From: isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Open letter to the libertarian right
Date: 5 Oct 92 13:01:06 GMT
	<6985@transfer.stratus.com> <ISBELL.92Oct4103601@panther.ai.mit.edu>
	<1992Oct5.042029.3793@genie.slhs.udel.edu>
Followup-To: alt.politics.libertarian
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
In-reply-to: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu's message of 5 Oct 92 04:20:29 GMT

starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
|}|Oh.  You mean "commit fraud."  <gavel>  Next.
|}
|}You deleted the rest.  Your "commit fraud" comment *requires* a
|}"social contract" which I haven't signed.  I think this is fine *but*
|}it was this very newsgroup where people argued that there was no such
|}thing.
|}
|}Just making a simple point.

|No, just maing a simple mistake.  Only a legal positivist would say that a
|"social contract" must precede fraud proceedings.  Good libertarians are
|legal naturalists.  Fraud is what it is regardless of whether you or I
|agree about it, and proceedings against offenders are justified regardless
|of whether they think they've done anything wrong or not.

Is this an axiom?  More specifically, are breaking written contracts =
fraud = a crime an axiom?  Contracts are, after all, like money:
pieces of paper that society agrees has some kind of value.  Without
the consensus that 1) they mean something and 2) that meaning can be
backed up by the coercive force of a govt (thru its police and
courts), it is just a piece of paper with writing on it.

In short, to have meaning *and* to be able to bring to bear the
coercive force of the threat of death (as is the utlimate threat
whenever the govt compels you to do something) there must be a social
contract.

Unless, of course, you posit that God has given contracts meaning or
that the deterministic universe has--as one of its basic laws--that
contracts have meaning.

The argument is not that they are bad things, these pieces of paper,
or that govt should not be able to enforce the words on them, it is
that they are pieces of paper with no meaning in and of themselves.
If one is going to argue that the amendments to the constitution and,
indeed, the constitution itself are not valid because "I never signed
it" then it seems clear to me that one must accept the argument that
contracts are meaningless because I never signed the contract that
said that contracts are legal.  Further, this is an infinite argument,
regressing back forever.  In practice, and I suspect in theory, there
must be some consensus or "social contract" (for lack of a better
term) for any piece of paper, any govt, any law to have broad meaning.
These contracts may be changed and tinkered with, but they are
probably never "signed."

I may or may not be a "legal positivist."  I must admit that I don't
know.



--
Peace.
          "Any Black man who's educated and speaks articulately is not 
           considered 'really' Black.  It's the same reason people think 
           you're a dyke."
"People think I'm a dyke?"
          "Take it as a compliment,  I've learned to."
                                    -Kyle Baker, Why I Hate Saturn
                                   -\--/-
    Don't just adopt opinions     |  \/  |       Some of you are homeboys
          develop them.           |  /\  | but only I am The Homeboy From hell
                                   -/--\-
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.marrou