At 1/4/2012 2:02:26 PM, socialpinko wrote:At 1/4/2012 1:48:24 PM, drafterman wrote:Contract laws weren't outlawed necessarily because contract law failed to adapt. It was positively prohibited by a governental authority. Also you seem to have misinterpreted my post. I'm not arguing that contract law would evolve to allow consensual duels to exist (as they were prohibited by a government that would actively suppress people bringing that back), I was arguing that contract law itself would evolve to changes in types of contracts by perhaps requiring a higher burden on contractees. I'm talking about courts in the common law meaning here.At 1/4/2012 1:42:49 PM, socialpinko wrot
As was discussed by the ones who agree, contracts and possibly witnesses would be necessary to show consent. The point of contracts is to show exactly what terms of an agreement are and to show consent. Prima facie, contracts and witnesses can be trusted and contract law would evolve according to changing situations (such as high risk agreements like duels). Courts might require an extra burden on contracts to prove consent and to argue that they can't be trusted is really to argue against the very idea of contract based agreements.
If the bolded is true ... then why didn't it? It's not like we're arguing about something new here. Duels existed, and were outlawed. So if we're going to argue that society would adapt to allow duels to exist, then why didn't it? I'd argue it did: by eliminating them. That was the adaptation.
Right, but it didn't. Contract law existed. Duels existed and were essentially a form of contract. So why didn't contract law evolve to in the manner you suggested?
Yes there is doubt and ther always will be. You seem to be operating on binary choice not me. You're arguing that duels could possibly be abused, therefore they ought to be prohibited. I'm arguing that because there could possibly be abuses, contract law would evolve so as to compensate. I already mentioned the possibility of an extra burden to prove consent.
As far as the last statement. It's not a binary choice. It's not: Either they can be implicitly trusted with no room for doubt -OR- they shouldn't be trusted or used at all. Rather the mechanics are designed for them to be trusted to cover almost any situation that could arise, though there is always room for doubt. Otherwise, we would not need contract law, would we?
I agree that the level of doubt we accept should be tailored to the degree of potential abuse. I just happen to think that if a human life is the possible result of such abuse, then the level of doubt that is tolerable is none, and that cannot be achieved.
You chose to interpret this as meaning that I believe that no abuse is accepted and all doubt should be removed from any and all contracts. This is false. Not all abuse is the same. Since some abuse is different than other, our tolerance for it is different.
I have no tolerance when a human life is on the line.
My contention is, the existing doubt, while small enough for contracts to operate functionaly in society as is, is not appropriate when a human life is on the line.
You should then argue against allowing people to form contracts at all since the "wrong" choices people make still lead to social disutility.
Only if all disutility is the same. I'm not aruging it's the same, ergo why would I argue the response should be the same?
Also there's no proper line to draw based on your ambiguous reference to human life. What counts? Is it just if someone is in immediate danger? Is it if someones loife could be ruined as in gambling or using drugs? Is it if someone's life isnt as good as they wanted like through bad business practices? Revering something as non-specifically defined as human life above ones freedom to Fvck up their life is incoherent. I mean who does one live their life for? Do they live it completely for the sake of society or do they own their life and are fundamentally responsible for their own choices whether good or bad. Revering ones life when they don't even care is to say that you own their life.
This is a faulty analogy because all of the above is ambiguous. If I draft a contract that specifically allows me to KILL you. That is not ambiguous. The end result is YOU DIE. Not, maybe you're life would be worse to some degree. It's YOU DIE.
