Consent under coercion which most work contracts are implicitly, else how are you going to pay for your living expenses, by necessity require government intervention.
In many legal systems, there are laws that disallow certain types of contracts, even if they are supposedly entered into voluntarily. Some things are considered bad enough to not allow. Coercion is hard to define, especially with power differentials as huge as you find between multinationals and small communities.
No, it can't be coercive, by definition. If a jury of your peers deems that you did not provide informed consent, then the contract is void. A contract cannot be deemed both coercive and valid under common-law/libertarian principles.
Coercion is when someone reduces your option set, by threatening violence (against the person or property of you or someone you love). An offer, that you are free to reject, and have the faculty to fully comprehend, cannot meet the definition of coercive.
As for selling yourself into slavery, that calls into question whether the you that exists today has a right to the you that exists in the future to the extent that the current you possesses a right to sell that you's liberty away, and I am fairly a certain a court would rule you don't.
But these extreme/fantastical scenarios are not what libertarians are arguing about. There are far more mundane examples of people's liberty being repressed by anti-libertarian laws, that anti-libertarian apologists cannot excuse, so they resort to these hyperbolic examples.
Contract is just 'law' between consenting parties. When a third party gets involved in a way considered 'legitimate' without the consent of the first two (or N number of consenting parties), you have government.
Am I correct that you invoke a social contract as a justification for involuntary actions?
1) You are forced into this contract without your consent.
2) You can't quit this contract with your property intact.
This conditions wouldn't be enforceable if they were between ordinary parties, especially when there is inequality of bargaining power, why do they hold between a state and a person?
In the implied social contract theory, the consent is what is implied, while the contract's terms may be explicit, implied, or some combination of both.[1]
A contract is consent in both ways. Most people have not consented neither explicitly nor tacitly to any of this. I understand what the term means, but most people seem to stick with the enlightenment-age definition while in reality what we currently have in most states (eastern or western) is not a social contract, but a hostage situation.
Proving coercion or lack thereof is hard. If it wasn't everybody and their brother would weasel out of contracts unfavorable to them. Well, not everybody, but still, plenty of people would.
The govt wouldn't give a squat about what contractual agreements you have made they can still compel you.
By your logic I can make the same deal with an explicit contractual requirement that I cannot be detained by the police and then go on a murder spree and say sorry I got a contract that says you can't arrest me...
I understand the 'notion' of social contract. However I choose not to accept the terms of the contract as envisioned by above. A key element of 'contract' is consent.
That's utter nonsense. You can't consent to stuff that is against the law, esp. when the "power balance" when signing the contract is extremely lopsided. Such contract clauses are routinely ruled invalid and unenforceable.
You can't just put any arbitrary restriction in a contract that you feel like, particularly not when the party imposing the restriction has the coercive power of government or quasi-governmental entities on its side.
The classic example of this is the old-school homeowner's association covenant that forbade selling your house to people of a certain race.
A valid contract requires consideration. It also requires an understanding, by both parties, of the terms of the contract so, no you couldn't _force_ someone into _slavery_ if they _inadvertently_ blah blah blah. I'd say none of those words make sense in context of a valid contract.
You signed the contract. You agreed to it, it doesn’t matter how one sided it was. You could sign a contract to eat shit for a dollar. You’re correct in that some countries restrict consent between individuals.
reply