General

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

MaikU — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:08:55 GMT

"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.

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

Wesker1982 — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:40:53 GMT

@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.

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

Autolykos — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:41:15 GMT

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.

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

Wheylous — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:18:55 GMT

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.

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

Autolykos — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:20:59 GMT

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".

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

Wheylous — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:37:41 GMT

Alright. You support this construct? It seems quite useful, though I'm not exactly sure where it comes from.

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

Autolykos — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:13:03 GMT

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.

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.

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

Charles Anthony — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:49:31 GMT

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?

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

z1235 — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:12:52 GMT

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?

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

Wheylous — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:11:09 GMT

It is illegal. It's not proportional punishment.

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

Charles Anthony — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 22:24:54 GMT

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!

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

Eugene — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:38:58 GMT

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?

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

Charles Anthony — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:05:55 GMT

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?

Reputation.

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.

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

you12 — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:15:52 GMT

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.

Re: Is Voluntary/debt slavery a violation of NAP and Individual?

vive la insurrection — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:55:46 GMT

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