doesn't make him the rightful owner. He does have de-facto control over all that it will do, but it doesn't mean that he is the jut owner.
Control is not the same as ownership. Look at LLCs for a quick examples.
Wheylous, you've touched on exactly my point.
Whatever it is that one has over themselves, it's not ownership. Unlike a TV, humans are only able to perform an action, and answer to the consequeces of that action, by the command of one person: themselves. A TV can have mutlitple users. Nothing moves from the individual without their moving.
Whatever it is that one has over themselves, it's not ownership.
I don't see how this follows. I may own a pet fish without being able to fully control it. I may own a roomba without knowing how to program it.
And technically, people can be controlled by sticking electrodes in them. We can even read brain signals and use them to control prosthetic arms. So the ownership/control veil is fading even in practicality.
Until science reaches the point where people (and not their prosthetic counter parts) can actually be controlled, that's a pretty lame example. That's not to say that there aren't very complex methods of control around, but that free will is something individuals always have, or it's at the very least something that they should rightfully be able to exercise.
Yes, at best it simply isn't morality or anything but a language qualifier to either dispel nonsense or detect if someone is speaking "libertarian". I don't thibnk it even fits the technical definition of ethics or legal theory - it is simply a means to an end to achieve something...though I don't feel like arguing that second point because I don't really care if Hoppe is technically in an already useless category.
Look, it is best to dispel and cast off any and all talks about rights, morality, and the "right kind of legal theory". It is drifting so far out into loopy territories any college prof, acadmation, liberal(which we are), philosopher, legal theorist, or whatever is going to look at you like your nuts, and rightfully so...because all of this stuff has been disproven 1000 different ways since Prothagoras and has been mainstream (and correct) thought for over 200 years. You can have no philosophy or theory hinge on such notions.
There is not a syllogism or category that exists that is pertent to reality, as we are outside of science. I can promise you this is for the best; Paul Krugman, Knight, Arrow, Hayek, Mises, Menger, Schumpeter, Milton Friedman, and on and on with liberal economists of various stripes would look at you like you were from the 9th floor of the hospital if you used this as the linchpin to your thinking.
Let's just take the Misean and traditional liberal way and worry about radical empiricism in an inter-subjective world (which is Human Action) and look at the logical structures and consequences of the actions - concerning ourselves with what can and can not be said (interestingly this is all proably going to be a type of synonomous language for neodarwinian thought by default - so anyone looking for economics to fit into evolutionary structures already has it wrong and backwords - it should automatically alaign because that is just how the world "is") . There is no profit or sense in creating empty universes and situations in your head that don't exist...and there is certainly no good to come out of worrying about empty "buzz words" and sensationalism if one is here to learn about Austrian methods and ways of thinking with it's application to science, and hence the real extant world.
@BP - you still need to provide reasoning behind control being the same thing as ownership. Just because I may be able to control your chainsaw while murdering you doesn't mean that I own it.
@vive - "There is no profit or sense in creating ... situations in your head that don't exist"
Sort of like starting a new business?
"you still need to provide reasoning behind control being the same thing as ownership. Just because I may be able to control your chainsaw while murdering you doesn't mean that I own it."
I'm not saying that control is ownership. I'm saying that humans are not comparable to chainsaws.
I can write a novel about unicorns, or sell unicorn insurance. However a unicorn doesn't fit into any language that science can support and if people said unicorns existed on a scientific biological level there is nothing in epistemology or ontology that would support the claim on any intersubjective level.
Ahh what luck von Mises himself on todays daily about the uselessness of worrying about non things and useless subjective buzz words words as things:
http://mises.org/daily/5608/The-Revolt-against-Rationalism
Thats theprecise argument for state not voluntary society. We want to negate or minimize violence even if a few people don't get their moneys worth.
Eugene:Since no one answered my question yet, I'll repeat it: How can regulatory agencies in free society work if they can't require contracts with physical punishment in case of failure?
Aside from the fact that the concept of "work" is purely arbitrary, I will tell you this: I as a consumer in the economy can base my future decisions on how other people deal with the contracts they make -- regardless of whether breaches of those contracts are enforced in any particular way.
In other words, if I see somebody violate a contract, I may choose to never do business with him nor any of his business associates nor with his family nor with his friends. I do not care about how the contract violation is handled. My future decision will be the same.
So, such a society may "work" simply by making contract violations publicly known. That could be enough. To tie this in with the OP, I would say that is how most people deal with such problems. I mean, who wants to date a person who has a neurotic track record of marrying for money and or having kids with people they do not love? People are ostracized based on their baggage whether they like it or not. It works for some.
What if I post a sign on my door saying that everyone who will be caught stealing will be shot. That would be an implicit contract with a physical punishment clause. Would that according to you be illegal?
No, putting up a sign would not be illegal.
However, if you put up that sign, I think it would work. It would work to warn people to stay away from you and never do business with you. How you would possibly be able to survive as a hermit, I can not imagine but being a hermit is not illegal.
God forbid you should actually shoot somebody! People would actually hear it and know for sure that they should stay away from you!
It is illegal. It's not proportional punishment.
Charles Anthony:It would work to warn people to stay away from you and never do business with you.
So on a free planet, one's ability to rape and murder would only be limitied by his ability to move away from the localities that are about to ostracize him for it?
In a positive sense, that is correct, z. However, if you are asking in a normative sense -- i.e., Is it morally correct for you to rape and murder and torture and pillage if your ability to move away etc. etc.? -- I would of course say no.
I am not claiming it is morally correct behavior for a libertarian. All I am claiming is that it could work and I explained how it could work. The purpose of my response was to clue in to the Eugene how it might work whereby nobody initiates aggression even though this sign is still posted on this wacko's front door.
From an analytical stand point, this wacko and his sign are essentially non-actors or inanimate objects. We would be wise to treat them as if they were wild animals. Thus, the latest question posted by Eugene is no more complicated than asking: What if I post a sign on my door saying that this house is not structurally sound. Everyone who enters will likely fall through the floor and die crashing to the basement. That would be an implicit contract with a physical punishment clause. Would that according to you be illegal?
Sorry, I forgot to respond to this.
Wheylous:As the conclusion of that thread seems to decide, you can turn over titles in the future and have these be legally/ethically enforced. To me, a "promise" and a "transfer of title in the future" are equivalent and the issue boils down to semantics. I concede that I don't mind using the technical jargon of "transfer of title." Please correct me if I misunderstand that thread.
Please correct me if I misunderstand that thread.
A transfer of title in the future necessarily means that no transfer of title has occurred yet. So I fail to see how, under a contract where two parties agree to exchange both the property titles and the properties themselves in the future, that contract is enforceable in the absence of any transfer of ownership. Keep in mind that a transfer of ownership involves, at the very least, a transfer of title.
Regarding that thread, I think a good conclusion for it is in Clayton's last post there:
Clayton:I don't think Rothbard actually makes a distinction between the enforceability transfers and exchanges (two-way transfer) as RD was thinking. Personally, I see no reason why a transfer should not be enforceable. If I give you the title to my car (even if for nothing in return), the car is yours. If I later refuse to give you the actual car itself, then that should be treated as theft.
The key thing to remember here is that possession does not necessarily entail ownership. In fact, possession is neither a necessary nor always a sufficient condition for it. But regardless, Clayton's phrase "[i]f I give you the title to my car" refers to transfer of title in the present, not in the future.
With this in mind, a key innovation - which makes things like performance bonds possible - is the notion of the conditional title. Basically what a conditional title does is change the nature of the ownership, such that it falls to one party if a (simple or compound) condition is met and falls to the other party otherwise. So in the case of a performance bond, this is like saying "the ownership of this $100,000 is now such that the contractor owns it under successful completion of the contract and the contractee owns it otherwise". Maybe a better way of expressing this is transformation of title rather than transfer of title.
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Alright. You support this construct? It seems quite useful, though I'm not exactly sure where it comes from.
Yes, I support it. What's not to support? :P
Performance bonds are a very ancient concept, first attested around 2750 BC. They're really just a form of surety bond. Another way of looking at surety bonds (including performance bonds) is that they're essentially contract insurance. However, I think the word "bond" is instructive, because a bond is a debt obligation. Technically, people who enter into rental agreements often enter into performance bonds, except in that context they're called "security deposits".
Just because they're old concepts it doesn't mean they're a good thing. I'm thinking of how to frame them in terms of property contract theory.
For example, I wonder whether you can make "conditional back contracts" (what I call them). As in "I will have given all of my possessions to my son if I die", which goes back in time and creates a transfer or property in the past.
Wheylous:Just because they're old concepts it doesn't mean they're a good thing.
Don't get me wrong - I wasn't making an appeal to tradition. But you were wondering how they came about, so I thought I'd give you some information there.
Wheylous:I'm thinking of how to frame them in terms of property contract theory. For example, I wonder whether you can make "conditional back contracts" (what I call them). As in "I will have given all of my possessions to my son if I die", which goes back in time and creates a transfer or property in the past.
I think a more accurate way to put it would be "My ownership of my property is now such that it will pass to my son in the event of my death." So again we see that wills are just another form of conditional title.
@Euguene "Maik, let's say I owe you 1 million dollars. In order to pay you I have to work all my life, which basically means I will be your slave for the rest of my life. How is that better than prison?"
It is likely that someone who is making a $1,000,000 transaction with you would make sure you had insurance. Your insurance would pay the victim, covering all or part of the cost. There are ways to encourage you to pay them back without violence.
If you owed someone one million dollars where no contract was made (theft or property damage), you would find it impossible to get insurance coverage without working out some sort of agreement to pay the victim back. Someone that is impossible to insure would effectively be ostracized since no one would have any guarantees when doing business with him.
"let's say I owe you 1 million dollars." and other extreme situations are irrelevant, just as life boat situations. Too little information on how you went in such huge debt, why I borrowed you 1 million at all and many other factors... Also, you have to put this situation in context. What society we are talking about, statism or market anarchism? Too many variables. I can assume, you would be required to re-pay the money in small steps in for example, 10 or 50 years. Slavery would be if I forced you to give all your earnings and kept you chained in my basement. Otherwise, it's just voluntary debt, your personal failure at life. Bad for you.
Sure, I can forgive this debt, but I am not required to. Now, you are either responsible for your actions or you are not and wait for some higher authority to decide how this must be done.