So, we libertarians pretty much accept the fact that tacit contracts do exist (or at least it seems that way from my reading of Kinsella's Against Intellectual Property and some Walter Block lectures). Yet, on the flip side, there are some we agree are entirely illegitimate (the social contract, for example).
The question I'm bringing up for discussion is, then:
What are the limits of tacit/implied contracts? What criteria do we use to determine if they are just or unjust?
And, if you wish, tackle associated problems like how would they be handled in a free society, etc. etc.
Wheylous:promises are not legally enforceable in libertarian society
This is one of the few positions of Rothbard that I disagree with. If there is an agreement, there is a contract, in my opinion. I don't think it makes sense to require specific words, because that is getting caught up in formalism. An agreement is an ethereal thing. Simply because certain words are spoken, written, or not does not prove a contract one way or another. They can be evidence of a contract, but not proof. I think Kinsella >> Rothbard on this. Kinsella's work on this is probably available on this site.
Wheylous:Yet breaking implicit contracts is not fraud because no title was transferred.
You are assuming as true that which is yet to be demonstrated. Whether an implicit contract can transfer title is the point under contention, no? Or one of them, at any rate.
Wheylous:There might have been some common sense agreement, but that rests on the good will of society.
I don't think you meant to say this as it was written. A commonsense agreement rests on the two minds involved, and nothing more.
Wheylous:Naturally, as I've said before, traditional implicit contracts which make sense in everyday life such as restaurant dining would be followed through by most people anyway.
Right, but we are necessarily dealing with those instances where an agreement was not adhered to. It is no good to wave away the problem of rape by saying that 99.9% of sexual encounters are consensual. We must still deal with that 0.1%.
If someone enters a restaurant, dines and dashes, is the restaurant within its rights to threaten and even use violence to recover damages. I think the answer has to be yes, in the vast majority of instances. If someone from an uncontacted Brazilian rain forest tribe somehow wandered into American society, entered a restaurant and then ate, it could probably be succesfully argued that there was no contract. But this could not be true of an American citizen, who damn well knows under what conditions he is being served the food. There is an agreement, which is what a contract is, even if there is no verbal communication.
The heart of a contract is the agreement. The verbal communication facilitates, in most cases, the forging of the agreement, but absent the communication, if there is still an agreement, then there is a contract.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under - Mencken
I think Kinsella >> Rothbard on this. Kinsella's work on this is probably available on this site.
I dare say every article of Kinsella's that I read which brushed on the topic began with a reminder that Rothbards 'title transfer' theory of contract is superior to other formulations (chiefly the 'promise theory') so I must say I'm suprised at this statement.
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
Can I have some links to some of Kinsella's works? I've heard of Against IP, but not many others.
To many—even to many libertarians—it seems elementary and obvious: if you promise to do something, you may be forced to do it. Some libertarians and laymen assume that an individual has some power or ability to legally “bind” or obligate himself by simply promising to do something. However, this assumption is groundless. Not all promises are enforceable, nor should they be.
DarylLloydDavis: If many libertarians believe that speech does not constitute an initiation of aggression and therefore does not justify retaliatory aggression, does this mean that one does not have the right to take a death threat seriously--to wrest a knife from another hand, or to shoot first? That would be a pretty dysfunctional interpretation of liberties.
The relevant note here is that Speech is (generally) nonaggressive this is allowing for the fact that a threat when credible is to be interpreted as an aggressive act, an initiation of aggression.
Speech is (generally) nonaggressive
Glad to hear it. I don't consider myself a libertarian; but the way Ron Paul talks, one might conclude that Israel doesn't have the right to take the Iranian leader's threats to wipe it off the map seriously. But at what point is a threat a "credible" threat? And who gets to decide that issue?
Just for you Daryl You're good. That answers that. I must have been listening to the liberal characterizations of his positions. But that still leaves the question of whether one is free to take any threat literally; or if a duty to weigh the probabilities of its being carried through is required. (By the way, how do you quote in this forum? Sorry, newbie.)
Just for you Daryl
You're good. That answers that. I must have been listening to the liberal characterizations of his positions. But that still leaves the question of whether one is free to take any threat literally; or if a duty to weigh the probabilities of its being carried through is required. (By the way, how do you quote in this forum? Sorry, newbie.)
About Quoting :
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/18184.aspx
DarylLloydDavis:But that still leaves the question of whether one is free to take any threat literally
Daryl - look at the causal chain. Why might other nations be angry at Isreal?
nirgrahamUK
I definitely asked the right person about the quoting function. Thanks a second time. I'll try it later: I'm tech-challenged.
But I still don't believe it's sufficient to leave the term "credible" to the eye of the beholder, so to speak. And I wonder whether a state has the right to act in its collective self-defense, according to libertarian principles.
Wheylous:
I agree with Ron Paul that Israel ought to sink or swim on its own--that no country should receive our yearly financial support. I was apparently under the false impression that Paul completely sided with Iran against Israel, though; and I wondered how Iran's threats against Israel changed the equation, in the context of libertarian idealogy.
nirgrahamUK:I dare say every article of Kinsella's that I read which brushed on the topic began with a reminder that Rothbards 'title transfer' theory of contract is superior to other formulations (chiefly the 'promise theory') so I must say I'm suprised at this statement.
He's very much in favor of title transfer. It's the wording issue where he parts with Rothbard. Rothbard was a stickler for making sure everything is worded correctly; Kinsella says, correctly, that the wording is not as important as whether an agreement was reached.
that still leaves the question of whether one is free to take any threat literally
You can't kill your friend if he's playing with you and happens to say, "oh man, I'll kill you." So yes, you have to use reason to establish whether a threat was meant seriously or not. I don't think this should be too difficult or prevalent anyway...
And I wonder whether astate has the right to act in its collective self-defense, according to libertarian principles.
Wheylous
you have to use reason
For all too many that's no easy guidepost. Do min/ancaps both believe in the legitimacy of judges, juries and jails?
According to minarchists, yes. Not according to Anarcho-capitalists like myself, though.
Do you believe that Ron Paul is the former or the latter? And do you object to voting, yourself--for him, or at all?