[ExI] Americans are poor drivers

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 4:41 AM, Stathis Papaioannou<stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

> The agreement may be that the common property will pass to any
> children or new residents in equal share. They get it for nothing, but
> they have to contribute to its maintenance and they can't give it up
> or give it away. This is rather like a person who buys an apartment
> getting a share in the common garden, whether he wants to or not, but
> he can't sell his share to anyone else. It would take a majority of
> the shareholders (or a supermajority - whatever the original
> arrangement) to change this.

### You cannot compare a competitive situation where you make a choice
to buy into one apartment complex among many versus an artificially
initiated large monopoly you are born into. You cannot agree to the
monopoly, just as the child of a slave cannot "agree" to be a slave -
for agreement to be valid, there must be *choice*. Imagine you were
born in ancient Rome, where by general agreement your father had power
of life and death over his children - do you think your promise of
indefinite obedience produced by ruthless flogging would constitute a
valid agreement, and it would be legitimate for the Roman state to
help your father kill you for a minor disobedience? Same applies to
your monopoly - by denying choice it makes itself illegitimate.

Rafal