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Old 02-12-2006, 07:40 PM
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Default Negative Rights and Libertarianism

The text below leads to the subject that I want to bring to your attention:

For libertarians, there are no positive rights (such as to food or shelter or health care), only negative rights (such as to not be assaulted, abused, robbed or censored).

http://www.moral-politics.com/xpolit...ian_Capitalism

I agree with the above statement except that I seem to have a fundamental difference of opinion with libertarians about the definition of abuse. Most libertarians seem to take the view that anything done without obvious coercion is not victimization. I disagree. I will now bring up a concept of business law known as unconscionability. As a legal term, the word unconscionable describes a contract in which a party is dealt with so badly that a court can conclude that the person had to have lacked contractual capacity when they agreed to it. In other words, the court concludes that the person must have been insane or under coercion when they entered the contract even if it cannot be established by the usual means that the person was insane or coerced. This is where I differ from libertarians. They seem to think that nothing is unconscionable per se and that something can be deemed wrong only if force or extreme trickery is involved. As such, many libertarians seem to lack an understanding of human psychology. They do not understand that there are some things no one would do if not coerced or insane, no matter how little evidence the physical appearance of a situation may show this to someone with limited observational ability. In short, however much I may agree with libertarians on many issues, until the libertarian movement agrees to fight certain forms of stealth slavery in our society, I cannot consider libertarianism to be a principled ideology.
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Old 02-13-2006, 06:09 AM
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You are either:

1. Coerced or
2. Not

That's it.
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Old 02-13-2006, 08:14 AM
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Default .

Quote:
Originally Posted by stekim";p=&quot View Post
You are either:

1. Coerced or
2. Not

That's it.
Well, that is a statement of the obvious. I hold, however, that the results of certain so-called agreements, in and of themselves, sufficiently indicate coercion and/or insanity.
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Old 02-13-2006, 08:21 AM
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Default So what?

If you entered into the agreement of your own volition, then tough crap.
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Old 02-13-2006, 08:29 AM
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Default ?

That's not even what the law states right now. I'll give an outlandish example for illustration. Suppose that I had a profoundly twisted sense of humor and too much money to spend and I hired people to beat their heads against brick walls for my amusement. Don't you think that a court should be able to strike down such a contract? The people who agreed to my terms were obviously under some sort of coercion and/or insane, but even if neither coercion nor insanity could be established, shouldn't a court be able to declare that no sane person (sanity being difficult to measure) not under coercion (many forms of coercion being subtle) would have entered such a contract?
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Old 02-13-2006, 08:46 AM
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Quote:
Don't you think that a court should be able to strike down such a contract?
Nope. Unless there is evidence of coercion or insanity. Your opinion that no one would do so unless coerced or insane should carry no weight. It's not relevant. Either there is evidence for insanity or coercion or there is not. If there is not, the contract is valid.
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Old 02-13-2006, 08:52 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stekim";p=&quot View Post
Quote:
Don't you think that a court should be able to strike down such a contract?
Nope. Unless there is evidence of coercion or insanity. Your opinion that no one would do so unless coerced or insane should carry no weight. It's not relevant. Either there is evidence for insanity or coercion or there is not. If there is not, the contract is valid.
Well, then you'll have to overhaul the current justice system, since it strikes down contracts when a judge decides that no sane person not under coercion would have agreed to its terms. Actually, moreover, the very nature of certain contracts proves that there was insanity and/or coercion.
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Old 02-13-2006, 08:57 AM
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Default Name a case where a judge said that.

All cases should be taken separately, so I will not make blanket statements. Either they were coerced or insane or they were not. Seems simple.

As for changing the system, I have plenty of thoughts on that.
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Old 02-13-2006, 09:09 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stekim";p=&quot View Post
All cases should be taken separately, so I will not make blanket statements. Either they were coerced or insane or they were not. Seems simple.

As for changing the system, I have plenty of thoughts on that.
In any state where the idea of unconscionability is in law, there are countless cases of this nature. I've moved ever rightward fiscally and I take libertarian stances on many social issues. I even oppose affirmative action on the grounds that it is insulting to self-reliance. You know the issues where I won't compromise my populism, though, so I wondered whether there is any variation or offshoot of libertarianism that believes strongly in preventing extreme gender and race inequality through the justice system.
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Old 02-13-2006, 10:10 AM
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Default Maybe you could link to some cases, then?

Actually, Libertarians really work for inequality. That's what we're all about. No Libertarian would ever be against "extreme gender and race inequality". We thinks it's good.
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