Originally Posted by The Rani

Contracts are for people who don't trust each other.

Relationships, whether business or personal, can change over time. Trust is nice to have, but in the real world, it's best to get it in writing.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Well, yes, I distinguish between those who are tolerant, loving and forgiving and those who attempt to use government force to impose their own system of morality on the culture. If this makes me biased, I guess I'm a biased.



Actually, while a lot of folks are throwing around the word 'rights,' this might not be the best angle to approach the problem. Let me list four problems gay couples might encounter that hetero couples don't.

1. Many hospitals only allow close family into ICU units.
2. Many hospitals, only release medical data or allow malpractice investigations when a close family member is involved.
3. There are tax advantages only available to recognized couples.
4. Recognized couples find it easier to adopt a family.

To my knowledge, none of the above are specific rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights / Constitution. To my knowledge, no Enlightenment philosopher argued that any of these are 'natural rights' that God intended all men to have.

The point is that denying these things is just mean and spiteful. One cannot see one's life partner as he is dying? One cannot have a family? One must pay higher taxes?

Add 5. Survivor benefits.

A lesbian was killed at the Pentagon during 9/11, and her partner received .... nothing. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but the surviving partner couldn't receive any government benefits and was in bad financial shape. Even traditional 9/11 charities wouldn't pay up.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Contracts are for people who don't trust each other.

That ranks right up there with "if you love me you will!""

Originally Posted by The Rani

You and I obviously live in different worlds ... thank goodness!

Oh, come on. Don't you have a license to practice medicine in the state of California? Didn't you sign a mortgage or lease for your place of residence? Didn't you sign a form and pay mucho bucks to get a California drivers' license?

The point is, you can talk "trust" and "verbal agreements" all you want, but the reality is that you are subject to some sort of government authority and control if you want to accomplish most kinds of activities that involve two or more parties.

Originally Posted by The Rani

So what?

Contracts are for people who don't trust each other.

When a patient signs a "consent for treatment," does that mean they don't trust you?

Originally Posted by The Rani

It means you don't trust the patient. Duh.

I find your response as a provider interesting, but you didn't answer the question.

Originally Posted by The Rani

The people who made those forms a legal requirement certainly don't trust doctors. Individual patients have no choice in the matter. Don't sign the form, don't get the treatment.

Well, yes. That's how it works.

But I'm asking you to judge if your patients' trust in you as a provider is diminished because they have to sign a piece of paper.

When I go to the doctor, I don't think about all these deep matters. I trust that they will treat me in an ethical way, whether or not I sign the piece of paper. I don't think it's in the government's power to impose "trust" on that relationship, or to take it away. If I don't like the way I'm treated, I change doctors.

But sometimes doctors seriously fuck up, and there needs to be a way to hold them accountable.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Do you think your doctor would fuck you up on purpose, or due to incompetence,

Well, I sure hope not. I've had her for five years now and have no complaints.

and if not why should he/she be held accountable?

Because I don't want shit to happen to someone else.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Right. Contracts are for people who don't trust each other.

One may or may not trust the person with whom one is entering a contract. Having been burned by people with whom I didn't sign a contract, I'll go the other route. Live and learn.

Anyway, this has been a fascinating and enlightening conversation, but I gotta split.

Until later, then.

Originally Posted by Skabungus

Your statement is your opinion, yes, but at odds with most libertarian strains of thought. The recording of contracts is a public act most necessary for future arrangements. It is critical data required when issues of divorce, inheritance, custody, etc. come to light. Putting the control of such a process in the hands of religious institutions is anything but an endorsement of the libertarian ideal.

You're eroding the distinction between public and private and it is lending itself to confusion. Contracts between individuals may easily be reduced to property rights: they are public in the sense they are matters of law, yet private in the sense that they don't require the state to enforce.

The recording of contracts, agreements, lineage (patrilineal and matrilineal), etc. by a neutral body is such a basic need of organized society that even anarchists (particularly anarcho-syndicalists) agree on its essential nature.

If even those most opposed to the state would agree that such a function is a basic need, it makes suspect the assertions by so-called "Libertarians" that the function (government recording of civil unions aka marriages) be abolished. This lends more evidence to the argument that the so-called Libertarians on this forum are anything but! Possibly they should take another glance at the playbook lest they be revealed as posers~!

OK. I don't see why it's more important to syndicalists, but if contractual obligations are needed, what does this have to do with the desire to destroy the legal privileges that marriage entails? (And your cries of 'false libertarian' are rather annoying.)

Originally Posted by Matt1989

You're eroding the distinction between public and private and it is lending itself to confusion. Contracts between individuals may easily be reduced to property rights: they are public in the sense they are matters of law, yet private in the sense that they don't require the state to enforce.

I rather thought that a major point of contracts is that one can go to court and seek damages if the other party does not honor the contract. The threat of government enforcement is a good part of it.

Originally Posted by Matt1989

OK. I don't see why it's more important to syndicalists, but if contractual obligations are needed, what does this have to do with the desire to destroy the legal privileges that marriage entails? (And your cries of 'false libertarian' are rather annoying.)

Is there a sanctioning authority that certifies libertarians? What would the test be like? Does the government enforce the result of the test? ™

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Since you both seem incapable of reasoning it out for yourselves - when gay marriage is enshrined into law, it limits religious liberty. A simple example is that the Catholic Church was told in MA that they would either place adoptive children with gays, or they would be forced to stop providing adoption services, which they had provided in Boston for 100 years, altogether. They chose the latter.

People who disagree with gay marriage or whose religious conscience forbids them from endorsing or supporting homosexuality will be placed on the wrong side of the law. There is great irony in the left's constant refrain about people who want to "force their morality on others through the law". In truth the left loves having the law force morality (or lack thereof) on everyone, as long as that morality (or lack thereof) is theirs.

Replace "gay" with "interracial" and you will understand how ridiculous this is. If a religiously based adoption organization refused to let interracial couples to adopt the outrage would force them to stop such discrimination if the law didn't first.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

When the government places its seal of approval on gay marriage, it has ceased to be neutral. It has taken an affirmative position in favor of homosexuality. By definition, that means that anyone who holds a contrary position is in conflict with the law. If you cannot imagine the infinite possibilities for conflict and infringements of religious liberty, I would suggest that you are willfully refusing to contemplate it. Or more likely, that you simply don't care, which is what I would expect.

So you must be against interracial marriages, otherwise you are a hypocrite.

Originally Posted by Odin

Replace "gay" with "interracial" and you will understand how ridiculous this is. If a religiously based adoption organization refused to let interracial couples to adopt the outrage would force them to stop such discrimination if the law didn't first.

Nice try. I'm just not sure that he will see 'interracial' as more or less 'icky' than 'gay.' Whether one sees one sort of inequality or another as important is really subjective for some.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Contracts are for people who don't trust each other.

Which to some degree means any two people. Trust is never absolute.

But it's also for areas of interdependence where obligations are legally enforceable, which is why marriage contracts become important only w/r/t joint property, child-rearing, etc.

Originally Posted by The Rani

As I said, we live in different worlds.

You can repeat that all you want. It doesn't necessarily make it true.

Originally Posted by The Rani

You can deny it all you want and it doesn't make it false.

Are we winning yet?

Winning what? Neither of us has appeared to budge in our positions.

You're yanking my chain. I'm yanking yours. I don't think our worlds diverge all that much.

Since we've seemed to have reached the end of the rational argument and gone over to personal stuff, I suggest we retire to the Rubber Room exclusively.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

I have always considered marriage a civil matter rather than a religious one. It is possible to be legally married without ever going through a religious body. AFAIK, one cannot be married in any state without getting a license and/or signing some sort of legal document.

To me it's pretty clear that the state is the final arbiter of who is and who is not legally married. And I find it ridiculous that some churches believe they can trump that.

This was not the case in most countries until the 19th century. Marriage used to be a purely contractual arrangement between families; when the state began to license marriage, the institution became politicized, with statutory definitions of marriage subject to legislative wrangling. This is why JPT (rightly) notes that the legalization of gay marriage must necessarily lead to the censure of religious denominations that forbid homosexual relationships. The very fact that the state has insinuated itself into the marital relationship creates a legal imperative to dictate some official conception of marriage.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Contracts are for people who don't trust each other.

You misunderstand what a contract is. All it really does is formalize the agreement several parties have made with each other. This formalization serves the purpose of helping both parties to focus their mind to really hash out all the possible ramifications of the agreement and come to some sort of mutual understanding of how they will be resolved before they arise.

And no, no Authority is necessary to enforce them (even minarchists accept the fact that ultimately it is community sanction that protects the sanctity of the contract, and that in fact the State, as one of the biggest contract-violators is hardly a reasonable institution to guard them).

Personal example: After I had agreed with the Russian owner and Andi (and he had agreed with his partners) that we both wanted to bring me and my family out to Pushkin to do some stuff; after we had agreed on more or less mechanics, pricing, and responsibilities; after we had both started sinking real costs into starting the transition process; we at that point spent the better part of a week and a half emailing back and forth contract versions until we had come to something in black and white that we could both live with. It was not an issue of trust at all -- since the contracted arrangement was, strictly speaking, not necessarily in accord with local immigration or employment laws, the paper was and remains legally unenforceable -- had we not trusted each other to fulfill what we promised we would never have been willing to even try to come to an agreement in the first place.
However, even though in the course of the last three years we've never once had to refer back to it, the contract discussion brought to light and allowed us to settle several matters we would never have otherwise considered (until it was too late and we would have had to decide in panic). Issues that sometimes we didn't think of ourselves, like (Andi had us put this one in): in the event that I died while we were here, the company would take care of getting my family and their stuff and my remains back to the USA; or that after the first year, we would be responsible for getting our cars re-registered (we saved on customs duties by keeping our Oregon plates, but it meant twice-yearly trips to Finland), but that if we needed to take time out during the workweek to do it, that was fine; or that in the event that any kind of criminal or administrative proceedings were initiated against any of us, we would have full use of the company lawyers free of charge and whatever funds might prove necessary to get us out.

These type of matters had nothing whatsover to do with trust (after all, if I found myself sitting in a russian jail, would I really think that an unenforceable piece of paper would do me any good at all?); rather they simply allowed us to clarify ahead of time our relationship in as full and clear a manner as possible.

That's all contracts are.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

That's all contracts are.

That includes an entirely reasonable example of a contract, but that is not all contracts are.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

That includes an entirely reasonable example of a contract, but that is not all contracts are.

No. That's really all a contract is. Other things may be done on the strength of (or as justified by) a contract, but a contract remains merely a formal expression of an agreement made between several parties. The contract is not the agreement itself, nor is it in any particular form a necessary component of multiparty agreements.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Someone (Matt or Arkham?) said that contracts are both private and public. I agree with that. I've also signed lots and lots of contracts over the years, and come to realize that if you think there is something shady about the deal, better to walk away than expect a piece of paper to save your ass.

Also, I think what Bob is getting at is the enforcement part of contracts. Did you ever sign a contract as a kid? I did, and I know other kids who did also, about various things. Sort of like the way that some therapists now have kids sign "behavior contracts" about household rules. If either party breaks that kind of contract, there's no way for the other to petition the state to get it enforced. Well, I guess they could try, but good luck with that. Not so with state-sanctioned contracts, notarized and approved by attorneys.

With the latter kind of contract, you're expecting someone else (the state) to take care of your own job, which should be fully understanding what you're getting yourself into. That's how we ended up with the current mortgage crisis.

A month or so ago, my mother failed the eye test at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, and thus lost her license. As a result, she 'gave' me the car. Well, easy said. This involved a bit of running around the insurance company and the Registry signing various pieces of paper. Some time ago I bought a house, which also required signing such papers.

The State of Massachusetts likes to keep track of these things. If someone asks who owns that car or that piece of real estate, they generally can figure it out.

Now, I'll agree with The Rani and Jason that there are other sorts of contracts that aren't intended to be enforced by the state. I might even listen to arguments saying the less one has to deal with lawyers and state bureaucracy, the better off one is. On the other hand, it is nice to know who owns major pieces of property. I can understand how the current system came into being.

Still, Justin is playing Humpty Dumpty with the meaning of the word 'contract' a bit. Some forms of contract in many quite ordinary societies are enforced by the state. I could allow Justin to create a hypothetical society as part of discussion, a society in which the government has no role in enforcing contracts. If he asserts that all contracts are like the example that he gave, that no potential for state enforcement should / could exist, I might quibble. That would be a hypothetical, not a reflection of the norm.

I make this point as Justin does this on occasion. He states that his version of reality exists when a lot of the rest of us dwell in another reality. I know he acknowledges the sort of reality governments like to believe in. For example, he drove his car with Oregon plates to Finland every six months. Governments exist and you end up doing stupid bureaucratic stuff to keep them happy. Some sorts of contracts are enforced.

There is that saying about having the determination to change what can be changed, the patience to endure what can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Bob: your problem is a simple one (though a two-parter). You are conflating the -- very different -- ideas of 'contract' and 'license' (or even merely 'record-keeping'). Also, you are failing to acknowledge that there are many instances where one of the parties to a contract is a governmental entity.

In the case of the transfer-of-title, a bureaucratic entity requires a contract formatted in a certain way to help it keep track in an unambiguous way of its own dealings. In your case, the question of to whom a car's title is registered. In that instance, too, the contract itself is still merely a formalized expression of an agreement between you and your mom. But due to its formal nature, it is relied upon by other parties as proof of that agreement.

Again, the contract is not the agreement. It's really not that hard to see if one gets the opportunity to spend some time dealing with them in a relatively less limited context. The illusion that they are something more is really a pretty thin one when you start dealing with their fundaments.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Bob: your problem is a simple one (though a two-parter). You are conflating the -- very different -- ideas of 'contract' and 'license' (or even merely 'record-keeping'). Also, you are failing to acknowledge that there are many instances where one of the parties to a contract is a governmental entity.

Yes, licenses are one form of contract, written agreements with legal force. Yes, some contracts are with government entities, which are even more likely to end you in court and/or jail if one attempts to violate the agreements. Government enforcement is part of many contracts, but not all contracts.

I suspect from the reading of many posts here, that some posters have had very little exposure to contractual arrangements outside of the few mundane forms that everybody has to have to drive, or own a home.

GOOD FOR THEM!

Contracts can be simple or complex, verbal or written but all can be subject to a court ruling. Such grows out of common law and as such is the basis of our social intercourse at the most basic levels.

Now we all know what daddy and mommy said about verbal contracts, so if you make those just remember they’re not worth the paper they’re written on. But don’t think they’re not enforceable in court. A verbal contract for a timber sale (one made between two hunting buddies in the middle of the woods on a cold winter’s night, with no government involvement) just finished up in court in a northern state that happens to have a lot of white pine trees. The court ruled in favor of one party and against another putting force to the terms of the verbal contract and penalty to the violating party. Thus you have a very fine example of the courts (government) putting to rest a dispute over the terms of a verbal contract between two private parties. I might add that going to court was the choice of both litigants and that both litigants were, well, libertarians so to speak in that they were both very rural, very independent and didn’t vote for either McCain or Obama. For alternate means of resolving said conflict without the benefit of the courts see the system currently in use in Somalia where common law is not something inherited from merry old England, but something imported from China with or without a folding stock and 30 round clip. Both litigants are at least as well armed as the average Somali militiaman but both having a high degree for common law, liberty and social custom, opted to appear before a judge. And yes, they’re still friends.

Most contracts are written down. Anyone involved with contracts on a regular basis can tell you why. YOU WRITE IT DOWN SO YOU CAN REMEMBER WHAT YOU AGREED TO DO! Its common sense and useful to everyone, including your employees, kids and partners should you be absent from the scene for any reason ranging from a long lunch to chronic decomposition. So, they are written down for other people to see. People sub-contractors, the general public (if you are dealing with public funds or making stuff the public will consume/use) and, yes, people like court judges and the helpful jury of your peers. You can find agreement on this in most any culture, under most any legal system. Libertarians and anarchists on the whole agree with this as well. Libertarian resources like the Hoover Institute and innumerable anarchist sources spend a great deal of time talking about the sanctity of the right to make contracts, not about how trivial they are.

Examples of contracts that are not written down, or written down with the assumption that they will remain secret, even from the courts would be the Mafia contract on your ex brother-in-law, that property deal where you swindled the granny next door out of her house, that arms deal you did with a foreign national at the bistro last Saturday night. Contracts that are never to see the light of day, and are “strictly between mes and yous” are typically those involving extortion, deception, or some other means of putting one party deliberately at the mercy of the other in a manner that violates their basic civil or human rights. Lumped in with these you can add arranged marriages, child slavery and the now defunct indentured servitude from days of yore. I know of no Libertarian or Anarchist source that advocates for contracts so totally free from outside scrutiny and so private that they violate the basic social contract.

So put to rest the idea that there is some sort of private-private contract that is (or should be) free from the scrutiny of government in a free society. Such practices are not suited to a free and civil society be it an anarchist collective (which really has more paperwork than you’d care to imagine) or a libertarian dream state (which would by design rely completely on the minimalist state to use its minimalist powers to keep the playing field and market place as free and fair as possible.

My 15 year old son hates contracts when he realizes he’ll be held accountable for what’s in them. He’s often given the job of drafting the contract himself so he can ensure that it is fair and that his mom and dad aren’t pulling one over on him. When he falls down on his contractual obligations he gets furious because it drives home to him that he’s having some difficulty growing up. His answer is that “contracts are stupid” “why can’t you just trust me to do it…..etc.” and proceeds to wail on that contracts are just another way his parents (the state) are tricking him! But, he really wants a driver’s license too!