Hitching and Ditching in Libertaria

Great Debates
1

I found this thread interesting, despite the sniping, and so I thought I would post a new thread and avoid hijacking the other. The opinions of left- or right-libertarians are especially solicited, but any others as well.

So, Larry Libertarian marries Linda - those starry-eyed kids! Larry labors as a lawyer; Linda as a librarian. Later their love leads to Lisa and Lorne, their 'leven-year-old twins.

Their lifestyle isn’t lavish, but they live in a lovely, landscaped split-level on Liberty Lane.

But time passes. And Linda meets Lana, the left guard on their lacrosse team. Lana is a lesbian, and Linda begins to be lost in love with Lana. And Lana declares her lasting love for Linda. And before long, they are locking labia lustfully during a trip to Loma Linda for the lacrosse tournament.

Larry learns of their love from a lode of love letters under Linda’s laundry. He realizes he has lost at love, and begins to look longingly at lovely Lois, his lively and likeable legal assistant.

“Linda is a loser”, Lois whispers in a low voice during an interlude in the copy room at Larry’s law office. “Let’s let her have it!”

So Larry leaves Liberty Lane and files for divorce. The only grounds for divorce in Libertaria is breach of contract[sup]1[/sup], and Larry and Linda explicitly agreed that mutual fidelity was part of their marriage contract[sup]2[/sup].

Linda doesn’t want the divorce. She wants to live in the Larry and Linda house, but to love Lana as well. Lisa and Lorne like living with Linda. Larry made lots more than Linda’s library ever paid her, and Larry left law school cum laude the year before he and Linda linked up.

So - how does Libertaria deal with this situation? Who gets what, and why? And how is it decided, especially since the parties do not agree on the desired outcome?

Regards,
Shodan

[sup]1[/sup]Is that how it works in Libertaria?

[sup]2[/sup]Are there different kinds?

2

Did you get a discount on "L"s today?

3

Such luscious levity! :smiley: Everything depends on their agreement. There is no state sanctioned marriage in Libertaria. Perhaps two people want to cement their eternal souls together. Perhaps they want a partnership of convenience. I’m willing to play your game (since it is you), but you gotta come up with more than this. If I say that X might happen, then nothing stops you from saying, “Oh, but they agreed to Z”. And then it goes round and round. Instead of all that, just post the contract in full. You take one side, and get someone else to take the other. Then bring it to me, and I’ll play arbiter. Let’s see what happens.

4

That’s fair, and I hope you don’t think I was setting you up.

Here is the marriage contract between Larry and Linda in full;

Would that be all that was needed? Does the marriage contract get approved by anyone before going into force?

Larry and Linda were such hopeless romantics that they thought this was all they would need.

Again, I am not trying to trap you into anything - this is more for my edification. Obviously anyone who has different ideas on how it would work would be more than welcome. If things start getting snippy, I apologize in advance, but I think it might be a worthwhile discussion.

Regards,
Shodan

5

Well, on first blush, it looks like Linda breached that agreement. Are you sure there’s nothing more complicated afoot?

6

But what does it mean to stop “sharing all we own”? Does Larry get everything, or do they split it up? Would Libertaria not have it’s own court system with precedents to follow in this sort of case?

7

I do think you’ll probably have a problem when the court is informed that a chimpanzee is one of the witnesses… :slight_smile:

8

No, that’s all there is. I am trying to come up with a scenario that is as straightforward as I can - honest!

The basic question here is, in Libertaria it seems that everything is based on mutual agreement. No coercion, no deception - so far, I understand. I think.

What we have is a situation where things have changed. It would be somewhat similar (I imagine) to a current divorce where there was no pre-nuptual, and no laws to control the situation. How then does Libertaria resolve these kind of differences?

I don’t want to be springing any gotchas at you, so let us stipulate that Linda has indeed breached her agreement with Larry by having sex with her lacrosse partner. What is the effect of that breach? Does she now lose everything that was collected during the marriage? Does it matter who gets the children? If there is disagreement over the children, is there some framework to come to agreement?

I can envision a Libertaria where the parties are left to themselves to come to some kind of agreement. If they can’t, they can’t, and providing nobody tries to use force or coercion, then nobody gets the house. I suppose the children would go to whoever they wanted to live with.

I can also imagine a society where there were a bunch of default laws passed, to cover situations like the above. Those laws would always be overriden by whatever agreement had been reached by the parties, but would cover cases not otherwise stipulated.

Is that in accordance with libertarian principle? (Addressed to anyone, not just Liberal - I am glad to see John Mace posting - if you have any ideas, please let 'er rip).

I was running out of L names. :smiley:

Regards,
Shodan

9

Surely you scarcely suggest that the simianness of Lancelot Link estops him from being a suitable subscriber to the Libertarian couple’s writ of wedlock? When suits from supernormal squids are satisfactory for establishing rights to realty? (Activities in Libertaria require quite a lot of quality queries of Alan Alliterator, I presume.)

10

Yes, that’s right. Libertarianism and volunteerism are synonyms.

This might be one of those rare instances where you’re bringing in a bit of baggage from other political philosophies. Libertarian government does not necessarily “resolve differences”. (Bear with me…) It resolves differences in the form of disputes, but it is not designed to solve problems. Mere disagreement does not constitute coercion. If I like vanilla and you like chocolate, I can’t drag you to arbitration to try to make you like vanilla. Even if we both agree to eat vanilla, but you eat chocolate instead, then you’ve done nothing wrong (unless I paid you to eat vanilla). I don’t know how the law is ordinarilly, but it seems to me that there needs to be some sort of expectation of consideration involved in an agreement before it can be considered a contract because otherwise there is no harm done if the agreement is broken.

It seems to me that, because of what your agreement says, the property is split fifty fifty. The children, of course, are not property, and if there is disagreement about them, then they are rights bearing entities, and as such are entitled to freedom from the coercion of either of you. You’re both pretty obviously, if not deadbeats, certainly irresponsible. If I were an arbiter, and you brought a dispute over this to me, I would likely try to find suitable guardians elsewhere. God forbid the kids should take as an example for their lives what you two are doing. (You can see other threads where the notion of children, their rights, and the unary contract they hold with their parents is discussed in detail.)

That would be one possibility.

That is also possible.

I suppose so. I’ve often thought about writing a novel, since a lot of people liked Sarah’s Gold, in which a visitor from Authoritaria is surprised to find that scenarios like this are almost nonexistent. I mean, you are positing two people who grew up in a society where all their lives they have seen the effects of being flippant and irresponsible about decision making. They have not seen government rescuing failed enterprises. They began studying personal finance in kindergarten. They have studied the history of their culture and understand that their decisions will have consequences. In Authoritaria, where government solves people’s problems, a couple might give more consideration to buying a car than to having children. But in Libertaria, they know that their obligations to their children means that their lives will change drastically.

11

What happens if their contract has nothing to say on their situation? Nobody is neutral, what happens if they can’t agree on an arbitrator? And who would enforce the arbitrator’s decision anyway?

12

Then there’s no dispute, is there?

As citizens of Libertaria, they agreed to arbitration of disputes.

The enforcer.

13

Did you forget Louise, Lena and Larry. The kids. Who gets to have the kids? Nothing is specified in the contract and they can’t be chopped in two equal sized portions. Also the Lamborghini. Who gets the million dollar fancy sports car they bought together? You can never foresee all possible things that may happen or put them into law. But I see you have an arbitrator. I guess the arbitrator can be called family court.

Ok. So you are not a zero state liberal, but a minimum state liberal. And if I’m born in Libertaria and never agreed to arbitration, am I to be stripped of my citizenship?

State police.

14

I answered all that in my response to Shodan.

I am a liberal in the classical tradition.

If you never gave consent to be governed, then how could you be a citizen anyway?

Yeah, that’s fine.

15

Linda Lovelace?

16

:smiley: And Larry Loins.

17

In Libertaria the arbitrator not only rules on contract law but also on morals? If you are saying that children should be removed from their homes because an outside force doesn’t like the examples the parents are setting, then I can see a big problem. We don’t have enough foster homes in the U.S. now, so would there be state-sponsored orphanages?

18

No, I don’t think he’s saying that.

First off, there would quickly be an ample body of case law that would give an arbiter guidance (if not direction) for how property and such should be divided.

I see something going like this:

  1. Sally Jesse Raphael scenario occurs.
  2. Divorce is pursued.
  3. Parties attempt to work out a settlement
  4. Where they can’t agree then an arbiter is called in. Both agree to abide by his/her decision.

Is that so complicated?

19

This is one area where things would probably work fairly well in Libertaria. Maybe not at first, but certainly over time, marriage contracts would get increasingly refined to cover all the standard situations with respect to a breakup, in terms of determining child custody, division of marital property, and determination of responsibility for failure of the marriage, if it affected custody and property settlement.

This contract, however, is pretty short: “We the undersigned agree to live together, sharing our lives and all we own, from the above date until one of us dies. We will remain faithful to each other and exclusively monogamous for life.”

The contract specifies monogamy and fidelity, but doesn’t specify remedies if these conditions are violated, so there’s no enforceability. When one spouse is unfaithful, the other could sue to compel specific performance in the future, but how would that be enforced either?

ISTM that they have a contract, unless both parties agree to nullify it. But ISTM that the only thing in the contract that’s enforceable by a Libertarian judicial system is the “sharing all we own” part. If Larry or Linda leaves, they can’t take anything with them, unless the other allows it.

Of course, the spouse that ‘stays’ may have trouble collecting on any court decree, since in Libertaria, one has to pay for one’s own police service and all.

20

Those analyses sound reasonable to me, RT and Jonathan. The only thing I would note is that, as I see it, the fee you pay for government includes the arbitration and the enforcement. And like Rune sort of says, these are equivalent to courts and police. The only thing missing is a legislature.