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Saturday, August 10, 2013 - 2:36pmSanction this postReply
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I agree with everything in the quote of Bill's. But I want to point something out. Bill says, "It is the right to control that which one owns that one cannot give up or surrender." [Emphasis mine] Yes, but when one no longer owns whatever is in issue, then the right to control it is also gone. If it is a car that I once owned, but sold, then I no longer own it, and no longer have the right to control it.

It might be too difficult to describe all future expressions of the "right to control things I own", as an inclusive statement of all future conditions, in which case it might not be possible to trade that right for something else. (After all, the contract would have to exclude what is being received in exchange --- that might just end up being too nonsensical.) Some things exist at such a high level of abstraction that they may not lend themselves to the kind of describing that is required to form an agreement to trade them.

But, if we can adequately describe something, and it is something we have by moral right, then we can (via a meeting of the minds) voluntarily surrender it for consideration. This is so whether it is called property, an object, a right, or a right to control an object.

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Saturday, August 10, 2013 - 11:49pmSanction this postReply
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Steve wrote,
I agree with everything in the quote of Bill's. But I want to point something out. Bill says, "It is the right to control that which one owns that one cannot give up or surrender." [Emphasis mine] Yes, but when one no longer owns whatever is in issue, then the right to control it is also gone. If it is a car that I once owned, but sold, then I no longer own it, and no longer have the right to control it.
I agree, Steve. So what's your point? Why did you emphasize the phrase "that which one owns"? My point was that it is the right to control that which one owns that one cannot give up or surrender, not that which one owns. Obviously, one can surrender the latter.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 8/10, 11:56pm)


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Sunday, August 11, 2013 - 10:56amSanction this postReply
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Bill,

You must have missed the end of the sentence: ...when one no longer owns whatever is in issue, then the right to control it is also gone."

The first point is that the "the right to control" can not have any reality without something to control. The second point is that the right to control any given thing will only apply as long as the ownership of the given thing is in effect. In other words, that right can be surrendered.

I can sign away my right to control my car, by selling it. I can decide to sell every possession I own, and with them go all of my rights to control them. Then I could sign a contract that has me foregoing the right to control anything in the future in exchange for some consideration.

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Sunday, August 11, 2013 - 1:32pmSanction this postReply
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You must have missed the end of the sentence: ...when one no longer owns whatever is in issue, then the right to control it is also gone."
I agree. What I was saying is that one cannot relinquish one's right to control one's property. A car that one sells is no longer one's property.
I can sign away my right to control my car, by selling it. I can decide to sell every possession I own, and with them go all of my rights to control them. Then I could sign a contract that has me foregoing the right to control anything in the future in exchange for some consideration.
Very well, let's say that you were to sign a contract giving me control over your life. In that case, your doing so would itself be an act of controlling the disposition of your life. How so? Well, if a third party, say Ed, were to forcibly negate the control that you had given me over your life (by, for example, murdering or enslaving me), he would be violating your right to control the disposition of your life by violating your decision to have me control it. So even after signing such a contract, you would still have retained the right of control over your life that that decision represented.


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Sunday, August 11, 2013 - 4:07pmSanction this postReply
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Bill,
...let's say that you were to sign a contract giving me control over your life. In that case, your doing so would itself be an act of controlling the disposition of your life.
Yes, I would be disposing of a bundle of rights - voluntarily ceding them to you, presumably for some consideration. But, those rights would be gone once the deal was enacted. I would no longer have the right to the things I turned over.
if a third party, say Ed, were to forcibly negate the control that you had given me over your life (by, for example, murdering or enslaving me), he would be violating your right to control the disposition of your life by violating your decision to have me control it. So even after signing such a contract, you would still have retained the right of control over your life that that decision represented.
You are such a clever fellow... but no cigar this time.

If the contract had called for some kind of control by you that would benefit me, then that was a new right that I had acquired as part of the deal with you. That means that I didn't end up with no rights of control - but rather that I gave up a great many rights, and received consideration that included a new right from you - my new right to some kind of Dwyer's Control Service.

That is similar to a financial arrangement where, via limited power of attorney, a person gives over their rights to control a sum-of-money/set-of-accounts/financial-decision-making (which could represent every penny the person owned at the time). These rights would go to a financial manager. But it isn't a gift - they get in exchange a promise of performance of some kind that is intended to be of benefit. They gave up a bunch of rights, but in exchange for some new rights that didn't exist, for them, before (right to the services promised by the financial manager).

If instead the contract was more like the traditional deal with the Devil where some gain, like a pile of money, was given to me up front, and in exchange for which I give up the right to any control of my life beginning 10 years later... that could be a very different proposition. The Devil, in this silly example, is looking to have a slave starting in 10 years - with no benefit or value guaranteed or given to the slave at all. While I'm thinking that I'm not going to live more than about 5 years, so it is a great deal for me. I warn the Devil that I might not last for 10 years, and he says he'll take his chances.

In this example, the value I'm given, and that I have a right to control, is that up front money and that I don't lose control of my life for 10 years. But, if I do live for 10 years, then on the next day, I've lost my right to control my life. And if Ed popped up and slayed the Devil, maybe I'd be free again, but it would just mean that there was, in effect, an implicit understanding, or an explicit understanding in the contract, that should the Devil die, my control of my life would return to me.

In real life, examples would include annuities - Pay an amount up front (losing the rights to the money paid) in exchange for the promise to receive a stream of money over the years that is greater than that paid (a new right in exchange for the one lost). A similar example would be those organizations that will pay a person a sum of money up front in exchange for the right to receive a larger amount of money that has been guaranteed in the future (like structured settlements from law suits, or a stream of payments to Lotto winners).
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In summary: If we own a right, we can trade it. After we trade it, we no longer own it. This is conditioned upon being able to describe the actions the right entails with sufficient clarity to have a meeting of the minds. We may get a new right in exchange for our traded-away old right. You have mentioned this generalized right to make deals as a right in itself. If it has an object, then it can be treated as a right. And that means that in theory it too could be traded away. But in fact, it is too messy and too general to easily arrange for giving over and particularly if the theoretical requirement for the structuring of the deal is that we get no new and lasting right in exchange. And, I say, "theoretical" because in real life we see so little application for such an extreme action. For the most part it only comes up here as we chew on the concept of moral rights.

To say that there is some moral right that is different in that it can never be relinquished, is a claim that has to be substantiated - the argument must show a different kind of moral right. I don't think that will ever be done since the very heart of rights is choice and ownership (moral sanction) and these work well with voluntary relinquishment, free trade, not being able to sell your cake and keep it, etc.

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