RuralRon

Thanks for the explanation shirgal. FYI the legal phrase used to describe what you wrote in your second paragraph is an agreement in "good faith". Good faith is a rather interesting choice of words, don't you think? Isn't that the same thing as enforcement? It's at least a form of shunning.

All replies are excellent considerations, especially powder's. Shouldn't something about the NAP be included in the definition?

Not sure I understand what you mean by "sunk cost fallacy" shirgal, would you explain that? The point you missed (again) autowagon is that a piece of paper won't compensate you when the terms on it are violated against you, that takes enforcement. If all parties are benevolent, reasonable and rational perhaps the violation would be recognized and a just compensation / adjustment could be reached. What if the parties are not reasonable or virtuous, what then? shirgal stated a good approach but that assumes all potential variables can be known in advance. We can't predict the future. We can do our best to anticipate but it isn't always adequate. Some type of enforcement is implicit when the terms of the contract are broken and the situation is not adequately addressed by the contract. In today's world that usually invites The State to step in to provide a remedy (tho it usually only makes the situation worse in the long run). The author suggests the solution is enforcement via shunning. Stefan has also spoken of shunning as a punitive measure of enforcement. That alone will not provide remedy; remedy could however be provided thru escrow agreements and insurance contingencies written into the contract and agreed to up front, all of which still require some form of agreement. Are agreements synonymous with contracts? Is this only about semantics? It seems to me the crux of the position to eliminate enforcement issues implied by contracts today is the key, which is why the author detailed the definitions and first principles of property contracts rely on. Language is important, and the legal definition of contract as recognized by The State and it's courts rely on their power to compel (i.e. force) contracting parties to comply with their decrees justly rendered or not. Formalizing agreements thru documentation is the essence of contracts. I don't see how that should or could be eliminated. And since every little detail and anticipated problem can't possibly be known when an agreement is executed, the only reasonable measure to cover the unknowns is a clause empowering an independent review panel of some type, like 3rd party arbitration is the only non-State option I can think of. No amount of due diligence will eliminate the possibility of entering into an agreement with untrustworthy bad actors. Someone has to be the first "sucker" or the first be involved after a good actor goes bad. If a person makes choices that ruin their reputation and break agreements then perhaps coordinated shunning is the only recourse.

OK, I understand that scenario. It's one of the primary challenges to writing a good contract and estimating costs. Nobody can predict the future and contracts are so often written not as a spec of what is necessary but rather how to deal with the unknowns and what ifs and to assign a cost (i.e. blame/responsibility) to a party for them. But what if a dispute arises between you and your client, one that they won't bend on? How would you resolve it if they refused payment or refused to acknowledge important facts - would you just eat your losses, sever all interaction and refuse to do business with them again? Obviously diplomacy, tact and discussion should be used to try and resolve any conflict, but if the other party refused to be rational you don't have much choice than to involve a third party or eat your losses. The 3rd party usually relied on in today's world is The State. In a future free society the choices would be enforcement (through shunning) and take a loss, or possibly collect from some type of insurance policy you may have bought to guard against such a breach of contract or failure to perform or as a way to "hedge" the risk of unforeseen problems that might arise. In a free society it may not be possible to obtain an insurance policy without a contract, or if it is possible the cost would certainly be higher, maybe prohibitively so, thus incentivizing most to put contracts in place. I don't believe there are any easy answers, but crying to The State to resolve a disputed contract is definitely not a solution, as it perpetuates The State's power and that is not a step in the right direction.

Thanks for the replies. Looking for a more "in depth" analysis than I've seen from most of the replies here so far. In response to shirgal I would say the "edge cases" of contracts actually anticipate and perhaps even encourage violations. I think of the contract more like a spec to declare what I need, certainly not as a means of punishment or sanction against unfulfilled and inconsequential clauses so frequently found in boiler plate agreements of today. The [en]force[ment] of all contracts is implied, that's the primary issue he raises, and in today's world that provides an invitation for The State to be involved. Arbitration isn't force if all contracting parties agree to it, so long as no coercion is involved and the arbitration is truly benevolent and no conflict of interests between the parties exists. To autowagon I think you missed the point entirely. Equality is totally irrelevant. Do you actually think a contract between a huge mufti-billion dollar corporation and a contract mechanic puts them on equal footing in any way? It's about performance not equality. I agree, the first example quoted is indeed confusingly written. The second one about the marriage proposal is more illustrative.

The article below was copied in total from Bytemaster's Blog b/c I felt the information was so fundamental to a free society a simple link just wouldn't convey the importance. I can't force you to read it but I can reduce the obstacles that might get in your way. I am genuinely interested in discussing this. I'm not aware of any podcast by Stefan that goes into depth on the arguments presented here. If they exist please mention them. Search results using the keyword "contract" on the FDR podcast page show two (2133, 1866), but imo don't address the points raised here. --- The Benefits of a Contract Free Society Most libertarians think about contracts as the fundamental building block of a free society. I take a relatively unique position that contracts as we know them are the Achilles heal of attempts to form a libertarian society. I go so far as to suggest that we need a contract-free society because enforcement of contracts presents a significant challenge to the Golden Principle upon which my entire world view is based. What is a Contract? Pardon me as I quote wikipedia: In common law legal systems, a contract (or informally known as an agreement in some jurisdictions) is an agreement having a lawful object entered into voluntarily by two or more parties, each of whom intends to create one or more legal obligations between them. According to thelawdictionary.com: A legal obligation or duty is enforced by a court of law, it can be a debt and the legal responsibility to carry out what the law asks. The very term contract, as commonly understood, is an intent of two or more parties to submit to a government that will interpret and enforce the contract as it sees fit. Note the requirement for the contract to have a lawful object or purpose. If you attempt to construct a contract to insure against getting caught violating the law, then you can bet the government will not enforce the terms of that contract and therefore, by definition, it is not a contract. Contracts & The Golden Principle For those of you who have not read my article on “The Golden Principle”, I will summarize it here: “Do not do unto others what you do not want others doing unto you.“ You don’t want to be imprisoned even if guilty of a crime. If you steal something from someone, you don’t want them using force or trickery to steal it back from you. If you really think about it you don’t want to give up your free will under any circumstances, even if you had previously promised something to someone. This is a real challenging stance to take and one that will cause many of you to abandon me to my wishful thinking. So I am going to ask you to reserve your judgement and avoid jumping to conclusions until you have had a chance to fully hear me out. Murray N. Rothbard in chapter 19 of his book “The Ethics of Liberty” outlined the foundation of valid contracts in a way that would be difficult for me to replicate. I am going to quote liberally from his book and comment as I go. The right of property implies the right to make contracts about that property: to give it away or to exchange titles of ownership for the property of another person. Unfortunately, many libertarians, devoted to the right to make contracts, hold the contract itself to be an absolute, and therefore maintain that any voluntary contract whatever must be legally enforceable in the free society. Their error is a failure to realize that the right to contract is strictly derivable from the right of private property, and therefore that the only enforceable contracts (i.e., those backed by the sanction of legal coercion) should be those where the failure of one party to abide by the contract implies the theft of property from the other party. These two paragraphs lay the foundation for a contract free society with the exception of the part regarding “backed by the sanction of legal coercion”. Blockchain technology can entirely automate the management and enforcement of property rights in a non violent manner, but it cannot compel enforcement of promises. There is no need to use legal coercion to compel anyone to do anything. So for now I will simply ask that you assume there exists a non-violent (aka non coercive) means of motivating individuals to fulfill the terms of a contract. A contract should only be enforceable when the failure to fulfill it is an implicit theft of property. If Alice lends money to Bob under the condition that it be repaid in a year, then the contract stipulates a transfer of title to the money in one year. Bob has already transferred title of the funds to payoff the loan one year in advance. If the loan is not repaid then that is theft. Existing law would contend that Bob had “promised to pay” and thus set up the “expectation” of Alice that she would receive money. As we can see such rationale breaks down if applied consistently to all promises and expectations when it comes to enforceability of a contract. Suppose that Bob promised to marry Alice in one year in a written contract. If Bob jilts Alice does Alice have the legal right to compel Bob to marry Alice? Under the promise theory of contracts this would be the logical conclusion. Our current legal system even enforces a mild version of this by forcing one party to pay damages to the other for losses incurred due to breaking the promise. While forcing one party to pay damages may be less objectionable, it is derived from the same invalid principle. Lets return to Rothbard: Specifically, a person cannot alienate his will, more particularly his control over his own mind and body. Each man has control over his own mind and body. Each man has control over his own will and person, and he is, if you wish, “stuck” with that inherent and inalienable ownership. Since his will and control over his own person are inalienable, then so also are his rights to control that person and will. This gets to the crux of the matter, you cannot surrender your will and any attempt to use force to compel you to act against your will is almost by definition something you don’t want others to do to you and therefore a violation of the Golden Principle. Contracts depend upon Enforcement What good is a contract that cannot be enforced? Is it still a contract or is it something else? Without enforcement a contract is nothing more than documentation of an agreement among honorable men. The parties to an agreement understand that the sole purpose for writing the agreement is to help aid them in voluntarily resolving disputes without violence. At first this might seem like a rather weak foundation upon which to build a free society, but as you will see it is actually the only foundation and much stronger than alternatives at that. You see, Rothbard’s definition of a contract is so narrow and restrictive that it becomes difficult for society to accept. People intuitively feel that promises should be enforced somehow and yet Rothbard’s approach makes that impossible. The key to enforcing a documented agreement is coordinated voluntary shunning of those who fail to abide by their promises as decided by an independent agency to which an individual has voluntarily consented to judge them. Coordinated shunning is almost like a prison without walls. You become an outcast until you make restitution. The nice thing about coordinated shunning is that it does not use any force or violence against any party and yet has been proven extremely effective at “compelling” an individual to act. Dropping the Term Contract The reason I argue for a “contract-free” society is because we live in a society where the government as co-opted the language and defined terms. If you have an informal verbal agreement to meet at a particular time and place for dinner then there is little anyone can do to compel to attend or punish you for failure to attend. Even if you wrote it down in an email or text message, it is not a “legally enforceable contract” and thus the government has no standing. The reason the government lacks standing is because, despite the agreement, there was not an intent to create a legal obligation. There are many laws on the book governing contracts and what kind of contracts you may or may not enter into. You cannot sell debt or stock to the public because those contracts are regulated contracts and require SEC approval. You cannot insure against getting caught breaking the law. You cannot contract for certain work unless you have a license. While you may require a license to contract certain kinds of work, there is no license requirement for performing the work without a contract. If the work performed was a gift then the laws often don’t apply. So while you may want to argue that I really do support contracts and that all I am doing is changing the enforcement mechanism, there are other reasons for forgoing the term all together. I would argue that the coordinated shunning approach isn’t enforcement at all because it specifically lacks the use of force. The effect is the same, but its nature is completely different. Blockchain Technology Rothbard’s definition of valid contracts is actually quite useful. Lets review it one more time: This is where BitShares and distributed ledgers come to play. A distributed ledger is designed to track property rights in clear unambiguous terms. Rothbard’s definition of a contract could be entirely encoded into a block chain because “all legitimate contracts implies theft of property”. It is fairly easy to ascertain whether or not property has been transferred and who owes what when you have a public ledger. With smart contracts it is also fairly easy to automate the change of ownership in such a way that no one can “enforce” a contract and no one can “fail to enforce” the contract. It doesn’t matter who you coerce, the block chain is going to execute the smart contract and everyone will automatically respect the resulting change in property rights. You can think of an automated forced transfer of digital assets as a form of coordinated shunning. Everyone refuses to acknowledge the prior purchasing power of one individual and voluntarily honors the purchasing power of a new individual. Imagine if every body had a bond and arbitration agent on file with the block chain. Imagine everyone refused to do business with someone who had an unpaid judgement against them because their own bond was at risk if they did. BitShares is the foundation of a non-violent consensus on property rights that replaces the use of force to physically reallocate property. The Contract Free Society In a contract free society agreements are documented but everyone understands that there is no force that can compel any individual to abide by any contract. An arbitration agent is not compelled to make any decision. No one is compelled to act. There is no need to force anyone into court. There is no need for government. So long as we insist on living in a world of enforceable contracts we will continue to empower the very beast that enslaves us. We are operating on the implicit expectation of the right to use force and in turn manifest a society built on violence and coercion rather than love. You cannot change others, but you can change yourself. I specifically avoid committing to legally binding contracts when ever possible. It can be very challenging for some people who feel the need to reserve the right to sue you and coerce you into fulfilling your promises. In general these are the type of people we should be shunning. Every time we give business to someone who demands a legal contract we are supporting our own enslavement. So I challenge you to release your need to control others and instead learn how to interact with others entirely without any legal obligations what-so-ever. Discuss this subject at bitsharestalk.org. Recent Articles by Daniel Larimer: The Benefits of a Contract Free Society Provably Honest Online Elections are Possible How to Create a Free Society What is BitShares? Why BitShares is Public Domain Libertarianism for New Agers The Golden Principle Genesis Post Own Your Identity with BitShares Subjective Reality Simplified

Do you know C++ or feel you could pick it up? What type of programming skills / experience have you had? You might not feel bitcoin is trustworthy enough to invest your $ into, but what about your time? There's plenty of ways to get involved in the cryptocurrency revolution, which has many parallels to the evolution of the Internet. It's an exciting field that needs principled, self aware people. But I also think you have other issues you need to face and work on to really feel in control of your life in order to begin achieving your goals. Seeking therapy is an important step. If you don't have the time or money to devote to that consider self therapy approaches like IFS (Internal Family Systems therapy). Check out Jay Earley's book on IFS on amazon. I'm working thru it now. Here are a couple of free webinars coming up on the 14th: 1) Experiential Exploration of IFS (Internal Family Systems) 2) Looking for love in all the wrong places that might be a good place to see if it's a good fit for you. Another thought is to look into a lifecoach. I highly recommend this one, who is an FDR meetup organizer. Ady's great, but may not be what you need. It may be worth having a convo with her, certainly wouldn't hurt. https://board.freedomainradio.com/user/17352-ady-sheerer/

Awesome example. I really liked what you've said here Josh. It's also good to see so many others here like the same alt media I enjoy.

Did you read all of the posts in this [old] thread ProfessionalTeabagger? Why do you come into this discussion so late and express an obviously emotional charge without quotes or justification of your claims? You've been around here long enough and were clearly here when this was a new topic, yet you just now find it worth your while to post, which was devoid of any firm facts, such as "this question and others", what others? You say "pretty sure there was more to Stef's argument"? Why make this claim without knowing? If you read the entirety of this thread you can see it was a discussion that involves hypotheticals besides the literal content of the podcast. Not one but at least two people had some reservations about Stef's position and stance in the podcast, perhaps more that didn't bother to post here. I'm getting very tired of seeing such hypersensitivity to things Stef says, as though he can say nothing bad or questionable whatsoever. It's as though people treat him as an unquestionable authority. My perspective is all authority needs to be questioned, all of it. He himself says he wants to be corrected if he's wrong, so things like this should not be a big deal. Why don't we call in to the show to bring this up? Really, waste his time and everyone else's on air for this? If Stef values this community and saw it as a valuable source of feedback towards his own self improvement he would have his staff look for such topics and then review them himself when they rise to a level of importance that meets his threshold of needing to be dealt with. I have chosen to step back from my rather high level of involvement in forum starting about a month ago, and haven't logged on as much as a result. I know one donator that has left the forum never to come back and several others that likewise have chosen to stop logging in here for similar reasons. What's going on in the FDR community is not good and it's not being dealt with. Even Stefan has commented on recent podcasts that donations are down. Perhaps he should be more proactively looking into why that is. Perhaps people "nit pick" to balance out the rampant hero worship seen here, where posts get tromped on (like this one) with no firm basis for doing so, no backing to the claims made. All that does is stir up hate and discontent. It is not an empathetic position to take and the emotional energy that it's delivered with leads me to ask why, and what's going on with this person? What haven't they dealt with from their past? If you bother to research the posts I've made (including this one) you would see there is a balance of criticism and praise of Stef. There's no doubt in my mind he is a force of nature and deserves respect for what he has accomplished and what he hopes to accomplish. But if I refrain from discussing troublesome behaviors and only speak of the things I totally agree with how is that not just being a yes man? Where does that leave room for me an my input or perspective? Well, it doesn't leave any room for it and I respect myself too much to just be a yes man. There are many many other topics that deserve Stef's attention in that regard, but I don't see him involved in any of them or even concerned with this community enough to comment on them. And I really wonder why not. Sure he's very busy, sure he has a staff to handle much of this type of thing, but there are some topics that he should be more actively involved in, especially recently In My Opinion. I am still allowed to express my opinion here, right?

I just noticed this topic posted in the last week here and I myself have been rather intensely focused and involved with bitshares development. After I wrote my post to the above topic I went back to look over the website more carefully. I now can see it is nothing more than a marketing page to solicit investors. There's not much substance there, and many of the links to pages have no content yet. But it got me to thinking about all the altcoins bitcoin's blockchain technology has spawned, and I asked myself, could this be another tech bubble in the making like the .com frenzy around the turn of this century?

Interesting I should stumble upon your post at this point in time. I've been extremely involved and focused on the bitshares community for the last 2 weeks. I began my serious research into bitcoin back in March after hearing it discussed and praised by Stefan Molyneux of FDR and Jan Irvin of Gnostic Media. The last post in this thread and this one will give you some background on my perspective. I have only spent 5 minutes looking over the website you linked. The project is extremely broad in scope. The website looks very polished and professional, but I've only just looked at it on the surface. My first reaction to the project is from the use of the word governance. It is a red flag to me. Granted, this is only my first impression and not a comprehensive review of the project. I'm also somewhat skeptical due to the very near term release date, and that nobody has mentioned this site on the BitSharesTalk forum. An of course I have reservations about any project based on Proof Of Work blockchain technology. I did find bitnation mentioned on reddit. I'll warn you however that you may not get much traction on that subject on this forum. It seems it's not that compelling of a topic here, perhaps because to fully understand it's merits requires a rather heavy technical CS background. Perhaps bitnation will be different. It certainly has more overlap with the topics discussed here on FDR. I can only hope if it should get traction as a topic here it will be discussed from top to bottom, both philosophically as well as technically. If the tech is flawed that bitnation is based on then the philosophy will be corrupted that is built upon it. The way I found this thread was from a global forum search using keyword bitcoin. There were 81 topics and I had read 64 of them or 80% of them. Only one was in the donator's only section which I don't currently have access to yet. A search for bitshares will likewise not produce many results. However, anything built with blockchain technology has significant philosophical ramifications and IMO is a perfectly valid topic for discussion here. I sincerely hope to see much more discussion about bitnation and bitshares. Update: I went back to to the bitnation website to look it over more carefully but discovered there are many links / menu items that are not active or don't point to content such as the one for the whitepaper. Nit: notice the logo, vertical chain links. I guess that represents the blockchain, but my first thought was why not a broken link (as in breaking the chains of top-down government)? I also watched about half of this video that was posted on the bitnation facebook page of the founder Suzanne Tarkowski Tempelhof. I wasn't too impressed with her answer concerning how governments might view the bitnations project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zp9LvrEzQY

I've been spending the last several weeks digging deep into the BitShares ecosystem and there are many people there with tons of great ideas. One guy posted this link and I immediately thought about this thread here in the forum. Might be worth your time to look into this: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2h7cdt/killer_app_for_bitcoin_incentivized_meshnets/. It's about incentived meshnets. Here's another post in the bitcoin forum related to meshnets: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=380441.0, and another in the BitShares forum which is quite detailed: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=9515.0

It's both. What color is (i.e. it's wavelength) can be objectively measured with a spectrum analyzer. Yet each person can interpret the wavelength of light they see differently, such as a person who is color blind.

WasatchMan, I find your efforts to pursue this line of analysis commendable, and it's my opinion you're doing a great job explaining yourself in a very articulate manor. It never ceases to amaze me how little people like to explore abstract concepts, especially here at FDR where such discussions should be frequent and benevolent. Unfortunately I often sense a level of negativity and critical tone in subjects rather than a spirit of exploration and curiosity. That's not to say it's inappropriate or wrong to criticize or to disbelieve or be skeptical of things, not at all, that's very healthy. It has more to do with the "edginess" and manor of delivery of comments, and it can be quite subtle. I'm not making any accusations concerning anyone here, this is just my gut feeling from several threads I've read. Perhaps it's related to the frenzied focus on recent FDR actions that have people feeling more defensive and sensitive.

How it warms my heart and gives me hope for the future when I hear stories like yours from passionate young people. May your journey through life be fruitful and fulfilled, and may your passion for truth guide your way. to FDR Rachel Ann!