A response to Eternal Vigilance or Perpetual Motion Liberty? - Part 1: Selling Yourself Into Slavery
Posted on March 30th, 2008 by bile Categories and Tags: Uncategorized, debt, food, Joe A. Gambler, Murray N. Rothbard, restitution, Smith Co., thefthttp://www.strike-the-root.com/…
In The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard presents selling oneself into slavery as a logical impossibility because of the “inalienability of the will.” The will may be inalienable, but a contractual obligation certainly is not “inalienable.” Rothbard would reject a contract worded thusly: “I hereby sell myself into slavery to Smith Co. in return for subsistence living and three lottery tickets per week.” However, consider this case. Joe A. Gambler is given a one million dollar line of credit at 20% interest at the casino. He gambles it all until he has one million in debt, and just the monthly interest is more than his attainable monthly income. He is bankrupt, and if Rothbardian contractual debt obligations are enforceable in a meaningful sense, then the casino has very significant rights on the control of how Joe gets to spend his income, how much leisure he gets, and how much he must work. Joe has become a de facto slave.
Rothbardians miss this essential problem. People are advertised, persuaded, brainwashed, conned, Ponzi schemed, schooled, and more to convince them to sell themselves into virtual slavery. It is not a non-issue, it is a central issue. Living by debt is walking on a wobbly fence when falling on the wrong side is slavery. Call debt slavery merely de facto slavery if you will, but if it looks like a dead fish and smells like a dead fish, then why treat it other than like a dead fish? Notice how important thrift and debt avoidance was to Thoreau in the first half of Walden. He noticed that, like today, people would sell themselves into debt for superficial luxuries in housing when one could build an acceptable structure without debt. For those who say it cannot happen, I say rather, don’t let it happen.
- “I hereby sell myself into slavery to Smith Co. in return for subsistence living and three lottery tickets per week.” is a an invalid statement/contract. You can’t be definition be a voluntary slave. You can’t be property. You can voluntarily act like a slave which from an ignorant 3rd party perspective looked like enslavement but you can not call that situation slavery. Looking and smelling like a dead fish does not mean it’s a dead fish.
- Rothbard clearly describes restitution proportionality and what he feels should be considered a legitimately enforcible contract. One’s inalienable right to life would override any debt described in the above article. In all but the most extreme cases, just as today, people would not end up in any sort of prison or work camp or otherwise physically restrained in order to pay off their debts. This includes wage garnishing to an extent where the debtor was unable to sustain themselves. There would more likely be a great amount of ostracism which the debtee attempts to propagate if the debtor fails to make reasonable efforts to repay the debt. That debt however is voluntary theft and therefore you are obligated to repay it… not involuntary slavery.
- Nor is it the same as the situation of supposedly selling yourself into slavery. In that case you are agreeing to something which is continuous. Shelter and food can be stopped at any point with little or no theft. You stop working and they stop providing shelter. That’s significantly different from Joe A. Gambler taking a one million dollar loan at 20% interest. In that case you’ve taken money conditionally and upfront. Any failure to repay under those conditions is outright theft. Just because you cannot predict the future doesn’t negate the situtation you’ve agreed to. The debtor could have won money and repaid the loan too… so that act of getting the loan they possibly couldn’t afford isn’t in itself illegitimate. Besides it’s not practical. Are you really going to go to the individuals who have the money and ask for it back telling them the loan was illegitimate to begin with? If we are talking about a free society there can not be an organization with a monopoly on force, justice and law which attempts to forbid such contracts from being created in the first place.
- “People are advertised, persuaded, brainwashed, conned, Ponzi schemed, schooled, and more to convince them to sell themselves into virtual slavery.”
- advertised: voluntary
- persuaded: voluntary
- brainwashed: hardly scientific IMO, can’t judge
- conned: fraud
- Ponzi schemed: possibly fraud, caveat emptor
- schooled:voluntary
If you voluntarily enter into a situation that turns bad then there is little I feel someone can argue about. Lots of people make bad, ignorant decisions. That’s not fraud however nor is it something realistically preventable nor should it be prosecuted. Fraud however is a different story and would negate any contract entered into.
2 Responses to “A response to Eternal Vigilance or Perpetual Motion Liberty? - Part 1: Selling Yourself Into Slavery”
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March 31st, 2008 at 7:32 am
I’m glad you posted something on this very well discussed topic.
I think you fail to understand that to the human creature there is little to no difference between being compelled to do something and forced to do something. You cling to the idea of voluntary and involuntary actions when they are hardly discernible. In the past you’ve fallen back on the tactic of picking the most bombastic, straw man example possible to try to show how I’m wrong. Something along the lines of "There is a big difference between someone pointing a gun at my back and making me drink a coke and seeing a billboard that says ‘Drink Coke’".
In actuality there is little difference. People are indoctrinated from birth through advertisements and they do things unconsciously. One of the worst ways to get people to do things is by pointing a gun at them, you want them to not even think about it. A "voluntary" slave (I concur with you that it’s an oxymoron) may be free to leave at any time, but if the thought of leaving never occurs to them are they really free?
This is enforcible in the same manner you fall back on to punish debtors. Social stigma. As a society a set of standards will emerge as to what is fair and what is unfair. Those who don’t follow these standards will be treated as scum-bags. Predatory lenders and their ilk will be so hated by a well informed society that they will have trouble continuing to exist. Other institutions which follow more ethical (from the perspective of the society) guidelines will spring up to meet the needs of people who formerly were subject to usury. The mutual bank is a good example of this.
March 31st, 2008 at 2:32 pm
You sound like you don’t believe in free will or even personal responsibility. The ability to learn or reason. There is a significant difference between coercion and persuasion. You talk about ends as if the POV at the end is all that matters. Smelling and looking like a dead fish doesn’t mean it’s a dead fish. Claiming some limited end perception is all that matters is a willful ignorance of reality. It’s like saying that with regards to a Turing test whether or not the other end is a computer or human doesn’t matter. Sure it does. The means are what puts the ends in perspective and give it additional, often incredibly important, meaning.
Also I don’t even see any real evidence to your implication that individuals are easily indoctrinated. If it was so simple why then don’t we have 1 government, 1 set of clothing, 1 form of entertainment? I’m bombarded every day with adverts for all kinds of crap I don’t buy just like billions of others. People aren’t sleep walking picking up Coke. Surely in the past hundred years with the advent of mass broadcasting you’d have a single method, a single product which could be pushed on everyone fairly equally. If you claim that natural differences between individuals makes them each susceptible to different messages then I fail to see any reason to worry much about it. You will never stop what you claim to be indoctrination. People advertise everything from religion to snake oil. Ostracism is advertising. Wearing clothing is advertising.
Yes because freedom is lack of coerced obligation… not lack of ignorance or responsibility. Besides, people are naturally inquisitive and when left to their own devices the desire to minimize uneasiness will lead them to education. The evidence is obvious and abundant.
That’s not enforcement but persuasion. He says: "don’t let it happen." You can’t not let it happen without coercion which libertarians are supposed to condemn. He is talking about legitimate actions which can be used to nullify or prevent a contract. That it is related to the inalienability of the will. He claims that voluntary debt theft is the same as voluntary slavery. I pointed out how I think he’s wrong. You can’t technically have voluntary slavery nor is it the same as debt slavery. He’s making a fallacious comparison.