Libertarianism, In Theory and Practice

Lockstep

Soldie wrote: »

You're conflating implicit consent with explicit consent.

No I'm not; when treaties are so multilateral then implicit consent is an accepted way of dealing with this. As it is with countries, as it is with citizens
You seem to think that there is no such thing as a contract without explicit agreement, ignoring the existance of tacit consent.

Soldie wrote: »

Unless I explicitly consent to a contract then it is incorrect to assume that I consent to it.

No it isn't. When dealing with so many different parties to a customary law/contract, you are assumed to consent unless you explicitly opt out.

If you walked into a resteraunt and ate all their food and walked out without paying, would you see this as alright as you didn't explicitly agree to pay for the dinner (by eating their food, you tacitly accepted their contract)

Soldie wrote: »

What you're claiming is akin to saying that I like Ireland by virtue of the fact that I live here, and arguing that I could move elsewhere if I did not like it -- as such, that because I live here it follows that I must like it. It is not a logical conclusion to draw.

No, I'm saying you accept the basic principles of governance (you get given services and protection in exchange for limits on your personal liberty) by virtue of choosing to stay here. Most people's parents choose this contract for them at their birth but you are free to you are free to opt out at any time yourself.

Soldie wrote: »

It delegitimises the concept of social contract, which is what we're talking about, right?

Nah, it discredits that particular government.
I'd say you and I would agree that the Bush administration was a disaster.

pagancornflake

Joycey wrote: »

At the risk of distracting you from responding to pcf's other points...

I have some sympathy with the whole "fruits of my labour" thing. I recognise that when somebody labours on something they put a part of themselves into it and that to deprive them of this is a violation of their humanity and as such should be considered unjust.

Same as, I realize (now that I have had some sleep :P) that I phrased that bit about pre-tax quite badly. It sort of looked like I was saying that you dont have any right to your income until it is taxed, but what I meant to say is that the concept of pre-tax is a misnomer, and that tax is just something that factors into the value of your labour.

Eliot Rosewater

Joycey wrote: »

However what I really dont understand is how we can get from this shared foundation to libertarian's attempting to justify economic conditions whereby someone working, say, in a sweatshop in Taiwan, is creating precisely the same amount "fruit" from their labour as did the founding member of the multinational corporation who now owns the factory (as if there was really such social mobility at any time in human history).

This clearly ignores economic facts (if I may be so daring to bring up economics in what so fundamentally an economic discussion).

Firstly, there would be no corporation without the founding member. That is, no job for the person in the sweatshop.

Secondly, and more importantly, the founding of the company took an amount of risk. Risk pays, because risk isnt nice and risk is at the heart of the economy. Every business entails some form of risk and the entrepreneur is someone who is willing to stake his livelihood on an idea. Risk takers contribute more to society through the creation of new products, services, jobs and wealth.

The founding member certainly achieves more than the laborer. He has to co-ordinate said laborer, as well as a complex system of distribution and pricing. His job requires more thought than that of the laborers (though not more physical strain, of course).

Fundamentally, capitalist economics always has the element of choice, which is sorely lacking in any other system. The laborer doesn't have to work at the factory (and if he does its usually due to historic market protectionism instituted by imperialists).


I dont know if its worthwhile getting tangled in this kind of discussion. The heart of the matter - economics - is usually brushed so far under the carpet that its flattened to a pancake, while the talk usually revolves around tired old cliches such as "multinational corporations." In socialist lines of thought "multinational corporations" is synonyms with evil. Which is highly ironic, as I imagine people are reading this through the operating system made by the best example of a multinational corporation worldwide - Microsoft.

Kama

kickoutthejams wrote:

If you walked into a resteraunt and ate all their food and walked out without paying, would you see this as alright as you didn't explicitly agree to pay for the dinner (by eating their food, you tacitly accepted their contract)

I'd love to see a coherent reply to the restaraunt analogy; I think I brought it up in the distant past of this thread, and I've never got a good reply on it. You ate the food, you drank the wine, its hardly coherent to then knock over the table and shriek about 'violence' that there might be an expectation that the bill would be paid.

Now, willy-nilly, one obtains a variety of costs and benefits from living in any society, even at the extreme micro of being born into a family. These cannot be chosen volitionally, so an explicit contract is therefore impossible. But, assuming the existence of a right of Exit, the decision to remain constitutes an implicit consent, ergo the contractual requirements such as taxation cannot be coherently represented as 'violence'.

By continuing to eat the food, you accept the legitimacy of paying the bill; you can attempt to haggle with the owner, or use your 'Voice' to enact lower levels of taxation, but principled opposition to the concept of payment seems at best confused, at worst dishonest, especially for one who maintains the sanctity of contract.

Eliot Rosewater wrote:

Fundamentally, capitalist economics always has the element of choice, which is sorely lacking in any other system. The laborer doesn't have to work at the factory (and if he does its usually due to historic market protectionism instituted by imperialists).

Appropriately enough for the thread, the central problematique remains the differing definitions of freedom, and its antimony of constraint or coercion.

To say choice was or is lacking, in any other social system, requires a studied disinterest in any non-capitalist system in history, and/or the same disinterest or avoidance of the coercive features of capitalist systems - usually by a projection of the coercive function into the 'non-capitalist' features such as imperialism. Capitalisms historical spread, unlike that of much of Buddhism, was not primarily by the peaceful proselytization of merchants, but generally with the assistance of violence and expropriation, whether statist or non-statist.

So, we could take a standard account of coercive privatization in the development of capitalism, the Enclosure of the Commons. Taking an early start, we have the change in land rights of the Restoration Parliament, wherein the feudally-derived peasant landrights of copyhold were annihilated by the transfer by the aristocracy of their feudal land-rights into more exclusive, less relational private property rights. This was followed by the transfer of historically-common lands into private, exclusive ownership, and the dispossession of peasants, enforcing the need for waged labour by removing the capacity for subsistence. Kevin Carson writes that 'The factory system could not have been imposed on workers without first depriving them of alternatives, and forcibly denying access to any source of economic independence'. The context of constraint required to ensure the correctly-structured 'free decision', as in the sweatshop argument, is of necessity conveniently outside the analysis of free and unconstrained capitalist choice.

The problems of purity (in this case, maintaining the purity of capitalism with freedom and choice) requires that the 'dirt' of coercion emanate from some exterior origin, where it is 'found'. In the case above, we could say that these coercive 'distortions' are due to interference by an aristocratic system; similarly in many right-libertarian accounts, the 'distortions' come from the existence of a State. Since capitalism is assumed to be near-perfectly correlated with freedom, unfree features must necessarily originate elsewhere. The 'choice' to engage in waged labour in the Enclosure period required the removal of the 'choice' to remain in a commons-based subsistence system:

'these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements' - Capital, Volume 1, Ch 26

Freeholding, independent or subsistent peasantry were a far less tractable labour force, commanded a higher price for their labour, and were consequently seen as 'lazy' and 'ungovernable'. A docile labour force required the structuring of social relations so as to ensure their dependence and assent, precisely by reducing their freedom.

Eliot Rosewater wrote:

I imagine people are reading this through the operating system made by the best example of a multinational corporation worldwide - Microsoft.

Ubuntu Ftw Tbh...

silverharp

Kama wrote: »

I'd love to see a coherent reply to the restaraunt analogy; I think I brought it up in the distant past of this thread, and I've never got a good reply on it. You ate the food, you drank the wine, its hardly coherent to then knock over the table and shriek about 'violence' that there might be an expectation that the bill would be paid.

So if all the restaurants are owned by the mob as well as the other food stores, I had to Q , the food was bad and when I get the bill I'm told I have to pay for for table 14 as well (friends of the owner)............

Eliot Rosewater

Kama wrote: »

Appropriately enough for the thread, the central problematique remains the differing definitions of freedom, and its antimony of constraint or coercion.

Thats very true, but also our different definitions of Libertarianism are confusing us. For example, you criticized my choice comment by correctly pointing out that people in Capitalist countries are frequently forced do to do things they wouldnt necessarily do otherwise. However clearly their Liberty is being infringed, and in the theoretical Libertarianism that doesn't happen.

I messaged Joycey about this kind of issue. I said that I would hold the right to Liberty as perhaps the principle right, and the right from which others flow. The question is whether people have a right to walk across any field they want, or to right to own that field and protect it from "trespassers." Clearly those two rights are irreconcilable. (I made a huge generalization at this point and suggested that this may be the common juncture where Libertarianism and Communism split).

He subsequently replied pointing out that talking about "rights" was sometimes futile as in practice as many people cant exercise their rights. He used the example of a Taiwanese sweatshop worker who has the right to free speech but cant in practice use that right as he cant possibly reach a large audience.

My central issue with that is that he is basing the criticism of rights on something that is highly contextualized and as much a product of the era as it is the system of rights. In other words, in 200 years that criticism will fail to be valid as Taiwanese people will probably have access to the Internet and all that entails...

Apologies to Joycey if he didn't want me to publicly lay out our discussion.

Kama wrote: »

Ubuntu Ftw Tbh...

O yeah! :pac:

Joycey

silverharp wrote: »

So if all the restaurants are owned by the mob as well as the other food stores, I had to Q , the food was bad and when I get the bill I'm told I have to pay for for table 14 as well (friends of the owner)............

First of all you havent actually responded to the argument.

Secondly, what happens now if you get given bad food? Do you storm out without paying or do you pay?

The whole thing about paying for the friends of the owner... Thats not socialism/anything other than a corrupt monopoly...

If we were to suppose that an official democratically appointed by the people who work in the resteraunts (and in the case of a monopoly like what your talking about the society at large, at least in the region which is provided for), engages in such corruption, then the people by who's power the official is allowed to officiate in the first place should have the right to remove him/her from their post.

Any system where people in power are not held democratically accountable is not actual socialism IMO. There seems to me to be fundamentally no difference between the power imbalance of your situation above with capitalism as it stands. Both profit from their status, on the one hand as officially recognised 'manager' or whatever, on the other recognised as 'owner', and the fact that this position of power enables them to profit unfairly from the labour of others.

Edit: just realised you said "owned by the mob", and "friends of the owner". The two are mutually exclusive... If the resteraunt is owned by the people then why would theyy want bad food and to be ripped off

silverharp

I think the anology of a restaurant is poor for starters , all it says if you consume something then you have to pay for it , it is not good enough, btw to stay in the analogy "bad" can be poor quality or poor choice. Think health, education, farmers could possibly be the friends I'm sure there are others....

Joycey

silverharp wrote: »

btw to stay in the analogy "bad" can be poor quality or poor choice. Think health, education

Edit: Stupid argument

Apologies to Joycey if he didn't want me to publicly lay out our discussion.

No problem at all, its better if its in the thread anyway.

He subsequently replied pointing out that talking about "rights" was sometimes futile as in practice as many people cant exercise their rights.

But also because the whole discourse of rights always assumes something which is supposed to have been justified elsewhere (such as: where the rights are held to have originated, how we can come to know that the rights we say are rights are really rights, which rights are to be prefered in instances where conflict occurs between individuals who seem to both have a 'right' to something, whether it is possible and by what means one can 'give up' one of their rights etc). If we operate in a situation whereby two individuals have conflicting notions of the rights which accord to them, unless this entire discourse is unearthed, reassessed and agreed upon, then we reach deadlock, two parties, entirely convinced of their absolute justification in their crusade, simply bash heads with eachother, meaningful dialogue with a hope of progression becomes impossible.

He used the example of a Taiwanese sweatshop worker who has the right to free speech but cant in practice use that right as he cant possibly reach a large audience.

My central issue with that is that he is basing the criticism of rights on something that is highly contextualized and as much a product of the era as it is the system of rights.

But is an era where individuals operate outside of a context even conceivable? All we have is context. A 'right to bear arms' would be entirely meaningless in a world without weapons. A 'right to free speech' in a society where everyone is also forced to have their vocal cords cut out at birth would be similarly devoid of real content.

In other words, in 200 years that criticism will fail to be valid as Taiwanese people will probably have access to the Internet and all that entails...

But I dont see what your point is. We live in the here and now, where this hypothetical Taiwanese sweatshop worker (who may very well not be in the now, let alone the here :pac:) does not find themselves in a situation where they have the same access (if any) to the kind of mass media as, say, Rupert Murdoch.

If we take the 'right to free speech' to mean that every human being should have a right to make their views heard, this implies that someone actually hears them, otherwise speaking freely is meaningless and seems a fairly tame 'right' to have. A much more powerful 'right' would seem to me to be not one whereby one is free from oppresive and direct coercion when attempting to voice their opinion, but rather where people are actively given the oppurtunity to air their views. It comes back to context. If my context is such that the material conditions of my existence do not allow the excersise of my right, then being free from negative pressure from other human beings doesnt do me any good. I feel that the power which is entailed in the ownership of such a massively influential media apparatus as that of Rupert Murdoch (or any other large media conglomerate) should be democratically controlled. At the very least, decentralised, community based media oppurtunities should be set up, to allow the 99.9% of the population of a society the oppurtunity to participate in the production of the stuff with which they are constantly bombarded with, they are currently denied, if not explicitly then by the material conditions which govern their existence.

Im thinking something along these lines: http://www.zhelp.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22279

silverharp

Joycey wrote: »

OK. Suppose we found some way of qualitatively assessing every third level institution in the world, be they currently private or state funded it makes no difference. If we were to identify one (no example of this has to currently exist for the point to be valid) which was without question the best provider of every single possible category of service to students, and then provide services of this quality in every single third level institution, but prevent anybody setting up another university, thereby limiting choice. Would you have a problem with this?

Yes , as it would infringe the rights of the people that might want to setup a new university full stop, also if it could attract students it would imply it is better or cheaper then the alternative. In the real world as ideas and technology are always evolving there must always be room for competing services.

Valmont

Joycey wrote: »

OK. Suppose we found some way of qualitatively assessing every third level institution in the world, be they currently private or state funded it makes no difference. If we were to identify one (no example of this has to currently exist for the point to be valid) which was without question the best provider of every single possible category of service to students, and then provide services of this quality in every single third level institution, but prevent anybody setting up another university, thereby limiting choice. Would you have a problem with this?

That point is so insanely hypothetical as to be almost useless! Not to mention that without the opportunities for other people to start universities, progress would slow down within the one model. Would the "perfect" university you talk about not had to have benefited from competition with other universities in order to become "perfect" in the first place?

Joycey

Valmont wrote: »

That point is so insanely hypothetical as to be almost useless! Not to mention that without the opportunities for other people to start universities, progress would slow down within the one model. Would the "perfect" university you talk about not had to have benefited from competition with other universities in order to become "perfect" in the first place?

Right right right fair enough forget it. Rest of the post still stands though...

Kama

silverharp wrote:

I think the anology of a restaurant is poor for starters , all it says if you consume something then you have to pay for it

I don't think its that bad an analogy, its all about implicit consent, and a situation in which one has consumed a basket of goods prior to payment. Which is the point, for a statist critique of the libertarian move. Tis also a standard old chestnut, argumentatively speaking, for arguing with libertarians, so a good refutation would be a worthwhile endeavour.

silverharp wrote:

So if all the restaurants are owned by the mob as well as the other food stores, I had to Q , the food was bad and when I get the bill I'm told I have to pay for for table 14 as well (friends of the owner)............

As a devout follower of Tilly, I would say that perhaps all restaurants are owned by mobs; I regard it as a not-entirely-incorrect analysis of the origins of the statist project. As a personal preference, I would tend to go with the statist protection racket, rather than having competing private providers, a situation of 'gang warfare'. Areas where there is competiton for legitimacy and force-provision tend to be...messy. Civil-war messy, gang-violence messy, Blackwater/Xe messy, travel-advisory gtfo-messy.

But I don't think it tackles the kernel of the analogy: a 'meal' is consumed, of public utilities, infrastructure - social, legal, and physical - and all the instantiated capital, that I would argue makes much of the difference in productivity per worker hour between 'eating' in a relatively stable politico-economic regime and a less-well-endowed one. The libertarian argument (on either side) generally complains that they cannot easily enter the 'restaurant market' as a competitor, providing a different menu and pricing structure, that the market is unfairly dominated by established players. Unfortunately, in an arguably-anarchic world-system, there is no guarantor of this right: instead it is secured by effective force. This was the central point of my previous 'terrorists' thread, in my own mind.

The reason I find the hard libertarian case insupportable is the assumption that there were no such (social, collective, historical) inputs, or that they don't matter. The libertarian emphasises the value created by individuals, and de-emphasises the pre-existing value that enables the individual to create value; flipped over, the collectivist presumably de-emphasises the individuals contribution, while emphasising the social input.

Without a context within which to do so, you can be entrepreneurial, but the returns are likely to be far, far lower. So a proportionate 'take' or kickback to the mobster seems, relatively speaking, legitimate, regardless of whether the mobster is a good or a bad racketeer, if you have done well by and through him, a rent that does not cut deeper than the gains made would seem valid. If this is really insupportable, then much like the Agorist, you'll need to enter this market and provide a similar product, for your consumption or for sale to others. Otherwise, your implicit consent remains, constrained by the social reality of the situation or context.

(Read a good analysis of Mafias recently, stressing their role as an broker or middleman in the black markets, where trust is low and recourse absent. By securing the services of a 'Pepe' or mafioso, the transaction costs are lowered, as the exchange is guaranteed and the mutual mistrust of the traders bridged by the 'honest broker' mafioso)

Eliot Rosewater wrote:

The question is whether people have a right to walk across any field they want, or to right to own that field and protect it from "trespassers." Clearly those two rights are irreconcilable.

I tend to agree. There's a somewhat figure-ground perspective shift between the two; similarly the 'free contract' of the right-libertarian flips to a 'coercive relation of exploitation' for the left-libertarian. I don't think I'd agree that the rights are utterly irreconcilable; they are if and only if the asserted right is absolute, and private property rights are rarely so. There's usually, to my knowledge, all sorts of conditionalities. In the more-feudal situation, you similarly had a network of rights and responsibilities, shared patterns of ownership, use-right, and so on.

Asserting the absolute leads to the irreconcilable, but I see the problem here being the assertion itself. Absolute power and fully-free choice I reckon to be somewhat of a remnant from theology; the Church messing with our heads linguistically. History would be the only medium within which action can take place, our limited 'wetware' and language the medium through which thought can arise and be communicated, and so on.

Much as with choice or freedom vs constraint, these are inescapably countextually-bounded. Swerving back to restaurants, the first chapter of 'Nudge', aka Behavioral Economics for Dummies, there's the example of the ordering or items on a menu skewing expressed preference; no one is 'forcing' you to order based on the implicit preference-structure embodied in the menu, but probabilistically one is far more likely to. Again, this could be seen (positively) as squaring free choice with policy desires, or (negatively) as the soft end of cognitive oppression.

Joycey wrote:

We live in the here and now, where this hypothetical Taiwanese sweatshop worker (who may very well not be in the now, let alone the here :pac:) does not find themselves in a situation where they have the same access (if any) to the kind of mass media as, say, Rupert Murdoch.

Actually, this 'here and now' is what thrills me about our current age. For instance, this is Isaac, an 8 year old in Mathare slum, Kenya. This is what his day looks like. Murdoch he ain't, but in a sense it is now as easy to watch Isaac as it is Murdoch: you just click the link, or type the url. This, for me, is part of the libertarian promise of the internet: the 'broadcast model' monocultures are under relentless attack from below from a more rhizomatic, associational model.

Joycey

Kama wrote: »

Actually, this 'here and now' is what thrills me about our current age. For instance, this is Isaac, an 8 year old in Mathare slum, Kenya. This is what his day looks like. Murdoch he ain't, but in a sense it is now as easy to watch Isaac as it is Murdoch: you just click the link, or type the url. This, for me, is part of the libertarian promise of the internet: the 'broadcast model' monocultures are under relentless attack from below from a more rhizomatic, associational model.

Thx for the link. Yeah definitely good to see stuff like this. Fair play to DCTV too.

Not too sure about the "Murdoch he ain't" comment. I mean, if he just makes the right choices...

Permabear

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Permabear

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Joycey

donegalfella wrote: »

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Im in another country atm so cant dig it out of the book I read it in but why do you ask? What would it mean to you if this were the case?

Will try and find it in the library on Tuesday

silverharp

Kama wrote: »

I don't think its that bad an analogy, its all about implicit consent, and a situation in which one has consumed a basket of goods prior to payment. Which is the point, for a statist critique of the libertarian move. Tis also a standard old chestnut, argumentatively speaking, for arguing with libertarians, so a good refutation would be a worthwhile endeavour.

How far do you stretch this implicit consent concept? if 70% of the population decide to kill the other 30% , have the 30% given implicit consent?

Kama wrote: »

As a personal preference, I would tend to go with the statist protection racket, rather than having competing private providers, a situation of 'gang warfare'. Areas where there is competiton for legitimacy and force-provision tend to be...messy. Civil-war messy, gang-violence messy, Blackwater/Xe messy, travel-advisory gtfo-messy.

As you'd probably agree, there are only 2 ways to acquire wealth, either by production or via the political process. So you are happy to accept a permanent parasitic arrangement where there is no possibility to fight back. Plus you accept that the arrangement is a risky proposition in itself given the obvious flaws of the democratic process akin to taking a trip across a river on the back of a scorpion?
it's debatable if the state creates such an environment that its only ever eating into into a self created surplus. A supporter or net receipient will obviously argue so, Its a harder case to argue that the state may be affecting the time preferences of the economic actors (present oriented versus future oriented) with the associated problems.

pagancornflake

silverharp wrote: »

How far do you stretch this implicit consent concept? if 70% of the population decide to kill the other 30% , have the 30% given implicit consent?

No, that abstraction is terrible.

pagancornflake

silverharp wrote: »

So you are happy to accept a permanent parasitic arrangement where there is no possibility to fight back.

No, I am happy to accept a dynamic body which solidifies the social agreements between me and my fellow citizens such as law and the protection of ownership.

silverharp wrote: »

Plus you accept that the arrangement is a risky proposition in itself given the obvious flaws of the democratic process akin to taking a trip across a river on the back of a scorpion?

Elaborate or rephrase without reference to fairytale and please add in some predicates which justify your argument this time.

Permabear

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Soldie

pagancornflake wrote: »

What I am saying is that tax is not an imposition on some prior economic system, it is a fundamental part of the system. A sales tax is part of the price of what you buy just like income tax is just a factor that determines your earnings.

pagancornflake wrote: »

Central or localized, the point being made is that you must refer to a judicial and executive system which is provided by the government in order for contractual agreements and their enforcement to take place, and they will need funding to do so. The only difference is the scale of the government, and I don't see the point in localizing the government's power in terms of law.

That's somewhat of a chicken/egg argument. You're essentially arguing that the government has a right to tax us because we utilise their state monopolies, when we have no choice in the matter. The state's existence isn't justified simply because it exists. After the privatisation of Telecom Éireann we've come to the refreshing reliasation that we don't actually need the state to provide us with phone and internet services. Similarly, we don't need the state for arbitration or any other infrastructure, either. Your position seems to be that the state is fully justified in taxing us to fund their coercive monopolies simply because we use them, which is absurd in that we have no choice.

Also, this is an argument, not a reading list. If there is reading to be done on poly centric law, then it must be done by you and paraphrased here if you are going to suggest it as a better alternative.

I pointed to the possibility of polycentric law in response to your repeated implication that state arbitration and state infrastructure are necessary. To reiterate my previous point: we don't need the government for either of those things. If you're going to take the statist side then I politely point out that you're expected to back up that position.

Soldie

pagancornflake wrote: »

It is assumed because you do not have the right to live and accrue property in a region which is kept in order and governed by a body, as agreed by the inhabitants who constitute and elect this body. These rights are not pre-political, they are conditional. These rights are bestowed upon you and protected by this body and by deciding to stay and accrue wealth by using the land and resources of this place which is kept in order by the government, you contribute to its upkeep. You choose to stay and earn here. If you would like to go somewhere where you do not need to pay taxes, then go somewhere where there is no government infrastructure or state imposed law and set up a business/farm/whatever.

I think you will find that ownership is not a natural relation between you and the parts of the world around you that you choose to annex, but a social relation/agreement between you and your fellow citizens to refrain from interfering with the socially-recognized holdings of each other. This agreement is social contract and you agree to it tacitly when you use the system designed (among other things) to protect and honor this agreement.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

No I'm not; when treaties are so multilateral then implicit consent is an accepted way of dealing with this. As it is with countries, as it is with citizens
You seem to think that there is no such thing as a contract without explicit agreement, ignoring the existance of tacit consent.

No it isn't. When dealing with so many different parties to a customary law/contract, you are assumed to consent unless you explicitly opt out.

No, I'm saying you accept the basic principles of governance (you get given services and protection in exchange for limits on your personal liberty) by virtue of choosing to stay here. Most people's parents choose this contract for them at their birth but you are free to you are free to opt out at any time yourself.

Accepted by whom?

You're right, though -- I don't think it is possible to tacitly agree to a contract.

I think anarcho-capitalist Roderick Long can articulate what I've tried to say in previous posts a little it better:

Roderick Long wrote:

I think that the person who makes this argument is already assuming that the government has some legitimate jurisdiction over this territory. And then they say, well, now, anyone who is in the territory is therefore agreeing to the prevailing rules. But they’re assuming the very thing they're trying to prove – namely that this jurisdiction over the territory is legitimate. If it's not, then the government is just one more group of people living in this broad general geographical territory. But I've got my property, and exactly what their arrangements are I don't know, but here I am in my property and they don't own it – at least they haven't given me any argument that they do – and so, the fact that I am living in "this country" means I am living in a certain geographical region that they have certain pretensions over – but the question is whether those pretensions are legitimate. You can’t assume it as a means to proving it.

Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/long/long11.html

kickoutthejams wrote:

If you walked into a resteraunt and ate all their food and walked out without paying, would you see this as alright as you didn't explicitly agree to pay for the dinner (by eating their food, you tacitly accepted their contract)

What contract? If you steal from someone then that is theft. I don't accept that you can compare a restaraunt to a state.

Valmont

How would national defense be conducted in a libertarian society? Would it take the form of a company such as Xe Services? What could a country do if a larger, state-sponsored army were to invade?

Soldie

A general question to those defending social contract:

When congress authorised the levying of income taxes when they passed the sixteenth amendment, would it be logical to assume that those still present on American soil after the amendment passed consented to this taxation?

Social contract theory justifies taxation, but states will iniatiate force against those who do not wish to consent to the contract.

Lockstep

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

While I agree with you to an extent, the problem with sweatshops is that they can involve bonded labour (especially child labour).

Would completely disagree that the arguments against sweatshops are put forward by greedy labour unions; there is a humanitarian aspect to it as well.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/oct/28/ethicalbusiness.india

http://www1.american.edu/TED/nike.htm

http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/digest/slavery/india.pdf

I don't think sweatshops should necessarily be closed down (IIRC, the UN closed down child labour places in Vietnam and some of the kids had to end up in prostituion to make ends meet, could be a trick of my mind though) , but enacting labor laws would be a much more equitable solution; the kids still need jobs so closing down the factories/not buying their products mightn't work, but ensuring they're not being mistreated and can get out if needed or abused is a better way to go.
IMHO.

Lockstep

Soldie wrote: »

Accepted by whom?

In multilateral treaties (both written and verbal)?
I'd go back once again to international customary law, as it is accepted by the world's states. And I don't think I can be any more objective than that.

Soldie wrote: »

You're right, though -- I don't think it is possible to tacitly agree to a contract.

You'd be incorrect then, at least under Irish/international law(and I'm really not trying to sound like a bollox here or to make you look/feel stupid, I merely mean that you're incorrect) I've already used the example of eating in resteraunts (Irish law) as well as tacit consent in customary international law (International law) developments.

Soldie wrote: »

I think anarcho-capitalist Roderick Long can articulate what I've tried to say in previous posts a little it better:
Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/long/long11.html

I find his argument very strange, as he clearly believes in private property and yet his claim can be inversed to apply to private land ownership; his entire argument rests on the question of legitimate ownership of land. Which can also be asked to him on his assertion the land is his.

Soldie wrote: »

What contract? If you steal from someone then that is theft. I don't accept that you can compare a restaraunt to a state.

Eating in resteraunts is still a contract. And an unsigned one at that. You imply consent
Of course it's theft, but the argument started when you were arguing that there's no such thing as implicit consent. Which I've already shown is not the case.

Lockstep

Soldie wrote: »

A general question to those defending social contract:

When congress authorised the levying of income taxes when they passed the sixteenth amendment, would it be logical to assume that those still present on American soil after the amendment passed consented to this taxation?

But those people were elected in by the electorate and were free to leave if they disagreed to the idea of taxation.

Soldie wrote: »

Social contract theory justifies taxation, but states will iniatiate force against those who do not wish to consent to the contract.

As long as they are free to leave the country, I see no problem with the above.

Soldie

kickoutthejams wrote: »

In multilateral treaties (both written and verbal)?
I'd go back once again to international customary law, as it is accepted by the world's states. And I don't think I can be any more objective than that.

You cannot draw a parallel between voluntary consent between states and an involuntary agreement between an individual and a state. If a hypothetical grouping of countries agree on a policy whereby to abstain from a vote is to consent to a decision made then that's one thing, but for the individual there is no such choice.

You'd be incorrect then, at least under Irish/international law(and I'm really not trying to sound like a bollox here or to make you look/feel stupid, I merely mean that you're incorrect) I've already used the example of eating in resteraunts (Irish law) as well as tacit consent in customary international law (International law) developments.

There's some conflicting terminology being thrown around here that is confusing matters. Perhaps I should have been more specific: I do not think that an individual can tacitly consent to a contract. Your example of countries tacitly consenting to various things deals neither with the individuals nor with contracts. A social contract tends to take the form of a constitution and is legally binding.

I find his argument very strange, as he clearly believes in private property and yet his claim can be inversed to apply to private land ownership; his entire argument rests on the question of legitimate ownership of land. Which can also be asked to him on his assertion the land is his.

Can you rephrase that -- particularly the distinction you're drawing between "private property" and "private land ownership"? Nevertheless, you didn't really deal with his argument, specifically the part I quoted; that you're presupposing precisely what you're trying to prove -- that the state legitimately owns the land.

Lysander Spooner also extensively covered the absurdity of tacit consent in No Treason. He points out that social contract fails the burden of proof because it is involuntary.

Suppose I present an unsigned contract to a group of people and tell them that if they remain speechless for the duration of an hour then that means they agree to the contract. Do you think that would hold up in court?

Eating in resteraunts is still a contract. And an unsigned one at that. You imply consent
Of course it's theft, but the argument started when you were arguing that there's no such thing as implicit consent. Which I've already shown is not the case.

It's unsigned because it doesn't exist. You're trying to draw a parallel between a situation whereby there is a legally-binding contract and a situation when there is no contract whatsoever. It's a legal matter pertaining to property rights. If a person enters someone's property and steals something then that's theft. I really don't see how this can possibly be compared to an involuntary contract between an individual and a state.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

But those people were elected in by the electorate and were free to leave if they disagreed to the idea of taxation.

Okay, so what's your answer?

Permabear

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