the right to commit suicide is not a RIGHT! - everyone should understand this!

[helmuth_hubener]

Let me put it more simply.

Since you are feeling the need to "put it more simply," I may presume you are picking up signals that I don't understand your words, thus the need to break it down and be more simple for me. Allow me to disabuse you. I understand what you are writing. Your position is that the rights of a dead man cannot be violated. All his rights evaporate upon death, because they all derive from self-ownership, and he no longer has a "self" to aggress against (as far as in our mortal, earthly realm).

You have not addressed my points. They are two:

1. Rights or no rights, trust companies have reputations to uphold. They will not violate their contracts -- by just digging up and stealing the gold or whatever -- because then no one else would ever entrust anything to them again. You may not have addressed this because you agree with it, I don't know. It doesn't directly deal with the matter of rights, but rather bypasses it. In the real world, dead people have rights because there are companies who specialize in upholding the rights of the dead. Whether those rights exist or not, philosophically, they exist practically.

2. Living people have rights. You set up a counter-party arrangement. You play two living entities or, better, two perpetual entities, off of each other. I'm not sure you have understood this, because you wrote:

Person A demands that when he dies, all his gold be buried underground and never touched. Person A entrusts his gold to Person B. Person A dies. Person B takes the gold and spends it.

I don't think that that's really something that should be illegal. Person A is dead, he no longer has any rights... to anything. Yes, he exists either in heaven or hell in my opinion, but that's outside of secular law and simply irrelevant to the question at hand.

I addressed this a couple times. This will be the third time. Yes, the man is no longer around to bring suit. So if he expects his rights to be respected by contracting with just one party, he's just crossing his fingers, so to speak (though if this one party is a long-established and reputable trust company, his fingers may rest in peace and confidence). That's a problem if it's just A and B. A is gone; B is left to himself. The cat is away, the mice will play. But this is easily solved. Do you remember how I said he could solve it?

It's by contracting with more than one party, setting them up against each other. The man can give part of his fortune to C, as payment for auditing B to make sure that they are doing what he wants with the rest of his fortune. You could also pay D to be the ones doling out payments to C, and checking up on their faithfulness. And etc., etc., etc.

Thus, what I am saying is that an intelligent man with some foresight can preserve his control over his property in perpetuum. It will be a more crude and rough form of control than when he was living and able to make day-to-day decisions and changes, but it will be control nonetheless. Legally, lawfully, libertarianly, this control must be respected. The only way to disrespect it would be to disrespect the rights of other, still present, entities. So the rules and controls this man set up for his property cannot be justly infringed.

Sounds like a right to me.

3. The other way a man can keep control of his property after he's dead is to use a zero-party strategy instead of a one-party (see 1. above) or multi-party (see 2. above) strategy. He could, for example, build up a self-sustaining super fortress filled with machines and robots to defend it from any invader. If his defenses are better than anyone can penetrate, this would keep it sacrosanct and inviolable for as long as the defenses function. Or, in present technological conditions, he could launch all his wealth and operations out into the Kuiper Belt, far from any meddling and untrustworthy mortals. He's making it inaccessible, like building on an unscalable mountain in ancient times, or sinking a ship in unplumbable depths. Probably the easiest and most historically successful zero-party strategy would be simply hiding it -- burying a chest of treasure, for instance. De facto inaccessibility through secrecy.

I don't really believe that non-title transfer contracts should be enforced anyways...

Been reading Rothbard?

What do you mean by this?

And of course the contracts I'm talking about are title transfers, so no problem.

 

[Christian Liberty]

Since you are feeling the need to "put it more simply," I may presume you are picking up signals that I don't understand your words, thus the need to break it down and be more simple for me. Allow me to disabuse you. I understand what you are writing. Your position is that the rights of a dead man cannot be violated. All his rights evaporate upon death, because they all derive from self-ownership, and he no longer has a "self" to aggress against (as far as in our mortal, earthly realm).

Essentially: Yes. He can make a will that says the title to his property transfer to so and so (Or as many people as he wants) after his death. But he doesn't have a right to make any particular decisions regarding that property for after he is dead and the property instantaneously transfers.

You have not addressed my points. They are two:

1. Rights or no rights, trust companies have reputations to uphold. They will not violate their contracts -- by just digging up and stealing the gold or whatever -- because then no one else would ever entrust anything to them again. You may not have addressed this because you agree with it, I don't know. It doesn't directly deal with the matter of rights, but rather bypasses it. In the real world, dead people have rights because there are companies who specialize in upholding the rights of the dead. Whether those rights exist or not, philosophically, they exist practically.

That's fine. They could do that. But nonetheless, I would uphold that if the trust company did indeed dig up the gold, they would not be criminally liable.

If you say to me, I'll give you my gold when you die, on condition that you keep it buried, and I agree to it, then you die, and I dig up the gold and keep it, you're dead. So nobody has a right to stop me from taking the gold. But you're right, its likely that the company won't do this, since otherwise nobody would contract with them again.

2. Living people have rights. You set up a counter-party arrangement. You play two living entities or, better, two perpetual entities, off of each other. I'm not sure you have understood this, because you wrote:

I still don't really understand it, but let me try.

I addressed this a couple times. This will be the third time. Yes, the man is no longer around to bring suit. So if he expects his rights to be respected by contracting with just one party, he's just crossing his fingers, so to speak (though if this one party is a long-established and reputable trust company, his fingers may rest in peace and confidence). That's a problem if it's just A and B. A is gone; B is left to himself. The cat is away, the mice will play. But this is easily solved. Do you remember how I said he could solve it?

It's by contracting with more than one party, setting them up against each other. The man can give part of his fortune to C, as payment for auditing B to make sure that they are doing what he wants with the rest of his fortune. You could also pay D to be the ones doling out payments to C, and checking up on their faithfulness. And etc., etc., etc.

In the first example, I see no reason why C would have any right to actually do anything to B if they fail an audit, unless C has some particular contract with B. The contract with A is null and void when A dies. That said, there's probably a way you could word a three way contract to make this work.

Thus, what I am saying is that an intelligent man with some foresight can preserve his control over his property in perpetuum. It will be a more crude and rough form of control than when he was living and able to make day-to-day decisions and changes, but it will be control nonetheless. Legally, lawfully, libertarianly, this control must be respected. The only way to disrespect it would be to disrespect the rights of other, still present, entities. So the rules and controls this man set up for his property cannot be justly infringed.

It still depends.

3. The other way a man can keep control of his property after he's dead is to use a zero-party strategy instead of a one-party (see 1. above) or multi-party (see 2. above) strategy. He could, for example, build up a self-sustaining super fortress filled with machines and robots to defend it from any invader. If his defenses are better than anyone can penetrate, this would keep it sacrosanct and inviolable for as long as the defenses function.

This would certainly be legal in a libertarian society, but I don't think trying to penetrate the defenses would/should exactly be a crime either.

Or, in present technological conditions, he could launch all his wealth and operations out into the Kuiper Belt, far from any meddling and untrustworthy mortals. He's making it inaccessible, like building on an unscalable mountain in ancient times, or sinking a ship in unplumbable depths.

Yeah, he could do that. If he actually has it done after his death, he'd have to trust somebody to do it for him, while if he does it shortly before his death, he's pretty much good. That said, you still couldn't (And thank goodness) get rid of land itself this way.

Probably the easiest and most historically successful zero-party strategy would be simply hiding it -- burying a chest of treasure, for instance. De facto inaccessibility through secrecy.

Again ,that's fine, but if somebody finds it, there should be no libertarian law against keeping it.
Been reading Rothbard?

What do you mean by this?

And of course the contracts I'm talking about are title transfers, so no problem.[/QUOTE]

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Essentially: Yes.

Right.

That's fine. They could do that. But nonetheless, I would uphold that if the trust company did indeed dig up the gold, they would not be criminally liable.

Right.

In the first example, I see no reason why C would have any right to actually do anything to B if they fail an audit, unless C has some particular contract with B. The contract with A is null and void when A dies. That said, there's probably a way you could word a three way contract to make this work.

You're right, I got lazy and didn't flesh out a whole contractual sitiation that would work. C would have to have some claim on B so that they have standing. Anyway, since you agree that "there's probably a way you could word a three way contract to make this work" we'll just stipulate that there is without working out the details, because I'm sure there is. And so we're both in agreement.

This would certainly be legal in a libertarian society, but I don't think trying to penetrate the defenses would/should exactly be a crime either.

Of course not. And surely the machines would eventually break.

Again ,that's fine, but if somebody finds it, there should be no libertarian law against keeping it.

Of course not.

 

[robert68]

If you say to me, I'll give you my gold when you die, on condition that you keep it buried, and I agree to it, then you die, and I dig up the gold and keep it, you're dead. So nobody has a right to stop me from taking the gold. But you're right, its likely that the company won't do this, since otherwise nobody would contract with them again.

You didn’t gain possession of the gold through either legit title transfer or homesteading, so you wouldn't have a right to it. By your logic, if he had told you to give half of the gold to charity X, it would be a violation of your rights if you were prevented from ignoring his request. That's not libertarian principle.