Property and Contracts

The right to property is the right to contract with that property.  Property is the title to ownership.  You have a right to contractually transfer that property if you have a title to ownership.  The right to property is absolute.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you that rights must be limited, or you don’t own yourself.  You do own yourself and that should never be limited.  Your body can’t be alienated like non-body property.  You must understand property to understand life.

All contracts involve a transfer of property.  If it doesn’t involve a transfer of property, it could be just a promise, and promises are not contracts.  It’s moral to keep promises, but it’s not illegal and can’t be regarded as a breach of contract.  Just like you can promise to work for a time period.  The body can’t be alienated, and this is breaking a promise, not violating a contract.  If any funds change hands, it must be returned, it’s possible there will be other damages too.

Any victim of a property violation would have to be made whole.  This should be the first goal.  This seems obvious, but that’s not how it works.  Rather than the victim being compensated, the victim gets continually victimized by taxes to pay for the criminal.  Not just pay for the housing, also pay for the criminal to have the best cable packages.  The criminal justice system doesn’t enforce victims’ rights, rather it enforces the fictitious criminals’ rights.

Property violations should involve restitution and retribution.  That is how the victim could be made whole.  If the criminal stole money, he would have to return the money and pay damages.  In this case, this would be restitution.  Say it’s a physical assault.  The criminal would have to go to prison—likely damages too.  This would be retribution.  The victim would not be responsible for paying to jail his victimizer.

The body is property and property can’t be alienated.  The body is homesteaded through direct control.  Contracts involve a transfer of your own property.  If it is your property, you can transfer it to whom you’d like, when you’d like.   Rights are absolute and should never be limited.  Vices are not crimes.  Transferring your property to someone to get a substance someone else doesn’t like is not a crime.

References

Murray Rothbard; The Ethics of Liberty

Williamson Evers; Victims’ Rights, Restitution, and Retribution; The Independent Institute