4 ms·

Enforcement of contracts is always government intervention. It's a regulation of business, forcing people to stick to their word on certain issues, despite obvi

Enforcement of contracts is always government intervention. It's a regulation of business, forcing people to stick to their word on certain issues, despite obvious economic reasons not to. Not enforcing some contracts is less intervention, not more.

dietrichepp 11y ago
Right, and in most contracts you would sue for damages if the contract were broken. But with non-compete agreements, it's common to seek injunctive relief, which is a kind of terrifying and powerful tool that the court has. Liquidated damages seem like a more reasonable, free-market friendly alternative, although I'd rather see courts stay out of this even more.
_delirium 11y ago
True, I agree that contract law's existence in the first place depends on government enforcement. The same could be said for property ownership, at least state-enforced legal forms of property rather than direct possession (e.g. absentee land ownership proved via deeds and land registries, and enforced via trespassing law). Within the context of the U.S.'s current economic/legal system, I think it's more in accordance with common usage to think of the existence of private property and contract law as being the basic substrate on which everything else happens, including more specific government action. For example, to continue with the property analogy, we typically think of eminent domain as a state "taking" property, even in cases where a person's "ownership" of a property depends on the government in the first place (someone owns a deed to land they don't actively reside on or use, but since it's legally recognized as property, the government choosing to build something on it is legally recognized as a taking of property). But point taken that this whole contract/property system is itself created and enforced by the state, not some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon.
- oautholaf 11y ago
  > Within the context of the U.S.'s current economic/legal system, I think it's more in accordance with common usage to think of the existence of private property and contract law as being the basic substrate on which everything else happens This may have been common usage through the 1920s, and it may be common usage for people who wish the New Deal never happened. But even then it would be a stretch. This country's legal history is a lot more nuanced than that. What you articulate is probably best described as a minority vision today.
  - _delirium 11y ago
    My reading of New Deal legal history (though I'm admittedly an amateur reader of it) is that it came closer to endorsing that view than rejecting it. There was a turn towards courts being open to social-democratic style regulation of businesses and contracts, whereas previously some had held that a strong "freedom of contract" prohibited interference with most contracts between private parties. But courts didn't challenge the default existence of property and contracts as the substrate over which regulation happened. They simply held that the state had the authority to regulate them in a number of cases. And it was described in those terms, as regulation, which tends to imply that it's restricting something that preexists the regulation. An alternate, more radical view would be that, since the state had created contract law, property law, etc. in the first place, many New Deal laws weren't even regulations or restrictions on anything, merely the state choosing to withdraw some kinds of legal arrangements that it had previously created. But I don't think any New Deal courts were nearly that radical. They instead agreed that they were regulations or restrictions, but held that those regulations/restrictions were within the government's powers to enact, most often justifying them as within the power the Constitution gives Congress to regulate interstate commerce.
guelo 11y ago
The free market solution to contract enforcement is something like credit ratings where businesses form a network to enforce penalties. Without government, assuming society would be able to reach those levels of sophistication, it seems probable that capital would still enjoy a strong balance of power over workers to force them into undesirable contracts.
- x5n1 11y ago
  It's fine if corporations can form syndicates to black list workers, workers can form unions to strike, take over factories, etc. If corporations can then buy its own mercenaries so can workers form their own militias to take on rent a cops. And so on. This stupid fantasy of corporate tyrants free to do as they wish ends the same way all tyrannies do, with a revolution.
  - mmanfrin 11y ago
    Except that many states have now made laws making unionization very difficult. Also, I'm not sure if you intended, but everything you said describes the early 1900s. The Pinkertons were deployed on many occasions to break up unions, and they acted as a mercenary force against the working class. In the end rights were won, and then the 1980s came and Reaganism heralded the destruction of everything that had been fought for under the guise of being 'business friendly'.
  - guelo 11y ago
    I guess so, though there are a lot of examples in history where you ended up with stable feudal-like states. The idea that anarcho-capitalism would produce an optimal equilibrium seems ahistorical to me. I don't think humans have figured out an ideal system of governance, but a strong central government constrained by the rule of law and some democratic checks and balances seems to be the best we've got.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Which examples are you thinking of where a anarcho-capitalist society ended up as a stable feudal-like state? I'm not saying it wouldn't happen, I just don't remember such an ancap society existing in the first place.

dietrichepp 11y ago

Right, and in most contracts you would sue for damages if the contract were broken. But with non-compete agreements, it's common to seek injunctive relief, which is a kind of terrifying and powerful tool that the court has. Liquidated damages seem like a more reasonable, free-market friendly alternative, although I'd rather see courts stay out of this even more.

_delirium 11y ago

True, I agree that contract law's existence in the first place depends on government enforcement. The same could be said for property ownership, at least state-enforced legal forms of property rather than direct possession (e.g. absentee land ownership proved via deeds and land registries, and enforced via trespassing law). Within the context of the U.S.'s current economic/legal system, I think it's more in accordance with common usage to think of the existence of private property and contract law as being the basic substrate on which everything else happens, including more specific government action. For example, to continue with the property analogy, we typically think of eminent domain as a state "taking" property, even in cases where a person's "ownership" of a property depends on the government in the first place (someone owns a deed to land they don't actively reside on or use, but since it's legally recognized as property, the government choosing to build something on it is legally recognized as a taking of property). But point taken that this whole contract/property system is itself created and enforced by the state, not some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon.

oautholaf 11y ago
> Within the context of the U.S.'s current economic/legal system, I think it's more in accordance with common usage to think of the existence of private property and contract law as being the basic substrate on which everything else happens This may have been common usage through the 1920s, and it may be common usage for people who wish the New Deal never happened. But even then it would be a stretch. This country's legal history is a lot more nuanced than that. What you articulate is probably best described as a minority vision today.
- _delirium 11y ago
  My reading of New Deal legal history (though I'm admittedly an amateur reader of it) is that it came closer to endorsing that view than rejecting it. There was a turn towards courts being open to social-democratic style regulation of businesses and contracts, whereas previously some had held that a strong "freedom of contract" prohibited interference with most contracts between private parties. But courts didn't challenge the default existence of property and contracts as the substrate over which regulation happened. They simply held that the state had the authority to regulate them in a number of cases. And it was described in those terms, as regulation, which tends to imply that it's restricting something that preexists the regulation. An alternate, more radical view would be that, since the state had created contract law, property law, etc. in the first place, many New Deal laws weren't even regulations or restrictions on anything, merely the state choosing to withdraw some kinds of legal arrangements that it had previously created. But I don't think any New Deal courts were nearly that radical. They instead agreed that they were regulations or restrictions, but held that those regulations/restrictions were within the government's powers to enact, most often justifying them as within the power the Constitution gives Congress to regulate interstate commerce.

guelo 11y ago

The free market solution to contract enforcement is something like credit ratings where businesses form a network to enforce penalties. Without government, assuming society would be able to reach those levels of sophistication, it seems probable that capital would still enjoy a strong balance of power over workers to force them into undesirable contracts.

x5n1 11y ago
It's fine if corporations can form syndicates to black list workers, workers can form unions to strike, take over factories, etc. If corporations can then buy its own mercenaries so can workers form their own militias to take on rent a cops. And so on. This stupid fantasy of corporate tyrants free to do as they wish ends the same way all tyrannies do, with a revolution.
- mmanfrin 11y ago
  Except that many states have now made laws making unionization very difficult. Also, I'm not sure if you intended, but everything you said describes the early 1900s. The Pinkertons were deployed on many occasions to break up unions, and they acted as a mercenary force against the working class. In the end rights were won, and then the 1980s came and Reaganism heralded the destruction of everything that had been fought for under the guise of being 'business friendly'.
- guelo 11y ago
  I guess so, though there are a lot of examples in history where you ended up with stable feudal-like states. The idea that anarcho-capitalism would produce an optimal equilibrium seems ahistorical to me. I don't think humans have figured out an ideal system of governance, but a strong central government constrained by the rule of law and some democratic checks and balances seems to be the best we've got.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Which examples are you thinking of where a anarcho-capitalist society ended up as a stable feudal-like state? I'm not saying it wouldn't happen, I just don't remember such an ancap society existing in the first place.