Excellent point about belonging in a college. Yes, you can't alienate the will. I say, "will, schmill." This has nothing to do with will. The sole issue is, if the slave master kills the slave, is he or is he not guilty of murder. I say he's innocent of this charge, since he now, properly, owns the slave, due to agreement of the latter in a contract. That's the only way to save his child's life. You would deny him that possibility. Best regards, Walter
America could have saved itself a lot of grief by repatriating every slave or indentured servant being held in captivity that wouldn't sign a release of all future rights to reparations.
There would be a lot less blacks named Jefferson if Sally Hemings hadn't accepted his offer to emancipate them in return for her serving him in France.
Reparitions, even from the descendants of slave owners to the descendants of slaves, would be disastrous and, I would argue, morally questionable. So is ex post facto defining something as a crime and then punishing people for doing it while it was legal.
We have a statute of limitations for a reason. But even more important, we do not hold descendants liable for the crimes of their ancestors. Yet you want to strip the property they have owned all their lives, and give it to someone else? And how many of your ancestors had to be slave owners for you to be liable? How many of your ancestors had to be slaves to be eligible? Will you hold to a 'one drop' rule about this? Should you be forced to give your land back to a native American?
The freed slaves deserved compensation. That they did not receive it was an injustice. But any attempt to counterbalance that injustice today could only be accomplished through more injustice. If we go down this road, we return to the days of the Capulets and Montagues, where any tiny wrong done by one person to another echoes down through the ages to their descendants.
Not to mention that many slave owning families lost everything during the civil war, while many descendants of slaves became very successful.
On the other topic, I can see the case for allowing voluntary slavery. On the other hand, I need to think about it more before I decide on it. It's certainly not the most repellent idea I've heard espoused by academics (it's not even the most repellent idea espoused in this article)!
Maybe the counterpetition should have called for the expulsion of the signatories of the petition. Surely a prerequisite to being considered "educated" (whatever one's field of study) is to be able to engage in independent thought and communicate one's ideas to others, not to prevent others from doing so. If a so-called "student" refuses to live up to that standard, one simply doesn't belong in an institution of higher education.
I don't agree with Walter's premise about the possibility of contractual slavery under libertarianism. Libertarians hold that one is at liberty to do anything that doesn't violate the peacefully-acquired ownership rights of others (i.e. it is wrong to initiate force against others). The essence of ownership is that an owner is able to exclude others from the use and disposition of his property.
Voluntary consent is not sufficient to effect a peaceful transfer of ownership; such a transfer is possible only if it is also the case that a new owner can exclude the old owner from the property. What makes self-ownership distinct from ownership of alienable forms of property is that you can't help but keep using your own mind, body, personal energy, etc. regardless of what you might consent to. No other person can in fact ever truly take possession of you and exclude you from yourself; the most they can do is to attempt to continually thwart your liberty to use yourself as you see fit via repeated acts of coercion or threats of coercion against you.
Dear Vonu:
Too true.
Best regards
Walter
Dear Vincent:
Excellent point about belonging in a college. Yes, you can't alienate the will. I say, "will, schmill." This has nothing to do with will. The sole issue is, if the slave master kills the slave, is he or is he not guilty of murder. I say he's innocent of this charge, since he now, properly, owns the slave, due to agreement of the latter in a contract. That's the only way to save his child's life. You would deny him that possibility. Best regards, Walter
America could have saved itself a lot of grief by repatriating every slave or indentured servant being held in captivity that wouldn't sign a release of all future rights to reparations.
There would be a lot less blacks named Jefferson if Sally Hemings hadn't accepted his offer to emancipate them in return for her serving him in France.
Reparitions, even from the descendants of slave owners to the descendants of slaves, would be disastrous and, I would argue, morally questionable. So is ex post facto defining something as a crime and then punishing people for doing it while it was legal.
We have a statute of limitations for a reason. But even more important, we do not hold descendants liable for the crimes of their ancestors. Yet you want to strip the property they have owned all their lives, and give it to someone else? And how many of your ancestors had to be slave owners for you to be liable? How many of your ancestors had to be slaves to be eligible? Will you hold to a 'one drop' rule about this? Should you be forced to give your land back to a native American?
The freed slaves deserved compensation. That they did not receive it was an injustice. But any attempt to counterbalance that injustice today could only be accomplished through more injustice. If we go down this road, we return to the days of the Capulets and Montagues, where any tiny wrong done by one person to another echoes down through the ages to their descendants.
Not to mention that many slave owning families lost everything during the civil war, while many descendants of slaves became very successful.
On the other topic, I can see the case for allowing voluntary slavery. On the other hand, I need to think about it more before I decide on it. It's certainly not the most repellent idea I've heard espoused by academics (it's not even the most repellent idea espoused in this article)!
Maybe the counterpetition should have called for the expulsion of the signatories of the petition. Surely a prerequisite to being considered "educated" (whatever one's field of study) is to be able to engage in independent thought and communicate one's ideas to others, not to prevent others from doing so. If a so-called "student" refuses to live up to that standard, one simply doesn't belong in an institution of higher education.
I don't agree with Walter's premise about the possibility of contractual slavery under libertarianism. Libertarians hold that one is at liberty to do anything that doesn't violate the peacefully-acquired ownership rights of others (i.e. it is wrong to initiate force against others). The essence of ownership is that an owner is able to exclude others from the use and disposition of his property.
Voluntary consent is not sufficient to effect a peaceful transfer of ownership; such a transfer is possible only if it is also the case that a new owner can exclude the old owner from the property. What makes self-ownership distinct from ownership of alienable forms of property is that you can't help but keep using your own mind, body, personal energy, etc. regardless of what you might consent to. No other person can in fact ever truly take possession of you and exclude you from yourself; the most they can do is to attempt to continually thwart your liberty to use yourself as you see fit via repeated acts of coercion or threats of coercion against you.