Magnus

Taxation is theft, but that an ethical assertion, not a fact. Actually, taxation is more akin to slavery than ordinary theft. As for the original post, I would suggest initiating half a dozen philosophical propositions, and see what kind of response you get. Maybe make 10 or so videos, if that's your thing. We tend to get the responses we invite. If you don't like your responses, I'd suggest examining your invitations.

It's interesting that you mention this -- in the more creative lines of work (which are generally wide-open, free labor markets), like artists, illustrators, advertising, music, and even some software development, the hiring process is based very heavily on one's portfolio. I was an illustrator briefly after college (which was pre-Internet), and I thought about getting back into it a few years ago, and the near-universal consensus is that your credentials mean nothing and your portfolio is everything. Same with music. I have a good friend who is a true virtuoso, who went to one of the best music schools around. A lot of people who go there love it but never graduate, because the degree itself is trivial. It's 100% performance. Same with novels. I don't understand what Creative Writing BFA degrees are for. On the other end of the market-freedom scale are jobs like police and firemen, where there isn't even a way to rate performance, so they go by seniority.

I think the specious experience requirements are the result of phony credentialism, which is itself the result of state-run schools. The existence of a diploma or college degree is largely meaningless, as shown by the high percentage of stone cold idiots we all went to school with. From the perspective of the HR moron, they meet dozens of people with similar third-tier education creds, but on the job are unable to add 3 numbers together or write in complete sentences. The public school system has created 150 years of bullshit artists. The military, teaching and other fully statist environments are even worse. Promotion in them is strictly a matter of seniority plus education, so the system rewards (a) people who take no risks (thus ensuring longevity), and (b) spawned the creation of an entire industry of thoroughly worthless career "education" programs that make those diploma factories advertised on TV seem like Oxbridge. My sister-in-law got a "Masters" degree for her gov't teaching job that literally consisted of 2 class sessions and 1 written paper, which was mostly plagiarized with her instructor's assistance.

That is a change isolation -- the State has already situated all the roads, their type and design and locations, of all 4 million miles of them. Merely transferring control of the 4 million miles of State-designed, State-built roads doesn't, by itself, make America's land use system private. The State's roads are located where they are, and sized and designed that way, in order to service the current housing and commercial patterns, which are dictated by the State's comprehensive development plans. Getting into a debate over the system for maintaining the roads alone, without also addressing the entire system of State-mandated development restrictions and subsidies, is pointless.Your suggestion is like when the government contracts its jail-administration operations to contractors, and then calling it "privatized." No, jails are inherently Statist, in their use, design, construction and operation, even if one tiny component of the larger system is superficially, nominally private.

It's not just the roads. The State controls all land use -- the location, type, size and configuration of every type of commercial and residential structure. The government creates the demand for its own roads. Even if private owners were to simply take over the responsibility for the existing State road system, all 4 million miles of it, as a single change made in isolation from all the other State controls over land use, the result would not approximate the land use patterns of a free, property-based society. Private enterprise would simply bear the immediate and full cost of an inefficient and poorly-designed road system, one that services development that is itself poorly sited and designed.

The entire car-and-road based transportation system -- every aspect of the automobile technology and the construction of the physical space to accommodate them -- has been designed and implemented by and for the State. Even private spaces and their roads (including a few private neighborhoods that exist here and there, and large private commercial areas like Disney World) are all influenced in their design by the need to connect to the State's road system. Private areas just don't treat you the way the State treats us. They want you to have a good time. They want you to enjoy being there. They have security to protect people from the rare trouble-maker who might ruin the experience for everyone, not as a make-work union project with a jail cell at the ready for anyone who denies their authori-tay. There is not any aspect of our physical living space that has not been corrupted by Statism. Conversely, in the absence of Statism, the entire structure of cities, and our movement within them, would be radically different. You can't expect a simple answer to a question that supposes that only one aspect -- a contract -- is changed in isolation.

Dealing with traffic is one of the absolute worst parts of being an anarchist. And car registrations. And driver's licensing. Anything to do with cars, apparently. The State freezes technology. The federal gov't took over radio in 1928, and that's the reason there are only a handful of "stations" on any local radio dial, even today. The technology to allow many thousands of radio users to occupy the same area of the radio spectrum without interference was invented shortly after the federal radio take-over, but here we are, 90 years later, with cell phones that hop around easily, and yet the radio industry had to resort to satellites just to open up some telecom access. West Germans visited East Germany after the wall came down, and they said it was like a technology museum over there. In Cuba, they're still driving cars from the 50s and 60s. In the US, both the electrical grid and traffic systems were taken over in the early 1900s. That's why we still use massive trunk lines carrying power from centrally-generated (and State-owned and run) facilities, with wires on poles running through almost every neighborhood, as though it's still 1915. The supposed "need" to control both electricity and traffic was the reason used at the time to justify the virtually complete take-over of what they now call "public space." The traffic system is the ultimate expression of Statist values. They claim to essentially own all of the space between and among us. You can walk around your own quarter-acre, but if you want to interact with anyone, you have to pass through State-space. Notice how rare walkable urban areas are. There's lower Manhattan, the old sections of places like Boston or San Francisco, and the tourist traps like the French Quarter, and that's about it. The other 99% of us are housed in semi-urban spaces with government-designated set-backs between every building. There are no virtually alleyways, no pedestrian spaces. And yet, people travel all over the world to visit vestigial places like these: These non-car, archaic spaces are so desirable that they're now being built solely for fantasy. Harry Potter Land: Liberty Square in Disney World's Magic Kingdom: Ask any policeman where most people in jail are arrested, and they'll readily admit that over 90% of them come in through traffic stops. As with everything else, the State's traffic system serves the interests of the State.

Why did these songs and movies occur at that time? I believe the timing is due to the fact that the left-wing Free Love counter-culture movement was just about 30 years old. These artists were part of Generation X -- the product of families where no-fault divorce was common (no fault divorce was legislated in 1969-70). Rampant middle-class drug abuse. Plus, the early 1970s was a period of extremely low birth rates, so that generation was put through a government school system in which districts were consolidated into fewer (but individually more populous) facilities. I went to an extremely small school, but there was one high school in my town that had 5,000 students. It's hard to explain how different a childhood in the 1970s was from one in the 1940s. The postwar freeway system had created suburbs, television had taken over as the dominant media, crime rates were many multiples higher. It was a different world.

I'm sympathetic to the thesis and way of life you're describing (call it Luddite/anti-civ/anarcho-primitivism, etc.). I resent electricity and cars in particular, along with the construction methods and materials for most contemporary housing. I've lived without electricity or a car, for extended periods of time. I plan to build a house with my own hands, as a project with my son when he gets a little older. I've given a lot of thought to the basis for my feelings and attitudes on the subject. I've come to the conclusion that the most important principle is freedom, not the technology that is used to deprive us of our freedom. It's normal and certainly understandable to point to the technology that the Statists use as their instrument of oppression, but it's the oppression that matters, not the tool by which it's accomplished. I'm continually amazed by the fact that the USA of 2014 is more of an oppressive surveillance state than 1970s East Germany was under the STASI. If they had the ability to tap everyone's communications all the time, and put video cameras on every corner as we have today, and satellites in orbit that monitor everyone, and scanners that track license plates of cars, and a database so huge that no one person even knows were all of it is stored, does anyone seriously contend they wouldn't use it? It would look exactly like our lives do today. The technology that is used to accomplish these intrusions is a problem, even more so because it was developed specifically to be seamless and unobtrusive. The reason we don't have black-clad thugs arriving at people's doorsteps and beating confessions out of them with lamp cords isn't because they don't want to. It's because they don't have to. The technology allows them to disappear from view, almost all of the time. The technology is new but the violation of rights is the same. The technology that facilitates Statist oppression is driven by the Statist mindset of the people running it. Life was freer before such advanced surveillance technology was invented, but the urge to control and enslave others is the same. The ethical justifications for it are the same. The problem is not the technology. The problem is the people deploying the technology. I've always wondered where the "live out in the woods" impulse comes from. I've had it myself, from time to time (but not so much any more). Thoreau's cabin the the woods (although it was really more of a lake cottage with regular bread delivery service, so it was not exactly a hardship). Ted Kaczynski living in his hut in Montana. The interesting fellow on your embedded video. I believe that all of these people are just looking to be free. The primitivism is just a means of achieving that freedom. I think it's unfortunate that people have to resort to dumpster diving and building unfinished huts just to get away from the State. We should be able to stake out a free life right here, whether it's out on a farm (like the Amish), or in a village, town or city. I think the impulse behind the urge to flee to the wilderness is the extreme (though often hidden and subtle) mechanisms of control that urban dwellers are constantly subjected to. The design and construction of our physical space is deeply controlled by government. Local ordinances, land use plans, development codes, road-building, traffic engineering, eminent domain, utilities -- these are all things that most people go their whole lives without giving a single thought to, but they control the size, type, location and shape of everything we call a "town." It determines where all of the houses are. Where the grocery stores are. Where the offices are. It's all controlled, and heavily so. People feel the need to flee to the woods to get away from those (often unseen) control mechanisms. It's those mechanisms that give us such horrible features of modern life -- artery roads, the minimum lot sizes, the big box retail centers. These are all artifacts that result from government control over urban development. I think our time and energy as philosophers and anarchists would be better spent trying to dismantle the restrictions that make even small-town life so horrible and oppressive. Urban development is not evil. Government-run urban development is evil. ---------------- As an aside, I don't think it's particularly helpful to respond to someone who advances a challenge to technology by accusing him of being a hypocrite by using a computer, etc. It's like every time anyone here has ever tried to argue anarchism, and the cliche Statist response invariably devolving into "You use government roads, don't you?." Leftists rail against capitalism, and yet they use computers and bookstores and mobile telephones that were all manufactured and distributed by companies that don't exemplify the socialist workers' paradise. Conservatives decry socialism, but they drive cars that are built in unionized factories. Anarchists complain about the government but use the mail and road system. These things are unavoidable. It's certainly valid to expect someone to live the way he proposes others should live, but it's not especially helpful to pounce on someone who criticizes modern life by noting that his thoughts are written on a computer.

That's amazing. Not surprising, but still illuminating to see it summarized that way. I'm going to look for information about the private economy -- an analysis of the productivity of those 86 million non-government full-time year-round workers. The government's statistics always seem to count government work as though it's a form of productivity, rather than the uselessness (or active detriment) that it really is.

Harry Reid has been a "public servant" for his entire career (including working as a security guard for a couple of years while in law school). He has never had a private sector job. He grew up poor and inherited nothing. Yet his net worth is in the tens of millions of dollars. Like Hillary Clinton's cattle futures "investment" miracle, this is how politicians are bribed. They are not typically bribed with large stacks of unmarked bills. They typically use their extended network of family and cronies as proxies, who participate in various corrupt transactions (often real estate) that superficially look like investments, but are really just payola in a thin disguise (e.g., buying assets at extreme discounts, and selling them at extreme markups, or getting awarded fat government contracts). Tom Daschle's wife, I recall, was a particularly egregious offender. She was a lobbyist, and if you wanted the Democrat Senate to take any action in your favor, you had to hire her, which (by the way) was very expensive. The "conspiracy" is not that the particular Chinese solar energy company that is represented by Reid's son is buying the particular parcel that Bundy grazes his cattle on (a deal to be authorized by the former Reid staffer who runs the BLM). Getting Bundy's cattle off of this land will pave the way for some company to buy it (or lease it), even if it's not the one Reid's son represents. The feds will use their control to make more sweetheart, corrupt deals, for the benefit of the ruling caste, even if it's not this particular company buying that particular parcel. So, the purpose of the State's effort against Bundy is not to get his $1 million in unpaid grazing fees. The BLM and court system will have spent that much over course of the 2 decades of this dispute just litigating and paying cops to enforce the rules. They'll spend that much on government media consultants to manage the PR fallout from this episode. The point of coming down hard on Bundy is not the grazing money. The point is to establish control. Cenk Uygur, being an authoritarian Statist, sees no problem with federal assertion of control. He never considers the question of the federal government's authority, or the basis for the various federal court decisions (which were decided in favor of federal authority, not surprisingly). Despite his protestations of openness, he never addresses these issues. He emotionally recoils at the mere whiff of an idea of there being any dispute over federal authority, and the idea of local or private guns being deployed against federal guns. He wants federal guns to be aimed with impunity, I guess, and expects them to meet no resistance. Challenges to authority offend Uygur's sensibilities, and so his sympathy evaporates. These are not arguments. They are emotions. What strikes me, however, is why you, MartV, would come to an anarchist message board touting a video that is based on the unquestioned legitimacy of federal government authority. I then wonder why you would then argue that such a video, in which the speaker blithely assumes the existence of an authority that does not exist, has "debunked" something. Uygur hasn't debunked anarchism. He merely disregards it. That's not an argument, much less a correct one. I am also struck by your decision to spend the time to compile your post claiming to have "debunked" Stefan, only to then declare that he's "irrelevant." Irrelevant people are ignored, not challenged. Clearly you have some other motivation, which you are not revealing.

I don't like the usual grammar books, like Wheelock or Cambridge or the others. No one teaches modern languages that way. My hands-down all-time No. 1 recommendation is the Hans Orberg series of books, Lingua Latina per se Illustrata (Pars I et II). It's entirely in Latin. It begins by presenting basic information to you as you would a child -- "Sardinia is an island. Rome is a large city in Italy. Sparta is a Greek city." You learn by figuring out what the illustrations and passages are about, so you get a dose of grammar and prose application all at once, without ever learning by rote. It's truly great. (The series also has a College Companion grammar guide by Jeanne Marie Neumann, which explains the main text in a more conventional rule-based way, but I didn't have to use the Companion all that much.) I also enjoy readers, like 38 Latin Stories, or the Latin versions of The Hobbit or Harry Potter. I also sometimes listen to the YLE Radio, linked above. And occasionally read Radio Bremen's Latin news page. There are some interesting apps at www.RomansGoHome.com, but I haven't tried them yet. I was a medieval history major in college, and always wanted to be able to read the source material. My more recent motivation to learn Latin was to help me write a novel I've been working on (and have almost finished, I think). It's a conspiracy thriller about a young man who joins an underground resistance movement that communicates and preserves its history in Latin. I needed a basic proficiency in Latin to give the book some texture and depth.

I've been doing the same for a few years. I have an older version of Rosetta Stone that I enjoy, but there is a ton of free resources online. I bought the Wheelock book, but it just sits on the shelf gathering dust. How are you approaching it?

An owner is liable for the injuries sustained by invitees while they are on his property, particularly if the owner is aware of a dangerous instrumentality. By that logic, schools should be liable for every injury experienced by students, even if caused by fellow students. The Left clamored for similar protections for workers who are injured in the workplace. What do you think the Left would say about extending the same level of liability to their precious public schools?

It's not theft. It's a tax-and-spend policy that cuts out the middle man.

I find it very strange that you'd object to inheritance on the basis of sufficient proof. What would constitute sufficient proof, in your view? A formal document that was authored by a person, reciting a great deal of flowery language about exactly what he is doing, signed by that person in the presence of two witnesses ... that's not enough, in the absence of evidence of some irregularity? What if you had no rational basis to dispute the authenticity of the document? Would you still object to the validity of the property transfer it contains? Estates are fictional. But I don't consider them to be unethical as long as they are an attempt by living people to complete ethical acts that were begun by a now-dead person. Yes, there is such thing as "rightful possession" and "wrongful possession." A right of possession is as much as a valid type of property as ownership, even when the (rightful) possessor is competing with a claim by the owner! But, the term "possession" also refers to the mere fact of controlling something (by force), and is therefore possibly wrongful, in which case the object in question can ethically be taken away from the wrongful possessor by the rightful possessor and/or owner (or his proxy). So, you're very much correct -- possession is both an ethical term and a factual term, which can be confusing. In contrast, ownership is a purely ethical matter, as is "title." As for the dead, they are clearly not dead when they write wills. Wills are, of course, effective upon death, but they are written while alive, and more importantly, they transfer title to property at the moment of death. If you can write a deed transferring title to some piece of property to someone "one year from now," then why shouldn't you be able to define the timing of the transfer by other means? Such as: "when the Mets win the World Series in a leap year"? Or: "when my son John turns 21 years of age" (which is how a lot of trust funds work, by the way)? Or: "upon my death"?

What do you think possession is? Do we have property rights only in the things we are actively touching? With skin-contact? Touched in the last 5 minutes? As for "property comes first" being a Statist concept, that is incorrect. First of all, to be clear, there is no State -- it's not a thing. Statism is a purported set of justifications for a certain group's exemption from the ordinary rules of ethics. Therefore, once we fully accept the proposition that there are no exceptions to ethical rules for a particular group, it is easy to understand that the State is an organization that exists to violate people's rights. The fact that these people who call themselves "the State" go around violating people's rights in property all day, every day, in no way explains the relationship between property and contracts. Their claims to property do not define property rights. Logic and reason define property. Property comes before agreement because each of us owns himself. This is a tautology. It's self-evident. Then, we use our bodies to control various objects in the world. Objects are rivalrous, in the sense that two people cannot use an object for different purposes at the same time. Someone's use of a desired object must be either superior or inferior to other people's competing desired uses. Someone must have priority, ultimately, to resolve this conflict. Property is merely a set of ethical rules as to the priority of the use of objects. The term "owner" is a shorthand way of saying that person's claim to the exclusive use of something is superior to all other contemplated claims of all other people. Possession is just one form of property right. You can own a house and rent it out. The renter has a right of possession, but not ownership. Sometimes that right of possession is limited in time (a year). Sometimes it is for the possessor's lifetime (e.g., a "life estate"). Sometimes it's dependent on other conditions. But regardless of the means by which someone acquires a right of possession, it just means that you have the right to a limited set of uses of something for a limited amount of time. The right of ownership includes the right of possession, by default, unless possession is separated from it. Inheritors do not try to invent agreement. They are given property rights to a thing by its prior owner, by his express act of making a gift of it. Do you object to people giving gifts of their property in general?

Agreement is not the basis of property. Property comes before agreements. In fact, property MUST come first, because agreement (i.e., a contract) is essentially a set of mutual promises to trade property rights -- If you do X with your property, then I'll do Y with my property. Property that is based on mutual agreement is just another way of saying "social contract" -- you are essentially saying that property rights amount to: "You get to keep exclusive possession of your stuff only for as long as I agree not to take it from you." That is the State in a nutshell. The bedrock beneath the Statists' claim is that "we" get to define what property is, what part of it you get to keep, how much of it you owe, and how you're going to hand it over. Property does not arise by agreement, any more than the prohibition against murder arises by agreement. It's just wrong, no matter what you agree to. A "property rights transfer" is consent. It's entirely mental -- a matter of pure intention. It's the difference between sex and rape. It's the difference between abandonment of property and theft. It's the difference between slavery and employment. Property is transferred by pure intention, but that intention must be manifest in some observable way, so that others know what your intentions are. That can be any form of communication (even silence, in the proper context), or through non-verbal behavior. Property is transferred by pure mental decision, but that decision must (of course), by necessity, be deciphered by referring to some observable words or actions, or else no one can know what you intend. Proving the intentions of a now-dead person can be difficult, of course. That's why the common law made all those (admittedly arbitrary) rules about what constitutes "proof." In wills, that's why the call the process of identifying and certifying a dead person's will "probate," which is just an old fashioned word for "prove." The objective is to prove (or disprove) that the document is a true, reliable expression of the deceased's intent, which is a lot easier to do if it conforms to some basic formalities, like being signed, dated, having 2 witnesses, etc. But the deceased's intentions can be deciphered in other ways, even if there is no formal will. Any letters he might have written, statements made to third parties, even a video or a set of tweets. Yes, reviewing all of that stuff is something of a matter of interpretation, but the point of the process is to arrive at an evidence-based conclusion about what the deceased most likely decided, as to the disposition of his property upon death. That conclusion might not be perfect, but it doesn't have to be perfect. It only needs to be better than all of the other conclusions about what the deceased wanted. In order to respect property, you have to respect people's consent, intentions and wishes about their stuff. Property is a universal, objective ethical right, regardless of what other people might agree to. Otherwise, social life is just a free-for-all of Might Makes Right.

The important relationship is between the testator and the beneficiaries, not between the testator and the executor. It is not the executor who disposes of the property after the testator dies. It is the testator himself who gives away the property. The property belongs to the recipients, immediately upon death of the testator (which is the moment when the gift becomes effective). The testator's role is merely to be the intermediary of this transfer -- his role is purely administrative -- he gathers and inventories the property, reviews the documents, ensures the will is valid and clear, pays the debts of the deceased (if any), and delivers the property to their new owners. But the actual transfer of rights in the property goes directly from the testator to the beneficiary. The contract that the testator might have with some particular executor is immaterial. What if the executor dies first? What if he breaches his obligation? Does that mean that the beneficiaries own nothing, because the executor didn't give it to them? That can't be right. They are the new owners of the property, even if it hasn't been delivered to them yet. Anyone can serve in the role of executor, and the transfer of property occurs regardless of whether he had any relationship with the deceased at all during his lifetime. The transition can be handled by any competent person, since he's just the intermediary -- a glorified postman or bank teller who delivers property from one owner to another.

A will does not "prove the principles of property." It is merely a recording that reflects a person's desire. That's all that "will" means: wish, intent, desire, decision, etc. If I sell you my house, I execute a deed to prove the transfer. "Deed" just means "act." As in, the document that memorializes my act of divesting myself of ownership and transferring it to you. No one here at FDR questions a seller's right to do that, right? The seller could, if he wanted, also execute a deed that says "I give ownership of my house to John as of December 31, 2016." Again, that's not a contract. It's a transfer of property that is effected and completed in the future. If you can give away property in the present moment, then you can give it away at a point in the future. It's your property; you can do what you want with it. A will is the same type of thing -- a deed to all your property, giving it away, The only difference between a will and an ordinary deed (one that gives away property in its entirety at the moment it's made) is that a will is, by necessity, conditional. It goes into effect at the moment of death. If you have the right to give away your property while you're on your deathbed, as it were, why is it wrongful or invalid to plan your deathbed gifts ahead of time? When you're still healthy and conscious? After all, death might occur in a way that doesn't give you time to make your property wishes known. A will is not a dead artifact. It's an act of property transfer that was made while someone is alive, with the idea that the transfers are completed as he is dying. If you respect property rights, I don't see why you'd reject property being transferred via a will.

Acquiescence (or rejection) to a unilateral gift is not the same as a pair of mutual promises to trade reciprocal future performances. A contract is more complex than a gift of property. It is a voluntary obligation to behave in a particular way in the future, in exchange for a corresponding transfer or promise from the other party. A gift is simpler. It occurs in real time, rather than bind future action, and it is not reciprocal. A contract is a promise to (a) trade property (b) in the future. A gift (including those in wills) is (a) a unilateral transfer of property (b) in the here and now.

Transactional work (e.g., being the intermediary in eBay sales) is fine work, and can earn you money, but it's all in the efficiency. If finding ways to push efficiency to the limit is not your thing, then I'd look for other opportunities. Or, you have to be in an area where they lock out the competition, like real estate. (No, thanks.) Manufacturing is awesome, but you have to recognize that just about everything is made in computer-operated factories now. The production process is so advanced, even compared to 10 years ago, that the per-unit production cost of a lot of ordinary commodity goods is close to zero. The FAR greater cost and challenge is in the marketing and distribution. Even if you want to make something as simple as soap, start thinking right away about automation, even if you are producing on a small scale. You have to think about linear (flow) production methods instead of batch production, even if it's just something you make at home for now. Tim Ferris has a book out about it -- the Four Hour Work Week. He describes how a ton of ordinary business operations can be outsourced. Remember, Fight Club was dystopic psychological fiction (no offense to our illustrious Mr. Durden here on FDR). Climbing a security fence to steal liposuction biohazard waste is not exactly a business plan. You need a reliable source of materials, even if all you're making is moonshine whiskey. Remember, it's all about the Marketing, Marketing, Marketing. Look around for the things people respond to when offered, and then craft a product to fit that desire.

No, I'm sorry to be disagreeable, but a gift made in a will is not a matter of contract. The gift can be refused (in which case the gift fails, it reverts to the estate, and is disposed of according to a set of other rules), but a contract's essence is defined by a different set of criteria entirely -- a mutual, reciprocal promise to perform some act in the future, in exchange for some other act (or promise to act). A will is just a gift -- a transfer of property from A to B. It does not include reciprocity or a promise to perform future acts, as contracts do.

The executor is the deceased's proxy. The transfer from the deceased to the recipient is not contractual, in the sense that it's not reciprocal. But contracts are based on property rights, because in a contract, it is rights in property that are traded. Property is the root of all ethics. Inheritance is just the transfer of property as the final legal act of one's life. Wills are a bit metaphorical, but they rest on solid ground.

A will is not a contract. It is an act (effected through writing) of giving away property. It is a unilateral property transfer, and is operative at the moment of death. Everyone has the right to give away his property during his lifetime. But since death can come upon us suddenly, by writing it down, one can prepare for the final act of giving, so the transfer of rights occurs upon death, rather than have to do it ahead of time. That's why, in will contests, the main question is deciphering and implementing the testator's wishes. In some situations, though, those tasks might be impossible, so the common law developed a set of default rules for what to do when the instructions can't be followed, or if there are no instructions at all (in which case, they pretend the deceased wanted what most people would have wanted).