I struggle to understand why a contract that is voluntarily agreed upon by two mentally capable individuals would be deemed invalid, except for perhaps contracts that result in direct physical harm (or are made under threat thereof). Is this to protect individuals from their own bad decisions? — Tzeentch

It’s basically a matter of one’s power to contract (or not) being inalienable. Nobody has the power to agree to agree (or not) to any change of rights or ownership, such as by agreeing not to enter into other contracts (as in non-compete agreements), or agreeing to accept whatever terms the other party later dictates (as in selling oneself into slavery, or as in the "social contract" sometimes held to justify a state's right to rule), or agreeing to grant someone a temporary liberty upon certain conditions ("selling" someone the temporary use of your property, as in contracts of rent or interest; letting someone do something is not itself doing something).

In short, the power to contract must be limited to the simple trade of goods and services, and cannot create second-order obligations between people that place one person in a position of ongoing power over another person. — Pfhorrest

Thinking about how to explain this more clearly helped me come up with a... well, a clearer way of explaining it, which is very useful for me for my philosophy book where I write about this stuff, so thanks again for this conversation.

This explanation depends on the precise technical terms used in a Hohfeldian analysis of rights, so I'll quote an earlier post from myself in this thread first, where I summarize those:

(In Hohfeldian terms, a liberty is something that you are not prohibited from doing. It is the negation of the obligation of a negation, and so it is equivalent to a permission. A claim, conversely, is a limit on others' liberty: it is something that it is forbidden to deny you, which is just to say that it is obligatory. A power is the second-order liberty to change who has what rights. And an immunity, conversely, is a limit on others' power, just as a claim is a limit on others' liberty.)

At first glance, one would think a maximally libertarian society would be one in which there were no claims at all (because every claim is a limit on someone else's liberty), and no powers at all (because powers at that point could only serve to increase claims, and so to limit liberties). But that would leave nobody with any claims against others using violence to establish authority in practice even if not in the abstract rules of justice, and no claims to hold anybody to their promises either making reliable cooperation nigh impossible. So it is necessary that liberties be limited at least by claims against such violence, and that people not be immune from the power to establish mutually agreed-upon obligations between each other in contracts.

But those claims and powers could themselves be abused, with those who violate the claim against such violence using that claim to protect themselves from those who would stop them, and those who would like for contracts not to require mutual agreement to leverage practical power over others to establish broader deontic power over them. So too those claims to property and powers to contract, which limit the unrestricted liberty and immunity that one would at first think would prevail in a maximally libertarian society, must themselves be limited. — Pfhorrest

The limitation on the claim to property is already well-understood and I think agreed upon here: you can't call foul when someone else coerces you into not coercing someone, as in if they're fighting back against you attacking them; your claim against trespass upon your body is waived to the extent necessary to stop you from trespassing upon someone else's.


It's the analogous limit on the power to contract that's at issue here, and the clearer explanation of that that I just came up with is:

• You have the power to waive specific claims — which is just to transfer away your ownership of things.
  
• You have the power to waive specific liberties — which is just to take on obligations to do or not do things.
  
• But you do not have the power to waive your immunities — to transfer away your power to change your first-order rights as above.
  
• And you do not have the power to waive your powers — to take on obligations to permit or not permit things.

Those limits have far-reaching implications on many kinds of things, but their specific implication on rent and interest is that you don't have to power to take on an obligation to permit someone to use your property -- so long as it is your property, you have the right to decide whether or not someone is permitted to use it, and you can't take on an obligation to permit it, except by making it no longer your property, and therefore not subject to your permission at all. Since you can't take on an obligation to permit the use of your property, you can't sell such an obligation to someone; which means you can't rent out your property. You can allow someone to use your property, and they can give you money, but they can't validly buy a right to use your property against your future will, which makes the whole institution of rent completely insecure and unfeasible as a widespread economic instrument.

The natural alternatives to it in a free market have the socialist consequences already explained earlier.

started with Finnland, and the article came from BBC, then went over to Sweden, and the search term brought me this wonderfully infomative response:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Sweden

It's really good, informative, I believe what it says. — god must be atheist

This might possibly have been the situation in 2017(statistics for crimes among immigrants is a politically hot potato) but sadly, things have been worsening since then. The number of robberies where immigrant kids rob ”indigneous” kids have doubled and are now nearing 2000 every year. The robberies are getting more and more brutal too, urinating, beating and even raping. This is highly alarming. ”Indigneous” kids who do not have parents that can arrange for special schools are also systematically bullied by immigrant kids. Bombs exploded in houses where many people lives is also something that do not affect only the intended targets, member of rivalling gangs.

Believe me, the situation is very very bad, has worsen dramatically last years.

We're lucky to be living in the US, at least compared to other nations. Other states are not so kind. — BitconnectCarlos

So the evils committed by individuals are not utterly dwarfed by the evils committed by governments.

Could you elaborate? If we're going by the combined death toll of the Maoist government, Stalinist government, and Nazi regime you're gonna need quite a few Ted Bundies to reach those levels. Criminals/murderers don't come anywhere close.

Could you elaborate? — BitconnectCarlos

Many nations are unlike the regimes that you mention, therefore it can't be said that the evils committed by individuals are utterly dwarfed by the evils committed by governments.

Good governance don't cancel out evil, it's like if you had a dad who's a good guy like 95% of the time but the other 5% he's a genocidal maniac and kills millions. It would be stupid to say "oh well he's mostly good therefore we can excuse the rest." Again, I'm not saying that all states are evil but if we do an actual body count of the numbers killed by states and the numbers killed by non-states it's not even close. I'm not saying every state is bad, just that the state - with its centralization of power - is a major, major vulnerability if it falls into the wrong hands.

Believe me, the situation is very very bad, has worsen dramatically last years. — Ansiktsburk

Remember that you are talking to Americans and for them a bad crime situation is something totally else than in Sweden as there bad crime areas are really bad (if the US homicide rate is about 5, in Chicago it's 23).

Notice where the US and Sweden are on this statistics:


Crime levels are 28% higher in the US than Sweden (see here) The rape statistics and overall crime rate seems to be higher, but I would take these stats with a grain of salt as the stats may be not well comparable. Especially the rape statistics:

Historically, rape has been defined as forced sexual intercourse initiated against a woman or man by one or several people, without consent. In recent years, several revisions to the definition of rape have been made to the law of Sweden, to include not only intercourse but also comparable sexual acts against someone incapable of giving consent, due to being in a vulnerable situation, such as a state of fear or unconsciousness. In 2018, Sweden has passed a new law that criminalizes sex without consent as rape, even when there are no threats, coercion or violence involved.

Does this example help you understand? — praxis

Understand what? I thought it had been ME who had been trying make you understand something.

LIttle wonder neither of us has any understanding of the other's point. We've both been speaking without listening. (I speak for myself and for myself only... you got into the two immediately previous sentences as collateral damage.)

I don't know USA law, as it also fluctuates from state to state, but in Canada most of those provisions have also been included.

I attended a rape case in court where the man was convicted because he did not pull out of his wife when she complained of pain. No means no in Canada.

Also, minors are statutory rape in the USA, in Canada it's a convoluted issue; if both are under 18, then the man is not allowed to be three years or more older than the woman, under 14 it's an absolute no-no, if the man is 18 or over, the woman can't be a minor, if the consent is given under influence of drugs or alcohol or threat or beating or threat of getting excommunicated by a priest, clergyman or ~woman, a spiritual guide, a dervish, an imam, a rabbi, the Dalai Lama, and/or a shaman midwife, tombstone ripper, or seance leader, (a medium), then it's invalid. Furthermore, aside from intercourse, for the purposes of rape, there are more positions (non-intercoursual) defined than in the Kama Sutra. A person who has sex with a person who is in a dependent position, such as a patient, a student, a subordinate at work, a son, a daughter, a grandson, a granddaughter, a charge, a foster kid, is not always rape, but draw severe penalties, such as losing a licence or getting expelled from a professional position. (Hookers (i.e. in a professional position) are generally very exempt of this.)

Then they did away with rape, and called it sexual assault.

Interstingly, the only reverse sexual assault cases that come up are when a female teacher loses her head and takes on a male student of hers as lover. Only 0.00000000001% of those ever get to court, as 99.9999999999991% of these instances are never reported. (I, myself, passed third year calculus only via excessively fantasizing about my calculus teacher. To her credit (an mine, obviously) she never knew about the issue.)

... the state - with its centralization of power - is a major, major vulnerability if it falls into the wrong hands. — BitconnectCarlos

If it falls into the hands of the wrong individuals. This is why democracy is the best form of government for the people because it tends to be resistant to the concentration of power.

Does this example help you understand?
— praxis

Understand what? — god must be atheist

The example that illustrates the relationship between freedom and responsibility.

If it falls into the hands of the wrong individuals. This is why democracy is the best form of government for the people because it tends to be resistant to the concentration of power. — praxis

I agree with you on the democracy part.

You're kind of arguing more in line with a perspective associated with the right/libertarian side of the coin here when you describe events more as individuals acting as opposed to groups/organizations. I'm not saying that you're wrong; anyone can describe events in various different ways.

If I were to get audited by the IRS I could describe it that way or I could say "John B. Smith audited me today." Neither is wrong per se.

It is worth noting that Stalin, and likely Mao and also Hitler, didn't personally murder anyone. With Stalin at least it was often done through lists which were then passed down through the ranks, and yes, while the actual executioner was often some low level security forces member it seems a little superficial to me - but not technically wrong - to describe, say, the execution of a Stalinist purge victim as, say, "Yuri Bogdanov, KGB sergeant, shot X, Y, and Z in the basement of a KGB office." Yes it's true but there's no description of the system behind it - the list concocted by Stalin, the show trials by the legal system, etc. etc.

Don't get me wrong, I love attributing things to individuals and I'm a firm believer in individual responsibility. Maybe this is the beginning of my slow progression to leftism.

You're kind of arguing more in line with a perspective associated with the right/libertarian side of the coin here when you describe events more as individuals acting as opposed to groups/organizations. I'm not saying that you're wrong; anyone can describe events in various different ways. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't see how. My understanding is that those on the right generally believe that government is prone to corruption and not good at managing the economy, so it should be kept as small as possible. The problem with this is that individuals not in government, who have economic power, take advantage of their power at the expense of those without power. They monopolize, pollute, don't practice fair labor standards, etc, etc.

Labor only has collective power and ideally, the government facilitates their collective power. If the government favors capital, as it does now in the States, labor loses power and the rich get richer, the rate of environmental degradation increases, and the economy becomes less stable.

In my opinion, the more educated tend to lean left because their priorities are different compared to those who hold more conservative views. For example, academics are less likely to own or manage businesses directly, so they are less concerned with having lower taxes and less regulations that would make it easier to start and sustain a business.

Notice where the US and Sweden are on this statistics: — ssu

This is very old data. Death by shootings has increased dramatically. But what really make people jam into the nazi-root nationalist party(SD) is the robberys, harrassment, explosions committed by immigrant root people. The political situation is terrible.

n my opinion, the more educated tend to lean left because their priorities are different compared to those who hold more conservative views. For example, academics are less likely to own or manage businesses directly, so they are less concerned with having lower taxes and less regulations that would make it easier to start and sustain a business. — AntonioP

Having spent last 20 year in the nicer part of towns and with substantial contact with people from different "better" families, actually married into such a family(which one may say, I should have had this conversation done with years ago but... my new relatives do not want to talk about it. Their leftness is God given...) , it is definitely more sublime. Neighbours that run their own businesses, resents immigrants and taxes are highly scolared, and can take part in any intellectual discussion.

No. This is more sublime. Something like after the enlightment and the french revolution, when the Romanticism flourished. There is something Che Guevarish about especially young people. No one wants solutions. As for immigrants, Much like what God Must Be Atheist kind of says above, "maybe it will get better in 50 years..." and for environmental matters its like "we must find a new lifestyle". There is always something romantic. And not only with the young people. Especially ladys who had their hey days around 68 are spamming facebook flows with "open our hearts" and "find new lifestyle" while the guys going to SD, our semi-nazi party are constantly posting liks to newspaper with crimes committed by immigrant root people and do like the ostrich when CO2 emissions are mentioned.

People seem not to want to acknowledge problems as problems. And bloody difficult problems. Problems that need solutions. And problems where it is wise to go about carefully. As a person that absolutely hate SD, the nationalistic party I would NEVER say that a generous admittance of refugees or immigrants should be allowed, integration MUST work. And I would never say that "there is no CO2 threat, there are scientists saying otherwise bla bla". The romantic left disappeared when the yuppie years arrived and were happily gone until last 10-15 year or so. Now there are posh "activists" all over the place. I feel no need for activism. I feel need for difficult problems handled in a careful manner. General rule - keep the daytime working classes in a position where they feel reasonably safe. And you can do a lot. But those guys don't want revolutions. Che was a medical student...

Wiki says
"Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Spanish: [ˈtʃe ɣeˈβaɾa];[3] 14 June 1928[4] – 9 October 1967) was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has bome a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.[5]

As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed...."

Our social democrat Prime Minister(Stadsminister) Olof Palme, murdered 1986, the deed, committed on a Stockholm street shocked everyone has the same story. From the noblesse, spent his summers in a castle close to where my blackmith grandfather spent his summer in the standard the working class workers from town spent their summers, in a shed that the fishermen rented to the workers of the town.

Palme, a good social democrat traveled eg the USA and saw people who were even worse off than the Swedish workers(who had few "under them") . Palme did NOT become a revolutionary, but during the 68 movement he spoke highly of the revolutionarys around the world, and he is kind of the archetype for swedish activists. Greta is just another one. Good oratory skills (you learn that in a posh family), ends to which almost all in principle agrees to, but no plan for how to accomplish the ends, a fuzzy wish for a revolution, and a deeply romantic aura... This does not seem like something that would attract an intelligent youngster from a scolared family. One should think that people like that would appreciate the complexity of a problem, and act with the care and political delicacy. Yes, CO2 emissions levels are bad. Yes, its bad that people are stuck in conflicts in the middle east, Somalia. But what to do about it?

And most important - how do a person from a well-to-do academic family end up being left leaning? The guys that happen to take a journey to poor mans land? Still a mystery, and noone want to give an answer. I don't buy "the good guys".

This is very old data. Death by shootings has increased dramatically. But what really make people jam into the nazi-root nationalist party(SD) is the robberys, harrassment, explosions committed by immigrant root people. The political situation is terrible. — Ansiktsburk

What makes the Swedish system so terrible is the fact that this hugely popular nationalist party has it founding members were neonazis, and hence all the other parties flatly reject the party and have nothing to do with it. This might sound great, but isn't. If the populist cause and criticism against the lax immigration policies of is only driven by one "fringe" party, it obviously makes things worse.

Here I have to say that luckily Finland has avoided this inability trap, at least for now. Here the "True Finns" rose to popularity and did join the previous administration and got ministerial posts, starting from the position of foreign minister and defence minister. And then came the European Migrant Crisis. Once Sweden started to shut down it's borders, then a wave of immigrants landed in Finland from Sweden. I can just guess what would have politically happened if the True Finns party wouldn't have been in the government back then, but in the opposition and the administration had been made of a leftist-centrist government: even if the policies would have been exactly the same, the public outcry would have been naturally worse. Still, just being in the government at this crucial time made the True Finns to divide into two, with the old leadership starting a new party, which ended in disaster for them in the next elections for them. Yet unlike in Sweden (I guess), the anti-immigrant agenda wasn't treated as outrageous and totally politically-incorrect discourse by other parties from the start, even with the Social Democratic Party accepting that there have to be limitations on immigration and immigration had negative consequences.

I don't see how. — praxis

I was just commenting on your tendency to try to reduce organizations (the state in this case) to the level of the individual. This is a common theme for libertarians, although they tend to do with society and not so much the state, though I suppose the state is possible. Many libertarians, in principle, are against monopolies, pollution and unfair treatment of labor it's just a matter of how best to resolve these things. I don't really feel like getting into a debate on libertarianism here I was more just commenting on something I find a little interesting.

What makes the Swedish system so terrible is the fact that this hugely popular nationalist party has it founding members were neonazis, and hence all the other parties flatly reject the party and have nothing to do with it. This might sound great, but isn't. If the populist cause and criticism against the lax immigration policies of is only driven by one "fringe" party, it obviously makes things worse.

Here I have to say that luckily Finland has avoided this inability trap, at least for now. Here the "True Finns" rose to popularity and did join the previous administration and got ministerial posts, starting from the position of foreign minister and defence minister. And then came the European Migrant Crisis. Once Sweden started to shut down it's borders, then a wave of immigrants landed in Finland from Sweden. I can just guess what would have politically happened if the True Finns party wouldn't have been in the government back then, but in the opposition and the administration had been made of a leftist-centrist government: even if the policies would have been exactly the same, the public outcry would have been naturally worse. Still, just being in the government at this crucial time made the True Finns to divide into two, with the old leadership starting a new party, which ended in disaster for them in the next elections for them. Yet unlike in Sweden (I guess), the anti-immigrant agenda wasn't treated as outrageous and totally politically-incorrect discourse by other parties from the start, even with the Social Democratic Party accepting that there have to be limitations on immigration and immigration had negative consequences. — ssu

Ssu, I guess we are neighbours on the world map. Your post is most intereresting. And what you say is in line with my observations from the other coast of the Baltic Sea.

To connect to the subject: It is not only in the immigration question Finland has outperformed Sweden this millenia. Also in handling of education, schools, teachers appreciation Finland is famous for its good education while Sweden goes down the drain PISA result wise.

Finland is supposedly doing things right there too. The schools are also a hot potato in Sweden, but in this case both the left and the right are accusing each other. And in both cases one can see elite projects stemming from people being born in upper class academical families.

Schooling is surprisingly rightist in a sense here in Sweden compared to other European countries. Private schools are allowed and get state funding. Schools that are allowed to make profit. Sweden had Right wing government during the 00-s and some really neo-liberal projects were launched.

I can see the same tendency here as I see in stuff like immigration and Global warming discussion. Young people from well-to-do academical families pushing for things where most people generally agree that this is a serious matter, but they push very hard, and in a romantic fashion. One get the picture of kids growing up in omnipotence - not having had to cope with consequences, treating serious questions as a means to give an answer to the eternal upper class question - "what do I want to do with my life". Very seldom the answer is - Get a daytime job and make sure I take responsibility for myself. WhiIch is the message my life as a lower, non-academic, middle class had as a must. Noone asked for goals in life. Does this makes sense?

To connect to the subject: It is not only in the immigration question Finland has outperformed Sweden this millennia. Also in handling of education, schools, teachers appreciation Finland is famous for its good education while Sweden goes down the drain PISA result wise. — Ansiktsburk

Let's remember that the first huge wave of immigrants and migrant workers that Sweden endured came from here and something well over half a million or so people in Sweden are of Finnish heritage. I've always have thought that the Swedish acceptance to an open doors policy came from this era as influx of foreigners, many of whom spoke Swedish as their mother tongue, didn't create huge social problems, but was great for the economy. Only the last decade with the European migrant crisis that open door policy was changed.

How Sweden changed it's policies:


As there are totally open borders between the Nordic countries (if I would move to Stockholm, the only thing I would have to change my address) you can see that once there aren't huge difference in prosperity among countries, immigration is not in any way a problem and there's not hostility against other Nordic people.

Finnish school system was great few years ago, to the surprise of even of those in charge of the schooling system, but the PISA results has gone down now. The cause is mainly because of budget cutbacks. An interesting thing (noted by a green party member of Parliament) is that the PISA data is gathered only from schools that have also foreign born students, and not all of Finnish origin. Still, if you would look at only schools the capital area, the results would be somewhere close to the Singapore level.

Sweden had Right wing government during the 00-s and some really neo-liberal projects were launched. — Ansiktsburk

Well, still Sweden is the land of European social democracy, where the socialists are happy to milk the cow of capitalism and while they do that keeping the cow in a leash, they do also take care of it that it doesn't die. Right wing rule for some time doesn't change the institutions. It is something that Americans have a trouble to understand, because it's basically what the Bernie Sander's version democratic socialism (a.k.a. social democracy) would be about. It wouldn't result in Venezuela, but Swedenization of the US. Pro's and con's with that alternative, objectives achieved for some, horror for others.

Read Les Mots (in english), partly because I am thrilled with the guy, and partly because Sartre and Beauvoir was in the forefront for the academical left. It gave me few answers to my heading question, but I want to cite Jean-Pauls last words in his oeuvre :

”What I like about my madness is that it has protected me from the very beginning against the charms of the "elite": never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a "talent"; my sole concern has been to save myself—nothing in my hands, nothing up my sleeve—by work and faith. As a result, my pure choice did not raise me above anyone. Without equipment, without tools, I set allofmetoworkinordertosaveallofme.If I relegate impossible Salvation to the proproom, what remains? A whole man, composed of all men and as good as all of them and no better than any”

This gives som clues , after all.
Hey Jean-Paul! Being brought up at the Schweizers you ARE elite, and will never be anything else. Sitting in cafés daytime weekdays people from humbler backgrounds seldom do.
And hey, If you have talent or not - you will never know. Living in a house with a personal library and only attending an elite school in Paris...

what I should want to know - the years in La Rochelle, and the years as a teacher - what did that contribute with. A bit like Wittgenstein after having solved all earthly problems and heading for the alps. I sincerely believe Sartre was a h*ll of a much better teacher. But what do they know about having talent and being raised in a daytime job area?

I think, their greatest hommage should be to those kids. But what Sartre was striving for was a country where the talented kids from the villages and banlieus had as much hell as possible. And his own elite free space to fulfil their dreams.