Stolz25: Brainpolice:Unless one is a masochist, it cannot be said that an act of violence can be consented to. An act of violence inherently is not consented to by the person who the violence is being used against. Guess UFC is done for in a libertarian society.
Brainpolice:Unless one is a masochist, it cannot be said that an act of violence can be consented to. An act of violence inherently is not consented to by the person who the violence is being used against.
Guess UFC is done for in a libertarian society.
That's a non-sequitor. It would fall under my definition of masochism technically. Mutual masochism.
scineram: These are nonsequiturs, guys.
These are nonsequiturs, guys.
Yes, all of them are nonsequitors. Thankyou.
Thedesolateone: There seems to be some bollocks floating around here, but maybe I have misunderstood the concept of ownership. I was under the impression that owning something implied the right to divulge one's self of said object should one be so disposed. Thus, if there is a "self" which owns the body, then, yes, certainly, ownership of the body could be transferred. However, this brings in the question of mind/body dualism. I think BP's two blog posts on the subject dealt with this fairly well. Viewing the body and mind (/soul) as one is firstly more coherent, and secondly allows us a less cloudy vision of what it means to own. With this idea in place, there are clear logical problems with transferring ownership of one's person. Who is doing the selling? Moreover, seeing as one's person instantly the property of the new owner, equally, the money paid for the transferral of ownership would fall instantly into the new owner's hands; the new owner has paid nothing. My biggest problem with the argument I have just made, is the fact that one can clearly rent one's person (e.g. labour, prostitution).
There seems to be some bollocks floating around here, but maybe I have misunderstood the concept of ownership. I was under the impression that owning something implied the right to divulge one's self of said object should one be so disposed. Thus, if there is a "self" which owns the body, then, yes, certainly, ownership of the body could be transferred. However, this brings in the question of mind/body dualism. I think BP's two blog posts on the subject dealt with this fairly well.
Viewing the body and mind (/soul) as one is firstly more coherent, and secondly allows us a less cloudy vision of what it means to own. With this idea in place, there are clear logical problems with transferring ownership of one's person. Who is doing the selling? Moreover, seeing as one's person instantly the property of the new owner, equally, the money paid for the transferral of ownership would fall instantly into the new owner's hands; the new owner has paid nothing.
My biggest problem with the argument I have just made, is the fact that one can clearly rent one's person (e.g. labour, prostitution).
Right, but renting out your labor is not literal ownership over your body.
pairunoyd: im not trolling. Ive asked this question for over a year and get no answer.
im not trolling. Ive asked this question for over a year and get no answer.
Your question is rhetorical trick.
RogueMerc: krazy kaju:Now, if slavery is the ownership of one person over another, and if self-ownership is axiomatic, then how can there be "voluntary" slavery? Simple. If you agree to sell your all your rights to someone in exchange for x or y indefinitely, then that is a particular case.
krazy kaju:Now, if slavery is the ownership of one person over another, and if self-ownership is axiomatic, then how can there be "voluntary" slavery?
Simple. If you agree to sell your all your rights to someone in exchange for x or y indefinitely, then that is a particular case.
Rights are not bought and sold, they are inalienable by natural rights theory. I've already explained this pages back.
is masochism a legal term in natural law, or is it just a pschological/opinion evaluation thats personal to you.
if the latter, then you launched the original king of all non-sequiturs on this thread
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
You could construct an axiom of self-ownership but for it to be applicable you would first have to show that there is a duality of the self. Without first demonstrating mind/body dualism the axiom is meaningless. In fact, many ideas on self ownership simply lead to a regress of the self owning the self owning the self and so on.
Brainpolice: RogueMerc: krazy kaju:Now, if slavery is the ownership of one person over another, and if self-ownership is axiomatic, then how can there be "voluntary" slavery? Simple. If you agree to sell your all your rights to someone in exchange for x or y indefinitely, then that is a particular case. Rights are not bought and sold, they are inalienable by natural rights theory. I've already explained this pages back.
People even today will sign a contract for work, saying that they will work for xyz period of time, for abc compensation. The scenario I portrayed would be in which one were to extend xyz period of time to that persons lifetime and that abc compensation would be zero.
What would you call this scenario?
RogueMerc: People even today will sign a contract for work, saying that they will work for xyz period of time, for abc compensation. The scenario I portrayed would be in which one were to extend xyz period of time to that persons lifetime and that abc compensation would be zero. What would you call this scenario?
BP says you can break the contract i.e., you retain your ability to consent (or not consent).
Right?
"The best way to bail out the economy is with liberty, not with federal reserve notes." - pairunoyd
"The vision of the Austrian must be greater than the blindness of the sheeple." - pairunoyd
Wouldn't that be breach of contract?
certainly anything that the contract itself states about its own dissolutionment would be very relevant. i.e. breaking penalties consented to at the initiation of the contract
RogueMerc:Wouldn't that be breach of contract?
Yes, he would be a breach baby and would receive a demerit. His ostracization would depend upon the import society places on said breach.
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
Juan:I'm late to the party, but, isn't "self-ownership" a metaphor of sorts, not to be taken literally ? Self-ownership is another way to say that such a thing as natural rights exists ?
i imagine different people have their own pet definitions to suit their purposes. I would probably say my personal interpretation is just that its short hand for saying that, you assume that if there is a rational body, it is a sovereign moral agent so long as there is no evidence that it has freely enterred into contractual obligations towards other moral agents that would impinge that sovereignty.
pairunoyd: RogueMerc:Wouldn't that be breach of contract? Yes, he would be a breach baby and would receive a demerit. His ostracization would depend upon the import society places on said breach.
Yes, the critical issue is if you believe penalties in contracts can be enforced. If you don't like your quote above indicates then there is no possibility of a slave contract because there is no enforcement of contracts and you are relying only on ostracization. By BP's definition almost any contract related to labor becomes a slave contract. For example if a contract says that if you don't perform the work you will go to jail becomes impossible.
Maxliberty:By BP's definition almost any contract related to labor becomes a slave contract. For example if a contract says that if you don't perform the work you will go to jail becomes impossible.
Unless of course you're being contracted for entertainment purposes, i.e., pretending to labor and pretending to be in a cage against your will. Then we know you're just funning and you're allowed to continue honing your higher art.
Wouldn't a person that could be thrown into jail for breaching a contract have an economic advantage? Wouldn't the demand for such contractors be greater than the demand for unincarcerable contractors (parties)?
Maxliberty:By BP's definition almost any contract related to labor becomes a slave contract.
Not this garbage again.
Maxliberty:For example if a contract says that if you don't perform the work you will go to jail becomes impossible.
Because not abbiding by that contract is not an act of aggression. A contract itself is meaningless outside the concept of property ownership. Unless ownership has been breached, you have no enforceable claim against someone.
Can't the ability to hold one's self more accountable add value to one's property, property being one's self? If I agree to be enslaved for X time and agree to beatings if I breach the contract, wouldn't this give me more value than the guy that only has to walk away from his obligations? If one man's skills are more employable than mine, this inducement might allow me to compete against him.
How about an anarcho-capitalist society?
The original premise is flawed. If a slave wanted to be a slave then they are not a slave by definition. Slavery implies that you 'own' someone against their will. If they want to be your servent and do whatever you want then they are not a slave. It's simple, really.
justinx0r: The original premise is flawed. If a slave wanted to be a slave then they are not a slave by definition. Slavery implies that you 'own' someone against their will. If they want to be your servent and do whatever you want then they are not a slave. It's simple, really.
Did you take a look at the scenario I portrayed before? The one where the guy agrees to sell himself a lifetime of service for no money?
question begging. slavery could simply mean, that person A can fully dictate to person B what actions B can and cant take. this says little about the two possible wills.
It's still not slavery because it's voluntary.
justinx0r: It's still not slavery because it's voluntary.
The question is if there is breach of contract if the "slave" does not want to be a slave after a certain period of time.
"The underlying point of the libertarian critique is that if I own something, I can sell it (and should be allowed by law to do so). If I can’t sell it, then, and to that extent, I really don’t own it. Take my own liberty as perhaps the paradigm case of the debate over inalienability. The claim is that if I really own my liberty, then I should be free to dispose of it as I please, even if, by so doing, I end up no longer owning it." - Walter Block
"The underlying point of the libertarian critique is that if I own something, I can sell it (and should be allowed by law to do so). If I can’t sell it, then, and to that extent, I really don’t own it. Take my own liberty as perhaps the paradigm case of the debate over inalienability. The claim is that if I really own my liberty, then I should be free to dispose of it as I please, even if, by so doing, I end up no longer owning it."
- Walter Block
Yes. I take the viewpoint that self-ownership is a bad metaphor for a good concept (personal/individual sovereignty, I.E. an ethical concept).
Not supporting one side or another on this, but I have a question. If we're assuming the mind/body (thoughts/actions) are one, then how do I have any right to dontate my organs when I die? Technically, since my mind is dead, I am dead, and I no longer own my body to give away my organs.
I suppose this case would be, say if I die, and my family doesnt want my organs to be donated, yet I wished them to be. What is the correct result?
It depends on the situation. If you signed a contract saying you would be someones servent for 3 years you would be obligated to serve it out.
It makes more sense to me if someone wants out of a contract and doesn't have the wherewithal to satisfy the contract then the contract should only be broken if the other party allows it or if a 3rd party chooses to purchase the contract. One may enter into enslavement because without it their alternative may be loss of life due to dire circumstances. Life can have a high price and if there are no other parties extending them better life-sustaining alternatives, why should such a contract be unavailable? What good is a naked, starving abolitionist?
and what if someone recontracted into slavery upon each emancipation? How many times will the abolitionist reemancipate them?
justinx0r:It depends on the situation. If you signed a contract saying you would be someones servent for 3 years you would be obligated to serve it out.
What creates this obligation? Them signing a peice of paper?
banned:What creates this obligation? Them signing a peice of paper?
first lets ask, what creates any obligation?
banned: justinx0r:It depends on the situation. If you signed a contract saying you would be someones servent for 3 years you would be obligated to serve it out. What creates this obligation? Them signing a peice of paper?
The voluntary exchanging of promises between the two parties makes it an obligation. Just like when you take out a loan to buy a car - you are obligated to pay it back even if you don't want the car anymore.
If I cannot alienate from myself my own life or liberty, then what am I doing when I commit suicide?
Under what all here describe, preventing suicide should arguably be a just case of coercion because it would be preventing someone from depriving themselves life.
How is this different from not allowing someone to deprive themselves of liberty?
I argue that they are not. If someone wants to deprive themselves of life through suicide they should be able to because - as the owners of their person - they have the right to determine where it's uses go. At the same token, the person also has the right to alienate themselves from liberty if they so wish because it is within their own control.
At the point in which someone completes suicide their autonomy is moot - the case is similar for slavery because it may for all intents and purposes be suicide.
good post Andrew
I think the real question here is whether breach of contract stipulants can entail physical aggression. Rothbard makes it pretty clear in TEOL that contractual slavery is a misnomer, but he doesn't get into whether the penalty, in his examples a sum of money, can include aggression and/or death.
Even if this was the case, voluntary slavery would still be impossible. Granted, once the contracted "slave" breaches the contract he would be physically coerced or murdered, he would cease to be a "voluntary" slave. He would just be an ordinary slave. The lifetime work without compensation contract originally signed would not be a slave contract, as it was voluntarily agreed upon. It would just be an extreme example of an labor contract.
This is just arguing semantics, however. The question is whether such aggressive stipulants are justified in a free society.
“Elections are Futures Markets in Stolen Property.” - H. L. Mencken
zefreak:The question is whether such aggressive stipulants are justified in a free society.
on what grounds would they be unjust? they are aggressive in the sense that they involve a certain level of force/violence. but aggress has another meaning, i.e. to first strike, or coerce, attack etc. these are two different meanings, the first compatible with libertarianism the latter not so.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, just that what is largely being argued in this thread seems to be semantics. Volunteer slavery is a contradiction but the attributes you associate with slavery being voluntarily agreed upon is not. I am just recommending that you drop the term altogether and argue the concept, that physical violence can be non-aggressive, in the NAP sense of the term.
nirgrahamUK:first lets ask, what creates any obligation?
'Depends what ethical system you are making an analysis from. If it's from Natural Rights, which is the common framework (I've found) within libertarianism, an obligation is born out of the right of ownership. Contracts are only legally and ethically binding within such a scope: the obligations in reguards to property ownership.