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>>The job seeker is still at a disadvantage in the relationship. They are not at a disadvantage. Whether the job seeker is dealing with a small business lookin

>>The job seeker is still at a disadvantage in the relationship. They are not at a disadvantage. Whether the job seeker is dealing with a small business looking to hire someone, or a large corporation looking to hire someone, they have the same power to walk away if the job offerer doesn't offer the best terms on the market. It's as simple as that. You're getting stuck on some trope about "imbalance of power" and are not dealing with the simple reality that in a free market, the only power someone has over another is to offer them a better deal than the next best offer on the market. That is not exploitation, or abuse or anything else that we need to violate the freedom of contract for. >>There are crimes that don't involve the violation of anyone's rights. Nothing that doesn't involve the violation of anyone's rights should be a crime. >>You're arguing for the ability to sign legal protections away. Yes I'm arguing that people should be free to make their judgments on what offer to accept. We don't need to deny people the right to offer terms because we assume that others lack the judgment to decide for themselves whether those terms are in their interest. >>Then provide a more direct solution. I did: provide more resources for legal representation for less-resourced parties. >>This is a start, but doesn't address the potential loss of livelyhood. It does, because a strong enough case of contract violation will allow legal firms to pay the wronged party living costs on the expectation that the defendant will need to cover those costs at a later date. >>It also doesn't address the potential for abuse at the contract negotiation process. And your solution doesn't address the vast swathes of mutually beneficial contracts that are prohibited by your cookie-cutter restrictions. Problems should be addressed on a case-by-case basis, through court proceedings that weigh the facts of each case. Cookie cutter rules that generalize entire classes of ostensibly mutually voluntary interactions as "involuntary", based on ridiculuos equations like "unequal power leads to unfair contracts" are not justice. They are not good government. They are not reasonable laws. >> some form of basic income No thank you. No universal welfare extracted through pain of imprisonment from those producing value. >>And yet I just gave a laundry list of counterexamples. I refuted every one of your examples. >>Repeating utterly untrue statements doesn't lend them more legitimacy, it just makes you look out of touch. Which, to be clear, you are. Any reasonable person would view a third party forcibly interfering and preventing a mutually voluntary interaction between two consenting adults as patronizing, and totalitarian. That's a fact that's clear once you strip away political partisanship, appeals to legality and ideological rationalizations. You're just in denial that the ideology you bet the farm on is, like all ideologies, wrong. >>Your proposed system would allow people to sign themselves into slavery. No. No court would allow that under common law. A court would find an argument that what a person agreed to a decade earlier cannot bind the person they are in the present, because the two people are not in effect the same person, as reasonable. Like I said: arguing with libertarians and showing how naive and simplistic their assumptions are is sport for intellectual types in the US. You're a typical example of that.

joshuamorton 7y ago
> No. No court would allow that under common law. A court would find an argument that what a person agreed to a decade earlier cannot bind the person they are in the present, because the two people are not in effect the same person, as reasonable. So you're saying that a blanket rule to make contracts that involve selling ones-self into slavery makes sense? Or that there are certain circumstances in which selling oneself into slavery is alright, and so it should be adjudicated by the court on a case by case basis? How even could someone who is a slave (and therefore likely limited in their movements) petition a court? > A court would find an argument that what a person agreed to a decade earlier cannot bind the person they are in the present People sign contracts for more than 10 years all the time (mortgages, as an example). You saying we can just back out of those?
- CryptoPunk 7y ago
  >>So you're saying that a blanket rule to make contracts that involve selling ones-self into slavery makes sense? Or that there are certain circumstances in which selling oneself into slavery is alright, and so it should be adjudicated by the court on a case by case basis? If courts rule that selling oneself into slavery is in all circumstances non-consensual, then there's no problem at all with codifying that with a statute. This would never be the case with minimum wage or 'fair' housing laws. Courts would absolutely find numerous if not almost all instances of such interactions as consensual. >>How even could someone who is a slave (and therefore likely limited in their movements) petition a court? The slavery is a private relationship, not one that is relevant to the court. The government doesn't deperson someone just because they enter into a slavery agreement with another party. The court would accept petitions from all legal persons. >>People sign contracts for more than 10 years all the time (mortgages, as an example). You saying we can just back out of those? Mortgage contracts govern property, not people. One has a right to give property away. One doesn't have a right to give their future self away.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    > One doesn't have a right to give their future self away. This contradicts what you said earlier, which is that you should be able to sign away legal protections in a contact. It seems we agree on one point: there are some rights you cannot sign away, and it is the government's responsibility to intervene in such a situation. You draw that line at somewhere around slavery. I simply draw the line elsewhere. We're both willing to violate your previously involiable right to contract. If you truly believed it were involiable, you would respect a person's right to sign themselves into slavery or indentured servitude. There are situations where one might be willing to make such a decision: to save a loved one, perhaps. But you've said that such a contract could be voided, even if at the time of signing the parties consented. We both agree that there should be limits on the right to contract, much as there are limits on most other rights. I simply claim that the line should be drawn differently than where you believe it should be.

joshuamorton 7y ago

> No. No court would allow that under common law. A court would find an argument that what a person agreed to a decade earlier cannot bind the person they are in the present, because the two people are not in effect the same person, as reasonable. So you're saying that a blanket rule to make contracts that involve selling ones-self into slavery makes sense? Or that there are certain circumstances in which selling oneself into slavery is alright, and so it should be adjudicated by the court on a case by case basis? How even could someone who is a slave (and therefore likely limited in their movements) petition a court? > A court would find an argument that what a person agreed to a decade earlier cannot bind the person they are in the present People sign contracts for more than 10 years all the time (mortgages, as an example). You saying we can just back out of those?

CryptoPunk 7y ago
>>So you're saying that a blanket rule to make contracts that involve selling ones-self into slavery makes sense? Or that there are certain circumstances in which selling oneself into slavery is alright, and so it should be adjudicated by the court on a case by case basis? If courts rule that selling oneself into slavery is in all circumstances non-consensual, then there's no problem at all with codifying that with a statute. This would never be the case with minimum wage or 'fair' housing laws. Courts would absolutely find numerous if not almost all instances of such interactions as consensual. >>How even could someone who is a slave (and therefore likely limited in their movements) petition a court? The slavery is a private relationship, not one that is relevant to the court. The government doesn't deperson someone just because they enter into a slavery agreement with another party. The court would accept petitions from all legal persons. >>People sign contracts for more than 10 years all the time (mortgages, as an example). You saying we can just back out of those? Mortgage contracts govern property, not people. One has a right to give property away. One doesn't have a right to give their future self away.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  > One doesn't have a right to give their future self away. This contradicts what you said earlier, which is that you should be able to sign away legal protections in a contact. It seems we agree on one point: there are some rights you cannot sign away, and it is the government's responsibility to intervene in such a situation. You draw that line at somewhere around slavery. I simply draw the line elsewhere. We're both willing to violate your previously involiable right to contract. If you truly believed it were involiable, you would respect a person's right to sign themselves into slavery or indentured servitude. There are situations where one might be willing to make such a decision: to save a loved one, perhaps. But you've said that such a contract could be voided, even if at the time of signing the parties consented. We both agree that there should be limits on the right to contract, much as there are limits on most other rights. I simply claim that the line should be drawn differently than where you believe it should be.