What would it mean to live in a completely free society? In dealing with personal sovereignty, which takes precedence: freedom of association or property rights? At first glance, we know that these two are tied together into one idea through self-ownership but when looked at more deeply, they can conflict.

There are Two Constructions of Libertarianism as set up by Chandran Kukathas in Libertarian Papers Vol 1, 11 (2009). One of these is a world in which there is complete freedom of association—the right to give up your libertarian right for the moment to whatever is yours in order to live in a statist or communal society, which can end up a world where we have many property rights violations, like those born into such communities who are not shown the way. The other is authoritarian propertarianism–self-ownership protected against those who would take it from you; meaning immoral agents barricading the knowledge of your libertarian rights from you.

The second one, which Kukathas calls the “Union of Liberty” would require a codification of Voluntaryist law, or, what it means to actually live within the framework of libertarianism. There are a lot of obvious problems with this construction, namely, that we are talking pretty much about giving a sovereign rule making body search warrant powers over the whole of the society in order to protect property rights, possibly routine or based on anonymous claims. This can turn into a lobbying opportunity for people who would like to force their definition of Liberty onto others.

The more metaphysically bankrupt side of this proposition though rests in its misunderstanding of language. To have a group of people, the Commission on Standards for Liberty, usurp the most intimate part of us: our brains and as a social species: our form of communication, in the name of the principle of self-ownership is beyond comprehension and lacks an understanding of language, the mind, and I believe some fundamentals about what spontaneous order really means.

As we have seen it said a thousand times before, one thing that freedom means is the freedom to make mistakes, to mess up and learn from them, but to do it on your own terms. Understanding the Rothbardian idea that selling yourself into slavery is literally impossible, there is nothing within a non-free community that lives within a larger free society that is actual immoral or a negation of self-ownership. For as we do not believe in positive rights, we cannot say that people have a right to understand their autonomy or a right to know their other options anymore than we can say that people have a right to good housing or health care. Ideas as such are not an economic goods because they are in super abundance and their content can be duplicated ad infinitum without taking away from the original “owner.” This means any person is free to them at any time, but this does not mean there is a moral obligation to present the ideas to somebody to evaluate them by their own standards.

So, there is a two-fold problem with this literal monopolization of defining the term liberty as in, a certain firm will be barring others from entering into the service that they provide, which is interpreting the word that the whole of society rests on.

First, we see a demand made on every individual about the way in which they have to spend their time and empty the contents of their brain: if you are a communist and you have a child, it will be “mandated” that you give them full knowledge of the other politoco-economic social structures that they can be a part of.

Secondly, that it is also telling people how to use language. Language, being the most essential social and mental tool, is one of the main things we need to safeguard against any attempt at one agency having ultimate control over. The easiest way to demonstrate how individualized language is would be to use a strong word: LOVE. Many people will look at this and think of Hollywood romantic, others their family, other people will think about a real, knowledgeable love and still others just think pain.

Another case in point about how language can be used to manipulate us is from what some people consider one of the highest philosophical “social contracts” that have ever been created: the US Constitution. Trying to put limitations on a government through the use of words is a futile attempt because like every part of the Universe, words are a constantly evolving constructions and because almost anything in this world can be used for good or for bad, it will move towards whichever we allow it to. As in all things, the diversification allowed for in the individualized method is what leads to great competition and cooperation and the least infringement on one’s personhood.

So, on the other side of the coin, why is it that it is more “libertarian” to allow for unfree societies to exist in a free world?

If there is one thing that propagates the state more than anything else, it is the compulsory schooling that we have, that teaches children how to become good citizens instead of good people. Why is this so damaging? Because what they are doing is taking away the children’s ability to think for themselves which is so very essential to our soft-bodied species.
If there is one force fighting against the state, then that is people’s ability to obtain the information that they want and need even though the state doesn’t want them to have it. There is a wealth of people who want this information because if your spirit is not broken, you are born with the ability and the craving for self-direction.

If anarchocapitalism is based on the idea that men are more good than bad, and that we have the ability to control ourselves and weigh out the cost benefit of any situation that is within our control–that is, having to do with ourselves and our property–then to dictate that people must learn this or that thing, that people must believe in things this way and be saved from their own ignorance, is a total 180 from what it is that we are supposed to stand for from a moral perspective.

We trust in markets because we trust people to do what is best for them. To say that people must be given this information in order to choose what is right for them instead of allowing them to follow their true hearts and minds, to not trust people to know what is right for them even in the face of adversity and oppression, is in absolute opposition with stated principles. The only way we can have a libertarian society come to fruition is to educate those who will listen, reach out to those that haven’t a clue, and to accept when people do not agree with the position. We do not force our position, we do not demand it be followed.

I would also muse that whatever technology a non-capitalist society came up with to block the incoming of information, capitalists could overcome that because of the greater organization and the profit motive.

As long as other communities are not aggressing against us, there is absolutely no moral or logical justification for enforcing our interpretation of liberty on them.

As libertarians, one of the reasons that we crave the salvation that comes with a stateless society is because we believe that within humans is the same need that we see in every living thing and even every subatomic particle that exists in the Universe–this is the ability to allow for autonomy, self-direction and the respect that should come with this responsibility. Even if something is an unthinking atom, a beautiful lantana flower, or a large beast like the blue whale, what we can say for sure is that the only thing obstructing their paths in doing what they so please and dealing with these consequences are the regularities of nature and the interspecies and intraspecies competition that comes with being part of a dynamic Universe and thriving world. I want to go over the correlation that we see between such passion in the political sphere and how it could and should extend to our personal lives.

If this is the truth, if what we so crave is freedom from oppression that comes with somebody trying to usurp your self-ownership–which can never, in fact, be done because you always have ultimate control over your own body–then what sort of deductions can we make from this on a more micro-level. Is there a way we can look at the concrete relationships that we involve ourselves in and see the mirror image of the sort of ignorant conceit that we get so uppity over the state for claiming wherein they can direct our lives instead of ourselves?

In any life form, there is a balance between competition and cooperations. As human beings, we know that the division of labor and the benefit and amount of productivity that comes with doing this is of immense benefit; we know that in order to get somebody to enter into an economic transaction with us without the use of the force, we have to offer them something not only that they want but something that they value more highly than whatever it is we want out of the trade. I believe this in our romantic, friend and our familial relationships, we need to demand the same of ourselves and of the people with whom we associate. This is an idea that has been most flushed out by Stefan Molyneux.

Ask yourself how often you look at a statist and think, how do they not see that these things are harmful to their well-being and also hurt those around them? Why in the world would any rational person accept the sort of abuse that comes from this coercive mechanism in which you have no say as to whether or not you are interested in buying, or whether you are interested in selling, as in eminent domain? How in the world has nearly the whole of humanity decided that instead of having love and respect for one another, we should constantly have ourselves split divisively by theft, by being told you may not enter into what voluntary associations that you will, by being told that your idea for a product is unsafe, by having it adjucated that your feeling of anxiety or injustice are illegitimate when done a disservice by either the State or the corporations with whom they are in cohorts? How did we get into this sad affair and why do people continue accepting it?

Now, again, I ask yourself to look around at the personal relationships that you involve yourself in. When you are in a conversation with your parents or any of your loved ones, it is important to make sure that when they voice a complaint you give that completely autonomous person the respect and thought that they deserve because their feelings are not invalid, and you should ask the same of all of those that you associate with. Why? Because we learn to accept our place in the world through not the completely abstract notion of the state but in our day-to-day doings.

As children, we are taught pretty young that we are not autonomous, that our wants and needs shall be subjucated to the wants and needs and others. That is, “you have to share,” something when you were just told it was yours, and then we are told that they didn’t really mean it was yours but it was on lease to you until the gift-giver decides that you do not have the exclusive right to use and dispose of. We ask ourselves over and over again–isn’t the philosophy of ownership so very obvious? Where have we gone wrong? It starts here. It starts with children who are given something to call their own but then they are deemed “selfish” and “mean-spirited” when they would like to use something that they were told was their own. They must share.

Delving into this selfishness more, what a blessing it would be to grow up in an environment where you are told that looking out for your own interests isn’t something to be viewed as evil, it isn’t something to be viewed as an affront to your fellow man. Man is supposed to denote the most rational being that there is, that we can possibly know of, at least, at this point in our technological development. If we are ever to truly respect other creatures including those with whom we share a species, one thing is completely and absolutely necessary to recognize: it cannot possibly be wrong to look out for your own well being. Every animal in the world is built to do it, to take fight or flight when they are in danger, to gather food, call it their own, to sustain their bodies, to mark the boundaries of their territory through chemical trails or other markers, to protect their young. If they fail to make the proper decisions, there is a possibility if they are a pack animals–as humans are, but in a different sense–that they will be lucky enough to have those with whom they are intimately involved lend them a helping hand. So, why, if everything down from ants and all of the way up to orcas have figured out this need for self-direction can we, who are oh so very proud at our ability to defeat the natural world, still so out of tune with its obviously lesson of spontaneous order and self-direction? We grow up and we hear our desire and need to look out for our own well-being is selfish; but who else will do it? When nobody is around, do we not eat because another may need the food? How far does the idea that we owe our lives to others really extend?

But then, we do not get any better at this when we are older. Our parents didn’t know so they never taught us, so we need to make it our absolute duty to take and understand the gravity of the responsibility of being a self-owner and respecting others with volition and a life to live. If we speak to our friends and tell them that this life decision is wrong, not only as a helping hand to show them the right way to go but making them feel bad about their thought process, about their own rationality which they have to use to navigate through the world, are we not seeing this same sort of abusive mentality that we receive from the state? We are telling our friends when we do not just say “perhaps there is a better course to take if you think about it like X, Y, and Z” but instead say “that is stupid. I cannot believe your so retarded that you think that is a good idea” we are reinforcing this same idea of impotency in grasping and taking control of your own personal world that we so hate to see in our government.

Another thing that we see and these two go hand in hand is the idea that you have to live at the service of others and that there are a lot of possible things that you can pursue in your life that are what you will be told is “impractical” for whatever myriad of reasons can be coughed up–because, what purpose do they serve? Who do they serve and maybe even as far as how will that service you financially. There is the stereotype of somebody going to art school when their parents wanted them to be a doctor. Where do we leave people when we tell them that their goals, the things that give them the most purpose in life, the most fulfilling feeling, are not fit to be lived?

When you look at your relationships in this way, if we look at our relationships in the way that we view the state, we can see that this is these are the exact sorts of things we are infuriated by.

There are a lot of theories about how to Smash the State (before it Smashes You). I have argued before that the way to go about this is person by person, case by case. To show a person from their point of view and their concerns how it is that the state is the antithesis of life and change so essential to the Universe, is the proper way to go about it. We need to do not only that but have it reflected in our treatment of the person, personally. This does not mean only believing you can have an honest, thoughtful relationship with those who hold your same views. For all we know, this can be a two way path. If we show people what it means to be respected as a individual with their own goals, their own thoughts and believe that they are worth pursuing for that individual, and they recognize how fulfilling it is, perhaps it will be easier for them to see how the State violates this right.

One thing to note about the use of the word “exploitation” as a bad is the literal definitions that we can look up (1) to utilize, esp. for profit; turn to practical account; (2) to use selfishly for one’s own ends; and (3) to advance or further through exploitation; promote. So we can look and say that it isn’t a bad in any sense of the word. Being utilized in order to create or promote; and with definition two, we can say that both the laborer and the factory owner exploit each other, the former doing so by using the capital investment the latter built up in order to make a living.

Just to go over a few of the vicious cycles of exploitation—used in the negative sense in which it is generally used–and the real implications in such a mentality.

(Il)legal Immigration as Exploitation

Because we each belong to our country and it belongs to us, citizenship is of the utmost importance in choices for employment. If an illegal comes into our country—and to some, even a legal immigrant—looking for work, he is taking jobs that belong to us as a country and a body of homogenous people and giving it to an alien who is now considered to have “stolen” this job from good, hard working, local men. This is laying claim on another man’s labor—that is, the capitalist who has gained the money using his physical body in order to employ people is now told that he may not do with his productivity as he pleases.

When immigrants go through the process of legal immigration and assimilate into a culture, the majority of people agree that this is a good thing. Having borders and an immigration process already presupposes the idea that the land here is, again, owned by all of the citizens and the government of the country. On one hand, practically speaking, 300 million people or the “government” cannot own property because nobody has the exclusive right to use and dispose of and responsibility for the maintenance of such property belongs to no one. Let’s just take the argument at face value though: the government via consent of the governed owns all of the land within the borders—this is called land tenure. As a citizen, when you agree that the government owns all of the land (because surely, nobody is saying “aliens can come here as long as they stay only on private persons lands”) you are then inherently accepting that you do not own your property.

Employers are by fact of minimum wage laws taking advantage of immigrants. I believe there is enough information on this site to cover all of the things that are wrong with minimum wage laws, from its creation of unemployment to laying claim on another’s person body because what you think a “living wage” ought to be.

Capitalists exploiting Workers

This is the most easily debunked idea of exploitation ever. We know that the reason that capitalists reap a profit while workers earn wages it because of the formers ability to suspend current consumption for future consumption and also his willingness to take the risk of losing his investment. But let’s call this beside the point for a moment. The more important thing is that both parties, the employer and the employee, are entering into a voluntary contract. That is to say that all involved have decided that the parts they are playing in the transactions are more than just mutually beneficial, but that both think that they are getting the better part of the deal otherwise they would do something else with their time. If the capitalist thought that his money was worth more than what value the worker will bring, he would instead keep his money. If the worker believed that his time would be better spent doing something else, or believed his wages to be truly “unfair,” he would use his hours and energies differently in order to pursue the best he can. In a free society, no man accepts a job or wage he doesn’t want.

Money and Banks as Exploitation

Everybody is very aware that money is the root of all evil and that there are giant, shape-shifting lizard monsters who control the world and have created a One World Government plutocracy. Honestly, in its current form, banks and the money supply are not completely voluntary actions due to the massive amount of government interference—which could, of course, be said of most institutions in their current form.

But can money really be evil, or bankers really exploitive in a free society? Money is a common medium of exchange, and banks work as both a storehouses for this medium of exchange and also an intermediary between lenders and borrowers; that is, lenders are savers who use time deposits as a way to signal to bankers it is okay to lend out the money and then gain interest due to their suspended consumption and borrowers agree of their own volition that they are willing to pay interest on such borrowed money because of their current consumption.

Are the lower class being taken hostage by the higher class by virtue of the fact that they need money now and cannot save and those who have planned, suspended consumption (saved) are now able to provide that needed money to those who are less well off than them? When we phrase the proposition like this, it seems ridiculous that being able to provide what is necessary for one is the equivalent of harming them. Perhaps it is the bankers themselves who are harming the whole of humanity outside of that profession by providing a safe place for people to keep there money and a way for those more fortunate to lend to those less fortunate for a profit to both the bankers and the saver, whilst the borrower is stuck with footing the bill of their gain?

One really important thing to notice about this is that the person who has the time deposit and the person who takes out the loan do not have to know each other. This is one of the more obvious mechanisms that makes the capitalist system more blind to race, class, color, creed, etc. Of course if a bank wanted to serve only blacks or only men, this would take a chunk out of their profits and that profit is exactly what they are in the business for. But what about the man who had saved? Although some people do live off the interest of their accounts, I think it is safe to say that is not the case more often than not. The person certainly does want the interest, but what if this man is a Protestant anti-Semite, a womanizer who finds anybody who harms their persons through the use of drugs and alcohol the scum of the Earth as well, as the rest that aren’t like him? It would exclude a huge amount of people from being able to borrow from him to start up a business, buy a house, or even have a payday loan to get through the week. But if the bank does not have any exclusionary practice, he will not be specifying that the loans made with his money must be to this or that type of person (which sounds like a hard thing to enforce anyway). So what we actually see here instead of a minority being excluded or taken advantage of is the banker allowing a voluntary transaction between two people who would not normally associate otherwise and all parties benefiting from it!

If we say money in and of itself is “the root of all evil” then what we are literally calling evil is indirect trade. If a five-year-old and a ten-year-old trade each other because one has an apple and wants and orange, and the other has an orange and wants an apple, do we call this evil? No. What if we use pebbles as a money because the five-year-old doesn’t like apples so he wants to keep his orange, so the ten-year-old offers him 3 stones for the orange that he can then turn around and use to buy a banana? This is “money,” or what we call evil.

What would a world without trade mean and how far would it extend? Will we call it evil if my mother trades her most recent issue of Cosmo for my sisters most recent issue of Glam? Well, we can say that without a question, this possibility wouldn’t even arise because such publications take a massive amount of division of labor which would not come to fruition in a tradeless world. May my sister who hates doing the dishes trade with my mother who hates doing laundry? Let’s assume family trade is okay. This means each family will have to become self-sufficient. The serious repercussions of such a world and its effects on our standard of living are unfathomable.

But beyond all of this, we look again to the question: how can people entering voluntarily into an agreement be said to be living at the expense of one another and not to the benefit of that they seem to believe it to be, by what standard and whose measurement?
These are just a few of the basic examples of the exploitation that people find the bane of humanity, these agreed upon transactions happening between two or more parties.

But what does exploitation, or to use more apt words: debasement, perversion, misuse and injustice really mean? Where is it that we see these things actually happening?

To go to war on a citizenry who has done no harm accept to live in an area of land monopolized by a state mechanism that is now clashing with another government is exploitation. To agree with an employer that you will work enough to earn the salary he has promised of $82,000, with a marginal tax rate of 25% in the US taken from your check to benefit people you know not and projects you know not, because of some social contract you’ve never seen or signed is exploitation. To tell a person from one territorial monopoly where they may move their body as if you lay claim on it is exploitation.

Only when we live under and with coercive forces may we actually see what it means to take advantage of and to demoralize persons and their spirits. When we step in between two persons and tell them what to do with their bodies, their energies, time and property and act as if we have a righteous claim to usurp some one else’s volition because we don’t trust individuals ability to do what is in their best interest, we are crossing the line between moral and immoral, creative and destructive, humanity versus inhumanity. And only when we realize that we do not have to allow ourselves to be subject to these sorts of transgressions will we live in a world free from “exploitation”.

1. Why a public judicial system creates corrupt incentives? Author: Amelia Vreeland, RFL
2. http://www.adr.org/
3. The Nature Conservancy Conservation Easement

Law: The rule of conduct and the mechanism for applying those rules

The topic of private arbitration has been covered on Reason For Liberty before¹², but the question is what sort of incentives does socialization of justice and security provide to a peoples? How is this different from those of custom law and privatized defense?

Private Law

There is much historical precedence for law without the state. Anglo-Saxon customs law was used up until the invasions of the Normans and other Germanic people. The laws being based on customs and individual consent, first off, they were not violated very often to begin with. If they were, why was it that if the defendant were convicted, he would submit to the judgment? Social ostracism, yes. But more importantly, the law was based on reciprocity of defense and individual and property rights. Crimes were considered not “crimes again humanity”,  “the nation,” “the king,” or “the People” but only as one individual committing a crime against another. Generally, there was some sort of economic restitution paid as opposed to capital punishment and the like. William C Wooldridge mentions one medieval example in Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man³:

Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows, and their power over his goods, proved if anything more effective than physical coercion. Take John of Homing, who made his living marketing wholesale quantities of fish. When John sold a lot of herring on the representation that it conformed to a three-barrel sample, but which, his fellow merchants found, was actually mixed with “sticklebacks and putrid herring,” he made good the deficiency on pain of economic ostracism.

If you are interested in Bollywood movies then I suggest Bulandi starring Rajanikant, where he plays the role of the village judge, and he punishes a rapist to be out of the village for 18 years and marry the girl he raped(which is a horrible Indian mentality that the solution of a rape is marrying the victim to her rapist), and that osctracization was a worthy punishment.⁴

Why did these “barbarians” not resort to killing often? Because they had more to gain from the mutual defense that person would provide after they had suffered their punishment then from any imagined idea of something being brought to “Justice” by taking a criminals life. If the defendant did not meet his obligation, the plaintiff had the right to kill him. So, each person submitted to the law not only because they were generally accepted social mores, but because if you did not submit, you were kept outside of the protection of the fellows in your group. Should someone harm you in any way, you alone will have to defend yourself(and your opinion alone, as a criminal, has no credence).

The Law Merchant, established in the 11th century, was also a stateless judicial system. They were extremely speedy because as most people were traveling merchants, they needed the courts to decide immediately so as not to incur extra economic hardships. This was based on economic transfers, all parties had entered into direct and voluntary contracts which established a moral and legal duty, and both parties roles were reversible: buyers become sellers and vice-versa. If the accused party does not heed the rulings and compensate the aggrieved, they would no longer be traded with, which also meant, if he was traded with, there would be nothing stopping any one from harming them in a transaction.

Again, we see a mutual benefit. People responded to the economic and security incentives by not committing the crime, and if they did, obeying the judgments because it would harm them economically; leave them defenseless against attacks both by people inside a certain legal system and outside; and general social ostracism since it was all based customs and commerce. From the actual judicial perspective, you would

1. lose your position as an arbiter if you were not just and
2. then be brought to trial for your tort against whomever you were unjust.

Another interesting fact is, in the administration of justice in historically private law, there is either the absence of a fee or a nominal one. Other examples of private law societies include the Kapaku of Papau New Guinea, many Native American tribes, Medieval Iceland and Ireland.

Public Law

From Common Law in England, we eventually got to what we have today–the civil and criminal law system. Each step that was taken in our travel from common law to authoritarian law was taken to consolidate power and money to the king and politically strong interest groups. Eventually, as now happens, criminal law became a matter of the “King’s Peace”. When once, if a crime was committed, the defendant paid the plaintiff and the settled the disputes locally, eventually the king started sending out representatives to make sure every group administered justice properly, and collected a fee when disputes were settled and a fee if the courts allowed a dispute to be settled outside of the court; if the defendant one, he paid a fee and if the accuser won, he paid a fee for wasting the king’s time. Being in the justice system is now a for-profit system based on politics.

As opposed to customs law where everybody agrees on the rules because they are customs, the State legal system is a law that comes from the top and works it way down. That means that there is less and less consensus among the people, more things become crimes due to special interest lobbying, and the cost of enforcement is higher because it is not agreed upon by the majority of people that it should be a crime.

Lets look at what sort of incentives this system has given us.

For all of the victimless crimes out there, we have a massive amount of lawyers prosecuting people for harming their own bodies–through drug and prostitution laws. Lawyers and defense attorneys have an incentive to prosecute as much as possible because it will further their career. Johnny gets a hooker. Who is hurt? Nobody. If the state finds out about it, we have to pay minimally for the

1. The district attorney
2. A grand jury of 23 people to indict and
3. A defense lawyer for the defendant and
4. A trial jury to find them guilty or innocent.

Should the trial jury find them guilty we pay for housing, food, rehabilitation programs, a GED program, and maybe job training through the correctional system.
This gives a huge incentive for those in the state system, defense attorneys, police, correctional officers, as well as those with special interests who want their morality impressed upon people a huge incentive to lobby for these victimless crime laws. After pressuring congress to pass them, they no longer have to deal with the burden of the costs incurred by enforcing such laws. As usual, the third-party paying system gives us an over-abundance of laws and criminals. Lawyers, since they get paid by the hour, have a very good reason to drag cases out as long as possible.

What about the courts themselves? They are free to everybody. We have back logs of cases that go for miles because people bring things to court more than they otherwise would because, again, people do not incur the costs. How do we divide the time? First come, first serve–so, I get caught smoking pot and a week later, your daughter is killed. If this were a private system, you would probably have the ability to get your case brought to the forefront through monetary compensation. But not in the public system.

Your daughter is killed and it takes months to present the case because we have a backlog of petty and/or victimless crimes. What happens? The criminal gets a plea-bargain, also stated as, you get less than you otherwise would have because all of our tax money goes into prosecuting pot-smokers. How about immunity? If a criminal agrees to give testimony against another criminal, they cannot have charges pressed against them about anything that they talk about. This says, it is okay to be a criminal if you also are not loyal.

The overuse of police is the most obvious. Again, because it is done on a first come, first serve basis, and the people using the police do not incur the costs of their call, it is totally abused. First off, people will call the police because of “noise pollution”. You have a party at your house and the cop comes, but really you weren’t that loud and anyhow, whose business is that? While the cop is on this call, there are real crimes happening that they now cannot attend to because your neighbor likes to eat his meal quietly. The police also work for the same people that the courts do. What happens when a police officer commits a crime? If he even gets brought to trial, and he probably won’t, he more than likely will not be convicted and if he is, it will be a much less harsh sentence than it otherwise would be. This creates a group of people who do not have to abide by the law.

And for the plaintiff? Well, whatever crime has been done to you, first you have to hire a lawyer, then you have to wait months and months for it to go to trial. Let’s say the criminal doesn’t have much money, so then your taxes are going to provide defense for him. They try to get a plea bargain to keep it out of court. You don’t want to accept that so you bring him to court. The process goes on for months and months and keep in mind, on top of your own legal fees and through taxes part of the criminals, your taxes are also going to running the entire court system. Then, he goes to jail and you have to help pay for the rest of his life but that is all. You get nothing in return for your effort, no justice is served unless paying for his room and board is the prize that you should be considered awarded.

Why capital punishment?

Rarely, because the State took over the legal system, were people killed because of crimes. Why was this? Criminals had to pay restitution with their own money or their own work if they didn’t have it, meaning the injustice was rectified. When it got to the point where that did not happen in criminal cases as now happens—when the court system gets paid, the lawyers gets paid, the police get paid–but the person who the crime was committed against gets nothing in the way of compensation, they want something to happen. Although we do it less and less often, the system that arose was taking the criminals life.

Conclusion

Instead of creating a system where law and justice prevail and the needs of people are met to their highest possible consensus, the State becoming the legal system has de-harmonized the organization of society, created perverse incentives for criminals and those that are part of the system, and created disincentives for those harmed to actually pursue justice because of the negative cost-benefit.

1. The Prospects of Private Judicial System, Reason For Liberty, Author: Unpretentious Diva
2. Third Party Arbitration in India, Reason For Liberty, Author: Renegade Division
3. See William C Wooldridge, Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man (New Rochelle, N Y Arlington House, 1970), pp 111ff.
4. Third Party Arbitration in India, Reason For Liberty, Author: Renegade Division

The first time we see a major philosopher discuss social contract is in one of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, Crito, where he states that by staying within the Athenian state, one is necessarily agreeing to abide by the laws of it. Since the society has made what he has possible (not in the sense that he couldn’t acquire it otherwise, but that he didn’t), then when the legal system says that a person ought to be thrown in jail, the person has not the right of objection. By staying within the tenured land of the society, you have implicitly agreed to abide by whatever justice the arbiter of the state handed down to you.

John Locke and Hobbes are usually given credit for their work on social contract theory and the state of nature as if they created the concepts. Their theories, as well as Rousseau’s, pretty much propagate the same sort of idea with minor variations.

All of the theories of Social Contract have one thing in common. Since it is the idea of a “contract” is that both parties mutually agree upon it(otherwise what is the difference between slavery and free contract) it presupposes the notion that we have all consented to live under these rules? Is this true?

The most basic argument is that under a certain government, especially a constitutional one, such contract was agreed to only by a certain group of men at a certain time. Not all of those living on the land in 1776 in America expressed that they were willing to live under such law. Certainly, no one alive today had anything to do with it. If you accepted this doctrine of generational consignment, it may be said, that means it is morally or legally acceptable to sell your daughter into slavery. Similarly not all those living on the land of India in 1947 gave their explicit consent to live under such a law, most of the time the respective kings gave their citizens to the government of India(which begs the questions, did Indians really get freedom or their ownership was merely handed over to the respective Kings by the British, who then handed them to then newly formed Government of India).
Unfortunately, this in and of itself doesn’t hold water. You are allowed to get up and leave at any time regardless of whether all other land also is previously owned and tenured, because in staying you are agreeing to that state’s laws instead of any other. Even if there aren’t other options—and I believe there are, such as living in Antarctica, or things like the SeaSteading project¹-that isn’t the state’s fault either. That man must make cost/benefit decisions under which dominion they live under, that there is a small supply of different choices currently, is a fact that cannot be evaded, wished away, called unfair, or used as a logical or social argument under any pretext of a world in which we have scarcity and economic law.

I have found only one argument that is a defense against not abiding by the laws of the State. What we refer to as social contract makes the self-affirming supposition that we have consented to such agreement. Something being consensual can only exist if there is, was or will ever be a choice. This isn’t to say that a constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land so we must abide by it; but that any constitution, being a legally binding contract between the state and society, can only be considered valid if it was consensual.

There are two essential components of a contract: the offer and the agreement. An offer you can’t refuse isn’t really an offer, but the fact of the matter is, man is able to permit something only if he is also able to deny it. That is, since the contract says “we will give you justice and security in turn for you paying taxes and abiding by our regulations,” if we cannot refuse to sign, then there is no ways the word consent or contract can be used. If we aren’t allowed to say, “No, thank you. I promise that I will not take a dime from the State, use any of the services provided, will take the security risk and will not aggress against any of its citizens as long as the State does not agrees against me.” then there is no consent involved, and it makes this argument tantamount to slavery. The ability to refuse to acknowledge the contract wasn’t a possibility at the start of any nation and it isn’t now.

A correlation to be drawn to bring it down to its most basic form: if I am raped, does it matter that if was in the wrong place at the wrong time and if could have not been in that place, or may have gotten up and walked away if I had the means, mean that I consented to the rape?

So, what if we own the land we stay on, and never leave it because that is violating the State’s property? Does this work? No, because they claim domain over all lands, even if they don’t in any sense of the word “own” it—they do not have exclusive rights to use and dispose of it as they would. So, even if land tenure were an argument, it brings us back to the original negation. You cannot choose to not sign. Henceforth, it is not a contract.

Even if you chose to live outside of society in a plot that had been previously untouched or else did have a deed transfer, you are still subject to the laws of such a society because it is inside the eminent domain of the State², and it means these people must admit they do not own their land and have to act as such because of tenure; or that expropriation right(of eminent domain) exists which is negative to social contract theory.

If people say they don’t own their own land, then they don’t own their labor because it is exists either through homesteading or contractual agreement (which are the only ways property can be acquired; mixing your labor into something unclaimed in nature or receive it through voluntary means); and if they don’t own their labor, then how much do they own their body? If people don’t own their own labor, do not have exclusive rights to use and dispose of their own body (and mind) than not only have they not made a contractual agreement, but they are incapable of doing so.

If nobody is able to consent or not consent, then this means the State enforces its contract through an agreement with itself because it derives the power to enforce such law through its own entity, which obliterates any notion of “social contract” ever construed, as far as I know.

The question of breach of contract also arises. If we did have a contract-and we don’t in any true sense of the word—then if one party does not or improperly performs its legal obligation under such contract, there is a breach which voids it as long as the aggrieved party can support his claim that the non-performing party did not perform. Even without a constitution, the whole point of social contract is for security. If we look at just this basic function, how secure do you feel? Worse yet, not only are you not secure from third parties, but also the very entity which you entered into this legally binding agreement with is the main aggressor and aggravator.
Since the State has a monopoly on the legal system, when you bring to courts the fact that you have been injured, you are asking the party which breach the contract to decide whether they have done so, making the agreement null and void; and that they must pay you reparations and admit that you do not have to live by the laws they’ve created any longer. This is as if I agreed to pay you $10 to wash my car, you wash it, and I do not pay. Now, in order for you to receive justice, you have to come to me to decide whether I have violated the terms. If I were going to decide in your favor, I would have just paid you the $10 to begin with.

We never agreed or had the chance to agree to a contract; now that we “have one” we have no way of reconciling terms if it is breached. This cannot be. If we did have any contract at all, it would certainly be an antisocial one.

(As a side note, in current times, the argument that you can just leave the State to go to another holds no water any longer. You must get your nation’s government to give you permission to leave, and then another’s permission to come. This is not “free to get up and walk away.” It is free to ask permission from those who do have a choice.)

1. Seasteading Institute – http://seasteading.org/
2. Eminent Domain is the inherent power of the state to seize a citizen’s private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen’s rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner’s consent. Eminent Domain Wikipedia

1. It is a common trend going on these days. School children commit suicides because of the “oppressive school system”. It is “Oppression” that some students get higher marks while some fails. Thus, there should be a grading system. Anybody getting 80% and above, should be graded A+. Alas! So, there is no incentive for a student to master a subject and gain 100% marks. Even if he gets 80%, he will be at the top. In addition, he can never fail. It is the making of mediocre.,ReasonForLiberty
2. Division of labor, ReasonforLiberty