Well, I’m assuming that in Libertaria, prostitution is legal. So why shouldn’t I be able to make a debtor work off her debt in the sex trade? You yourself conceded that ‘the plaintiff would become the slave of the offended party.’
Who gets to decide how the debt is settled? What parameters are they given? Because making a debtor go into the sex trade will surely have my debt settled much faster than say, working at McDonald’s.
Like i said, once you base your entire system on 1 concept (property rights, in this case) everything becomes defined in those terms, and you can rationalize any actions as long as they conform to this principle.
The usurped will be getting value from the sex and presumably that could be counted towards the debt. Perhaps you ought to describe what you mean when you say that the guilty party will be pretty much a slave. For example how much value does work that the slave does for the owner have? Can I send my slave to Africa where the yearly salary is around $200 so that the guilty party will never earn enough to pay off his debt? Are there any limits for how long or what type of work the slave can do or am I free to work him to death if I so choose?
By “pretty much”, I mean that it is in some ways the case, but not in other ways. I’m not advocating anarchy. There is a government in all this. It is the arbiter who determines what will constitute restoration.
“Slave” is a metaphor, indicating that the criminal has waived his rights by usurping someone else’s. You seem to do well in spotting what is shady in other people’s posts. Unfortunately, you examine your own with a different set of eyes.
This is really a non-answer to my question. In Libertaria, prostitution = legal money making job. If someone is in my debt, and is, by your own admission, my slave, why should I not feel free to put them to work in would would be a very lucrative business? I would just be profiting from their ‘labor.’
If you are uncomfortable with the sex trade as an example, can i put them to work as part of my militia? work in a hazardous environment? Make them risk life and limb to pay back their debt?
There would be no ‘forcing’ involved- they defaulted on their debt to me, initiating force, so I can do pretty much anything to them without it being coercion under your legal code. They’ve forfeited their rights.
If I am incorrect on this, please let me know. If it is not correct, then what checks are built into your system to prevent it? If it is, why do you assume that people would not enact schemes like I described, and how is that ‘more freedom’?
To be honest, I’m finding it more and more difficult to see the difference.
Up until a few days ago, if I had been asked to describe the many-governments interpretation of libertarianism, I would have said something like this:
"The basic principle which all libertarians agree on, is your right not to be coerced. However, just because libertarians respect that right does not mean that anybody is going to feel compelled to defend you against coercion from others. So, unless you feel able to defend yourself and your posessions against every (presumably non-libertarian) thug who wants a piece of you, you will want to contract with a government.
"When you do that, the government will defend you against coercion and enforce contracts which you have entered into with others. In addition, the contract you sign with the government may confer additional rights and/or duties on you – for example, a tax to finance the government.
“If you choose not to contract with a particular government, it will not protect you against coercion from others, but neither will it initiate coercion against you.”
That is how I would have described it. Hower, it now seems as if the second half of that last sentence is in dispute. If the government only respects the non-coercion rights of those who have contracted with it, then what makes it a libertarian government, as opposed to a Mafia-style protection racket?
If even your right to “live and let live” only exists as far as you are able to defend it, how is that different from pure anarchy?
Like I have said before this tells me absolutely nothing about my questions. In what ways are they like a slave and what ways are they not? I already know that the arbiter will decide what is restitution but you said that the guilty party waives all rights and is beholden to the coerced party. When asked if that meant the guilty party became the coerced party’s slave you said ‘Pretty much’. To me a slave means that you do what I say no matter what or I will use force to make you. Now at least to me we are back to where we started namely are there any limits on what the coerced can make the guilty party do?
Ok so the criminal has no rights and is beholden to me. I understand that but the questions still stand as to what I can do to make the criminal pay back his debt.
How can you have said that before, when I only made the assertion just above?
It is like a slave in the sense that he is not a rights bearing entity, but it is unlike a slave in the sense that a slave does not voluntarily waive his rights. That distinction should be self-evident to a man of your mental acumen.
But does “pretty much” mean “in every way” to you?
I have stated this numerous times: you may use only that force which is necessary to restore. Excessive force is itself coercive. Excessive force is itself coercive. Excessive force is itself coercive.
Whatever is necessary. Why you cannot grasp this is beyond me. It is, after all, exactly what you do now.
If a man does not pay his taxes, you send him a letter demanding them, and exacting a penalty fee. If he refuses, you send more letters. If he still refuses, you send an agent. If he refuses to let the agent into his home, you send more agents. Eventually, you send armed agents. If he resists them, you will use every means, including deadly force to haul him in. If he uses deadly force to resist, you will kill him.
Now, I’ve never claimed to be a smart man (only charming, handsome, and well hung), but I am afraid that i don’t see the distinction, really, especially from the pov of a non-rights bearing entity. That seems to be like saying that POWs pressed into slavery are not actually slaves because they signed up for the army, and it goes with the territory. I don’t see any sane person signing away their right to not be a slave if they end up in debt.
What if the refusal is a matter of not having the money to pay? Putting the debtor in prison won’t make me my money back. If I am allowed to make use of his labor, are there any limitations to my powers over him?
Becuase I am not able to discern what you think the difference is by you saying “yeah there are differences”.
Thats fine and I understand. What I cannot do is discern what differences there are from you merely saying that there are differences. Just to be clear he is a slave in everyother way i.e. his owner has complete say over everything he does and can force him to do anything.
Roger the whole point a gun then shoot etc. I got it.
That wasn’t my question however. My question was are there any limits on what the coerced can force the coercer to do to repay his debt?
Except I see I cannot force her to have sex with me. I cannot force her into the sex trade.
Yes but if he does not have the assets to pay the tax then he isn’t forced to go work in the salt mines to repay it. What I am asking is are there any limits to what I may force the guilty party to do in order to have my debt repaid?
Can you also quickly respond to posts #34 and #35 please?
And yet I’ve been asked before whether a free man may offer himself up as a slave. (Apparently, the inquirer considered it to be a clever examination of the notion of volitional praxis in a free economy.) And I responded that yes, given no conflict of other obligations, he may. The soldier, obviously, has a contractual obligation with the army. The soldier would be in breach if he offered himself as a slave to the enemy. The indebted man, however, has a contractual obligation to repay. He is already in breach if he is not paying.
Whatever limitations have been established by the arbiter. Perhaps, for example, he might declare that your coercer must build roads for two years at a wage of $10 dollars per hour (it is likely that road owners would have standing contracts for such cases), and that $8 of the $10 goes to you. The possibilities are as numerous as the cases.
Well, in this metaphor, the arbiter is his owner. That’s why you hired a government.
[…sigh…] Whatever limits are established by arbitration.
Humiliation and degradation are not necessary.
What? Are you an anarchist or a Libertarian? If the latter, then you know (or should know) that your question is ill-phrased.
No. I hear the garage door, and my wife is pleasant company. Sorry. I’m sure that whatever it is, I will be asked again forty more times in the next two years. Just hang loose. See you later. You’re beginning to grow on me. I apologize for my gruffness with you in the past.
Ok this makes much much more sense. The guilty party is not the slave of the coerced rather he is in custody of the government. Then the government will determine the fastest way to fix the coercion.
Are there any limits to what the arbiter may decide?
Well assuming that prostitution is legal hasn’t the coercer waived any right to refuse to do any job? I am assuming the coercer can’t refuse to become a janitor or shovel shit why is he allowed to refuse prostitution? The reason I ask is that I can garuntee that some waitresses/retail workers etc. can make a great deal more money in prostitution than their current employment.
Well I am neither of those just confused. The Libertarian talking to me has said that whatever necessary may be done yet prostitution is out of the question.
Who decides what is excessive? Who decides what is excessive? Who decides what is excessive?
Seriously. I predict that you’re going to go back to the magical aribitrator, who apparently decides all disputes in Libertaria (and on preview, I see you have). But that’s a bit of a black box. Are important decisions like what is or isn’t excessive left wholly to the discretion of arbitrators?
If an attractive woman steals from someone and cannot make restitution, you’ve said the victim has a right to her labor. Assuming prostitution is legal in this particular contracted government, and that’s where she can make the most money, is the availability of that remedy entirely dependent on which arbitrator is chosen?
For that matter, how much control does an aggreived party have to control what type of labor an indigent theif must perform for restitution? If indigent thief would prefer to work in an office mailroom, can I make him work on road construction if it pays better?
On second glance, amend my last paragraph to reflect an arbitrator rather than the aggrieved party. The question still stands – to what degree can an arbitrator direct the labor of the criminal?
That is, after all, what this thread was meant to be about (I will happily accept my share of the blame for getting off-topic). By investigative force I mean things such as searching a person’s house, searching their body, taking a DNA sample, making them stand in a police line-up, etc. All without their consent, and backed by the threat of violence if necessary. It seems to me that such force cannot be considered retaliatory or defensive, because it has not yet been decided that the accused is guilty of anything at all.
We have established that when accused and accuser are both citizen of the same government, the answer is easy: by contracting with the government, the accused has agreed to submit to whatever actions the arbiter deems necessary. So by resisting an investigation, the accused is essentially violating his citizenship contract and can be forced to obey that contract.
Those arbiters had better be angels sent directly by God, given the amount of responsibility placed on their shoulders, but that is a subject for another thread as far as I am concerned (though if you want to answer the questions posed to you by treis and Dewey, I’ll certainly follow along with interest).
So, let’s get back to the scenario where the accused has not accepted the authority of the government of Libertaria, and has therefore not consented to submit to a criminal investigation at the whim of an arbiter from Libertaria. What, then, gives the government the right to conduct an investigation against him? And if your answer is that the government does not need any justification because it does not care about the rights of a non-citizen, can you please explain how that is consistent with the sentence you agreed with above?
I don’t know why, unless you had confused classical liberalism with anarcho-capitalism, this even had to be explained to you.
Yes, and I have described that to you forty ways from Sunday. Let me ask you a question to determine whether you’re paying attention at all: are there any limits to what force may be used by a libertarian government? You’ve been told the answer. Once, I even repeated the sentence three times in a row. See if you can find it.
Prostitution is legal, but rape is not. It suddenly occurs to me that you do not understand what rights are in a libertarian context. I know this because you mention a “right to refuse” a job. Naturally, you understand that you cannot impose upon libertarianism a principle conceived in some other model, and expect a rational result. It would be like talking about the force of law in court while meaning mass times acceleration — applying a definition from science to a discussion of law. Rights and property are synonyms in a libertarian context; i.e., rights are an attribute of property. There is no “right” to do something; there is only the rights that accrue from the peaceful and honest acquisition of property. You cannot force the woman to do anything at all beyond surrender her liberty, since her usurpation was itself an abridgment of rights. Unless you have executed her, she is still the steward of her body and mind. She is indeed indebted to her victim, and all rights that accrue from her body and mind belong to him until he is restored.
Splashing boiling oil into her eyeballs is out of the question, as are pulling out her toenails and forcing broomsticks up her ass. But prostitution is not out of the question if that’s what she is willing to do.
Liberal philosophy recognizes a force it calls “preemptive force”. There is a certain threshold where preemptive force becomes indistinguishable from responsive force, and that point is when the preemption is defensive. For example, it is not necessary that you wait for a mugger to go into full arm swing with his knife before you kick him in the nuts. The mere statement, “Your money or your life,” is sufficient grounds for you to render him immobile without further ado. In other words, the threat of force is tantamount to the use of force. That is why the first appropriate response to a trespasser is to say, “Get out of here,” rather than to shoot him. The latter, at that stage, is excessive (assuming no special circumstances, like the trespasser is about to stab your wife or something). Regarding investigations specifically, it is not the case (and I thought I had explained this) that searches, seizures, or what have you are always appropriate. This entire discussion, as I’ve said before, follows from a greatly simplified example offered in passing to illustrate a point — namely, the “No” answer about whether he had stolen goods in his house. It is a mistake to carry that to an unfettered extreme and assume that enforcers are the brownshirts of the arbiters. Don’t forget that an arbiter is himself open to charges of coercion, and must be extremely diligent and thoughtful in the execution of his duties. He must make his decisions while keeping in mind how a reasonable man might interpret them.
I don’t have any idea whether Dewey has asked any questions or what they are. I understand that you don’t like this, but due to board rules, I am unable to explain this situation any further.
It isn’t just a green light; it is an obligation. Again, it’s easy to forget — given years of thinking a different way — just exactly what government IS in Libertaria. It is your hired agent who is obligated to defend your rights. Its debt is to YOU. It protects YOU from coercion, and therefore is itself precluded from coercing you. (After all, it is a metaphysical impossibility to both coerce you and guarantee you freedom from coercion.) All force that it uses is on your behalf. Before it invades some other nation or anarchy, you have already decided that you have been coerced, and an arbiter has agreed with you. It is unlikely that an arbiter will commit enforcement to a war without overwhelming evidence already established. (I mentioned satellite photos before.) On the other hand, if there is overwhelming evidence and he fails to do everything possible to protect you, including war, then he is in breach. If you feel that your government has failed you, you may charge its agents with coercion (breach) because they have guaranteed you freedom from coercion. Depending on your obligations, you may even secede. But no one can guarantee you perfection. No one can solve your problems for you. Libertarianism doesn’t even attempt to solve problems. It merely attempts to provide you a context of peace and honesty in which you face the fewest obstacles from others toward solving your own.
However, I can’t help but notice that while you draw an analogy between the concepts of pre-emptive force and investigative force, you are not quite coming out and stating that investigative force is justified as a form of pre-emptive force. Is that deliberate? The obvious difference is that with pre-emptive force, the facts are clear, whereas in the early stage of an investigation the facts themselves have yet to be determined.
As an aside:
I don’t think most of the issues we’ve been discussing are specific to that example.
And even if they are, I’d say it’s a pretty relevant example, because a search of a suspect’s property, in which the suspect would refuse consent if that option was available, is something which probably comes up in the majority of criminal investigations. It’s not like we’re discussing some obscure special case here which is never going to come up in the real world.
I think you may be underestimating the amount of cases where the “whodunnit” question cannot be answered with a reasonable degree of certainty, without resorting to investigative force – especially if we assume that criminals are not stupid and will adapt their behaviour to the methods that the government is using. You can say things like “maybe there are sattelite photos” or “maybe the suspect will incriminate himself and thereby open the door for an investigation”, but that doesn’t help you in the majority of cases where that it not the case.
Skip those rounds of investigation, and you either catch only the very dumbest of criminals (if the government chooses to err on the side of caution, and only acts when overwhelming evidence is available), or the NCP becomes meaningless and the government essentially becomes a bunch of ordinary mercenaries (if the government takes the accuser at his word without demanding hard evidence first).
A political philosophy which does not have an answer on how to deal with that large majority of cases where there exists reasonable suspicion but not proof, is not quite ready for the real world yet, in my humble opinion.
See you later. You’re beginning to grow on me. I apologize for my gruffness with you in the past.