Suppose that you and I make a contract that, in exchange for you giving me a badly-needed $20 today, I will mow your lawn tomorrow. Then suppose that after I spend the money, I change my mind about the wisdom of this deal. Can I repudiate the contract on the grounds that my labor for you is no longer voluntary? If so, then people will have no incentive to provide payment for services in advance, and it will hinder the economy in many cases.
Why do we need a rule against people selling themselves into slavery? When has that ever been a common practice? If someone is dumb enough to do so, don't they deserve the consequences? Those people will, like many other losers, weed themselves (and their foolish tendencies) out of society in a Darwinian manner, and it will cease to be a problem. But in order for that to happen, you have to let the market be free.
46 comments
So taking a potential consumer out if the economy is helpful for the economy?
If you're so opposed to laws and rules that protect us from ourselves, let me take the labels off of a couple of bottles. One has water in it and the other has poison. Drink up while you're not wearing a seatbelt on a road with no speed limit.
Contract law fail!
1. Specific performance is an equitable remedy, and therefore discretionary. It is not available if damages are adequate recompense.
2. All your children are belong to us, I suppose?
At least this one keeps it logically coherent. Yes, the free market leads to slavery (I do, in this case not consider European markets as free, but as social markets).
Okay, you get drunk one night or, better yet, someone drugs you. You signed away your freedom and didn't even know it. Or, let's say you are installing software and they write a clause into the digital agreement in hexidecimal notation. Now you're a slave. According to your logic you should now accept being a slave and you deserve the consequences.
Yes, someone can accept $20 in exchange for future services rendered -- it happens so frequently that there is an actual name for it, "default". The creditor's remedies are limited to seeking financial compensation, as laid out in the contract (if there was one), statue, and other factors.
No they can't force you to provide the service but they are allowed to (and should) sue you to get their money back.
The example given is a good demonstration why there should be more government regulation (i.e. consumer protection), not less.
Libertarians have to be the most ass backwards individuals in politics I've ever seen. It's like they don't understand that a completely free market is just as bad as a completely restricted one. I'm already a wage slave, I don't' need to be an *actual* slave because these idiots want to throw me under the bus.
Calls himself LibertyNow
image
Supports slavery
Why do we need a rule against people selling themselves into slavery? When has that ever been a common practice?
It was a common way to get to the New World back in the 16th century. Indentured servitude: look it up. For that matter, it's was pretty frequent throughout history, and in some countries today. Desperate people do desperate things ... and not always voluntarily.
But LibertyNow prefers a world where someone can coerce you into signing a piece of paper, or simply forge your signature (easier if you're illiterate) and enslave you ... and somehow you must get to a court and prove you didn't freely sign up to be imprisoned and abused before anyone lifts a finger for you. I wonder what he (she?) would think of a completely free market if he ended up as a commodity in human trafficking.
HEy. Hey.
Hey.
Social Darwinism was actually disputed by Darwin. The guy who made it up was an insane elitist who believed the poor should die and would because they have 'bad genes'. It's just eugenics by another name.
So basically, LibertyNow has a similar platform as Nazis and an Insane Dead Guy. Good work.
How about if we make a contract that, in exchange for me giving you a badly-needed $20 today, you will mow my lawn tomorrow, be locked in my barn, forbidden to go out or have any friends of your own or go to the church of your choice, and you'll be beaten if you don't mow the lawn fast enough, and I can have sex with your girlfriend any time I like?
There's a bit of a difference between a slave and an employee.
Can I repudiate the contract on the grounds that my labor for you is no longer voluntary?
Your labor is still voluntary, but you're in violation of the contract and I'm entitled to monetary damages, which include at least a return of the $20 bucks plus collection costs.
Well, in your case, LN, I then hire Jesus & Son, Gardeners and Landscapers.
As they come highly regarded by others (word of mouth is just as good as advertising) in my neighbourhood, and they do an excellent job in lawn mowing, hedge-trimming (even Topiary to your requirements) etc; extremely reliable they are too. Their fees are a little bit more than your average lawn mower crews/individuals, but the fact they always take away the clippings/cuttings etc means that they care .
...and I don't care about you ever mowing my lawn ever again. I'll make it well known to everyone in the locale that you'r not only someone who can never be trusted, you're also a thief and a deal-welsher.
Darwin'Darwinism' non-sequiturs required.
Liberty for myself, slavery for others.
People who are in favor of contractual slavery should admit to being willing to sell themselves into slavery should the need arise.
When has that ever been a common practice?
Never read about the indentured servants of the Colonial era, did you.
In some cultures, parents used to sell their children into slavery when they couldn't support them. I'm thinking of the Aztecs, but I'm sure there were others.
If you want to be a slave so badly, LibertyNow, advertise for a Dom on the Internet.
I knew it was coming... I knew this was the endgame of the so-called "libertarians" (ie, social darwinists).
What would happen is that people would use their already-existing power and wealth to enslave people. What it takes to not be able to realise this obvious fact is to have killed half your brain by internalising a completely unrealistic market-led model of human behaviour.
If this is some argument regarding some currently divisive political issue (healthcare maybe?), it eludes me.
There is a difference between mandated labor and slavery. Someone obligated to work still has certain rights, which slaves do not. Therefore this is a false equivalence.
Admittedly, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. constitution only forbids involuntary servitude.
So, theoretically, you should be able to contract to sell all your services to a single individual or organization for the rest of your life.
But, as other experts on contract law here have attested, if you refuse to work for somebody after having accepted payment to do so, you are in "default" and your creditor has legal remedies available to him. Those legal remedies do not include strapping you to a post and whipping you.
Having read a bit about evolution, I would say that it is a terrible model to base a civilisation on. We can create one where a lot more people will be happy, and not just the meanest monkey on the mountain.
Argument one: contracts are small violations of individual freedom made for the sake of commercial stability. Their scope should be limited as much as it is practical.
Argument two: present contract limit the freedom to enter future contracts
Argument three: contracts between parts of unequal power typically limit severly the freedom of the weakest, but they are very sketchy as to the obligations of the strongest. A typical 19th century contract would force the worker to do a job decided by the owner, in the way decided by the owner, at the speed decided by the owner, for arbitrary hours, forbade speaking and other disruptions, often interfered heavily with private life (i.e.:fired pregnant women), and allowed the owner to change the terms more or less at will, as well as charge fines to the worker, always according to the owner's judgement. The pay was also subject to arbitrary variations and often given late, as a way to force workers to remain at the factory or lose what was owed to them.
In modern Chinese factories, wages are also given late and fines often account for 1/4 to 1/3 of the nominal wage.
These conditions resurface whenever work regulations are eliminated, and even a libertarian could see that they are not desirable and not conducive to freedom, even in the strictest economic sense.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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