Let's say I was uninsured and I accidently ruined an extremely expensive piece of equipment, worth 10 million dollars. I don't have the money to pay for it. Do you think it should be legitimate for the owner of the equipment to force me to work until I pay for the piece of equipment, even if it takes my entire life?
What if it was worth 10 dollars. Would you even be asking this question?
why not?
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No, he should not. I'm curious, though, as to why you would not be working anyway, so as to feed yourself and such.
That's an interesting question. I guess that depends if a contract was signed prior to employment that stated whether the employee would be responsible. If not, then it's the risk that the owner takes. If I was that employee, I would just walk away.
it's the risk that the owner takes
So as long as I don't sign any contract with anyone I can break their stuff?
Good luck to that employer in finding workers willing to be employed by him.
I didn't say it was an employer-employee relationship. You just accidently ruined a piece of equipment of someone else.
Do you say that it is legitimate for the owner of that equipment to force me to work all my life to return the value of that equipment?
What if you had to work all of 2 hours to return the value of that equipment? Would you still be asking this question?
I don't know John. Can you answer my question first?
Eugene:Let's say I was uninsured and I accidently ruined an extremely expensive piece of equipment, worth 10 million dollars. I don't have the money to pay for it. Do you think it should be legitimate for the owner of the equipment to force me to work until I pay for the piece of equipment, even if it takes my entire life?
No, in practice there would be some opportunity for personal bankruptcy.
Why do you believe such opportunity is just? After all, you have to pay the victim for the damages.
Well, it's part of the contract from the beginning. Business partners are essentially making a contract with a certain legal alias, not a flesh and blood human being. So a person can 'leave' that legal alias like a company can go bankrupt. No legal obligation is going to follow you to the grave. It's like when musicians change their stage names to get out of their old contracts. If the risk of suffering damages is too high, someone can choose to not engage in a transaction. And of course there is always insurance.
@Eugene: JJ is trying to get you to come to a logical conclusion yourself. Answer his question. He's trying to help you
About the bankruptcy thing: I am not sure it would be the same type of bankruptcy as the current ones, but here is what I envision: an "workplace damage insurance" which covers you when you need it.
If the person came on to your property and damaged your equipment you could force them to repay as much as possible. But allowing the person to freely work and pay an affordable sum is much more reasonable and what would probably happen. It is debatable whether having to repay a debt at reasonable terms would be considered slavery. If anything it would be a massive consequence that could prevent damage to your equipment. I guess the person could declare bankruptcy. That is if there is no contract. If there is a contract then it is different. If the equipment is not on your property and you left it freely available for people to use and someone broke it, you would be less likely to be able to get compensation let a lone force someone in to debt slavery.
Also, the problem is 100% avoided if you just include a clause in the contract about damaged equipment requiring a 10% decrease in salary for 2 years or something.
you can beg his pardon!
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
Why would anyone allow you to operate a $10 million piece of uninsured equipment???
Clayton -
Because it happens ALL THE TIME! I juggle expensive centrifuges in combination with gold plated chainsaws while blindfolded and let's be honest...I'm not perfect.
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
Clayton: Why would anyone allow you to operate a $10 million piece of uninsured equipment???
This would be my answer.
So the employer provides you with equipment to do your job. You accidentally ruin it. He makes a call to the insurance company.
Let's look at it from a contractual perspective. X is lending you (Y) a tool he owns to do productive work with. Now, before that happens you both should have terms written down for what happens if there's an accident with the tool, including not just breaking the tool but breaking something others own with the tool.
If the contract says the Y will be liable for both damage to the equipment and other's property, and Y agrees to that. Okay then. But X will have a hard time finding anyone willing to use his equipment under those terms and/or will have to pay an exceedingly high salary. At least enough for Y to find someone to indemnify him against all damages. (Meaning this situation actually only shifts the cost of insurance to the employee instead of the employer).
If the contract says X will be liable in both cases, as long as Y is operating within certain parameters set by X (not high, not drunk, not goofing around, etc.), then Y is not liable, or may only be contributarily liable if he was violating the set parameters, and that would be a matter for a court to decide.
What's really wrong with the scenario you give is that it assumes an implied contract where there should be an explicit one. If a just court were to receive such a case, the judge would do right to yell at X for not having insurance and providing equipment to someone, and yell at Y for not having insurance and agreeing to operate equipment.
A reasonable outcome under such a situation would probably be something like the damage to the equipment to be paid for by X and damage caused to other things by the equipment to be paid for by Y.
I should mention that this question assumes some sort of special relationship between employer and employee, when in fact no such relationship exists. The employee is merely selling his labor to an employer contractually (explicit or implied, tho excplicit is much better). That must be the basis of all such scenarios.
As for "actual slavery" no debt amount results in 100% wage garnishment. You must allow people to live as a precondition for generating income :P So, actual slavery? No.
I'll repeat what I said earlier. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE relationship or any contractual relationship. I am talking about an uninsured person who just happened to accidently break a super expensive piece of equipment lying somewhere, maybe even in somewhat protected place. I don't see how you can just declare bankrupcy, its akin to not paying damages, and that would be unjust.
Like I said, in such a case the damager of the equipment should be sued in court and the court should determine how much of it was the damager's fault.
Contributory negligence would come into play here--what idiot leaves $10m worth of equipment where it can be (let's say) tripped on? Insurance would certainly take that into account. The situation is too vague to make any determination from your description. There shouldn't be anything worth $10m that can be damaged by tripping over it in a public place. That's why people are defaulting to the employee scenario where something like that could be envisioned.
Let's say a judge decides our fictional person intended to destroy X and rules the full amount against him. At this point we're talking wage garnishment and wealth garnishment. We're not talking actual slavery.
Is your question more like, is it legitimate to declare bankruptcy in such a case? I think there may be a case for that. Bankruptcy laws are descended in principle from the ancient Jewish year of Jubilee where all property would revert to the tribes and be distributed.
Eugene:I don't know John. Can you answer my question first?
I'm asking you a clarification question. If your answer is "no, I wouldn't be asking about slavery if the equipment only required 2 hours to pay off", then your whole question is just about the value limit. I'm wondering why the equipment has to cost $10 million. It sounds to me like your question isn't a question of principle, but rather a question of "what's the right number." As in, how much of the damage that someone causes should he be required to repay.
And I'm wondering if you actually think there's a way to determine that which wouldn't be completely arbitrary.
Eugene:I'll repeat what I said earlier. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE relationship or any contractual relationship. I am talking about an uninsured person who just happened to accidently break a super expensive piece of equipment lying somewhere, maybe even in somewhat protected place. I don't see how you can just declare bankrupcy, its akin to not paying damages, and that would be unjust.
Well, through the very act of owning expensive equipment it's partially the owners fault if someone breaks it. Indeed, it would be negligent to own a piece of expensive machinery and not to insure it. It would be like putting up a trap for some unsuspecting citizen to drive into. He can't be held fully responsible, since the owner put it there himself. That's why it would be just to allow for bankruptcy.
But you can trust that legal precedent will gradually figure this out in a libertarian society. There's no need for us to design every detail of the system up front. Maybe there's some aspect we haven't even thought of yet, the market can always figure this out better than we can.
Eugene, remember that destroying a piece of equipment is pretty tough. You might cause $10,000 in damage, but unless you come in with airplanes and bomb the thing, you won't have to pay the full $10 million.
Well, I suppose one could accidentally push a button on a cruise ship which causes it to tip over and sink... But then you have JJ's question. You seem to be making a willful distinction between levels of property that deserve to be restituted.
EmperorNero: But you can trust that legal precedent will gradually figure this out in a libertarian society. There's no need for us to design every detail of the system up front. Maybe there's some aspect we haven't even thought of yet, the market can always figure this out better than we can.
What is this conflation of markets with a libertarian legal system? The two cannot be mixed. There's no such thing as a market for law where legal principles are bought and sold. Legal principles must be reasoned through rationally. So no, we can't trust that they will be gradually figured out, we must think about it rationally first and so would a libertarian society.
I agree with Anenome. The market is a type of democracy, and we know what kind of laws can be created in democracy.
But anarchists (at least here) advocate FREE market, not just market. Because in that sense the state is complete result of a market, like one of my internet friends pointed out.
Note that to achieve your minarchy or our anarchy we would need a thorough reeducation about nonagression anyway, so people will actually be acting in the market in NAP-conscious ways.
Anenome: EmperorNero:But you can trust that legal precedent will gradually figure this out in a libertarian society. There's no need for us to design every detail of the system up front. Maybe there's some aspect we haven't even thought of yet, the market can always figure this out better than we can.What is this conflation of markets with a libertarian legal system? The two cannot be mixed. There's no such thing as a market for law where legal principles are bought and sold. Legal principles must be reasoned through rationally. So no, we can't trust that they will be gradually figured out, we must think about it rationally first and so would a libertarian society.
EmperorNero:But you can trust that legal precedent will gradually figure this out in a libertarian society. There's no need for us to design every detail of the system up front. Maybe there's some aspect we haven't even thought of yet, the market can always figure this out better than we can.
Laws in a libertarian, or rather anarchist, society would not be designed rationally but come to be through legal precedent. Read that David Friedman stuff about conflict resolution agencies. Basically, everything would be private, including the judge, and if you sue someone that decision will become precedent for the next time someone has a similar disagreement. The laws would be shaped informally by what the judges decide. It would be a market in the sense that the laws are made in a evolutionary process, depending on who wins the cases. Nobody designs it.
And Eugene, the market is not a type of democracy. A democracy is a system where one group of people can force another group of people to do what they want. In a market everyone can do what they want themselves.
The point is that if you destroy the state today, people will resolve their conflicts in the way they used to, according to non libertarian principles. People will not suddenly become libertarians just because the state is gone.
I don't think you noticed my previous post.
EmperorNero: Laws in a libertarian, or rather anarchist, society would not be designed rationally but come to be through legal precedent.
Laws in a libertarian, or rather anarchist, society would not be designed rationally but come to be through legal precedent.
Legal precedent of what, exactly. An anarchist society can't have anything defined truly as law, for it has no enforcement mechanism. Any court using coercion without consent of the governed to arrest people is just aggressing against them. Nor could it ethically pronounce judgement, much less enforce those judgments. It would have no legal power to sieze property, accounts, or to jail.
EmperorNero:Read that David Friedman stuff about conflict resolution agencies. Basically, everything would be private, including the judge, and if you sue someone that decision will become precedent for the next time someone has a similar disagreement.
Only in theory. There's nothing to prevent another court from deciding anything they want in an anarchist society.
Common law developed within an ordered, jurisdictioned society. To think it can simply work in an anarchist one is a reach. An anarchist society is more than likely to have sham courts. How do you deal with that.
EmperorNero:It would be a market in the sense that the laws are made in a evolutionary process, depending on who wins the cases. Nobody designs it.
Suppose it's a sham court, who do you appeal to? Common law arose in a legal context. Anarchist law and courts by definition have no legal context.
Eugene:The point is that if you destroy the state today, people will resolve their conflicts in the way they used to, according to non libertarian principles. People will not suddenly become libertarians just because the state is gone.
Without a legal system to resolve disputes, they'll be resolved by force.
Want to see what an anarchist justice system looks like? One need look no further than the Hatfields and McCoys.
A legal system without a monopoly on coercion within society is incapable of enforcing justice and will be ignored and ineffective.
Any court using coercion without consent of the governed to arrest people is just aggressing against them
What the heck is consent of the governed?
There's nothing to prevent another court from deciding anything they want in an anarchist society.
What prevents people from setting up their own sham courts right now and making odd rulings? What prevents the government itself from doing this?
Anenome: EmperorNero: Laws in a libertarian, or rather anarchist, society would not be designed rationally but come to be through legal precedent. Legal precedent of what, exactly. An anarchist society can't have anything defined truly as law, for it has no enforcement mechanism. Any court using coercion without consent of the governed to arrest people is just aggressing against them. Nor could it ethically pronounce judgement, much less enforce those judgments. It would have no legal power to sieze property, accounts, or to jail. EmperorNero:Read that David Friedman stuff about conflict resolution agencies. Basically, everything would be private, including the judge, and if you sue someone that decision will become precedent for the next time someone has a similar disagreement. Only in theory. There's nothing to prevent another court from deciding anything they want in an anarchist society. Common law developed within an ordered, jurisdictioned society. To think it can simply work in an anarchist one is a reach. An anarchist society is more than likely to have sham courts. How do you deal with that. EmperorNero:It would be a market in the sense that the laws are made in a evolutionary process, depending on who wins the cases. Nobody designs it. Suppose it's a sham court, who do you appeal to? Common law arose in a legal context. Anarchist law and courts by definition have no legal context.
So what you are saying is that there can be no market for legal norms because it could not work for practical reasons? Nobody can be trusted, and therefore people would screw you over rather than letting any stable legal precedent establish itself.
Well, doesn't the same apply to a free market in goods and services? Why does the price system, which apparently manages to be accurate enough to allocate resources for billions of people, not collapse due to all the charlatans who wish to screw you over?
Wheylous:What the heck is consent of the governed?
It means that for example a private court could not enforce any ruling without the consent of the subjects, otherwise it would initiate force, which means it's not free market. To have a free market legal system, people have to consent beforehand that the rulings will be enforced, that way it's not initiation of force any more but enforcement of a voluntary contract.