Forced agreements?

A defence

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We enter into many justly binding agreements under threat of force. Consider these three examples. First, you buy home insurance solely on the basis the area you live in is subject to very high levels of crime. Second, you buy a rifle in order to fight off hooligans who keep threatening to kidnap your children Third, you enter into an employment contract to be a vigilante due to all the robbery in your neighbourhood. I maintain these two transactions and agreement are justly binding.

These three examples show that although consent must be voluntary for an agreement to be binding it need not be free. Voluntariness can roughly be defined as the actor having an understanding of his choice, meaning, he is aware of the facts of the choice and its central consequences. Freedom is the condition of a person’s rights not being violated. In the home insurance purchase, the consent is voluntary, but it is not free, because, it is done under the condition of the person’s rights being violated, or, threatened with violation, by the criminals. A commitment to voluntary but unfree consent has some radical conclusions.

It would suggest any agreement with a third party you sign at gun point – provided it isn’t the third party doing the coercing – must be kept and can be justly enforced. Imagine you agreed to have your house sold in order to pay a ransom; following the prospective sale it appears the buyer of your house can still demand it – since it was a voluntary contract albeit unfree. How can this conclusion be avoided; indeed, should it be avoided? Crucially, how do we do so without saying the three agreements originally mentioned are not to be binding too?

Imagine you are required to sell your house. What should happen to the criminal? Should the criminal be caught it is obvious he must pay for the coerced effects of you being unfree – including you having to sell your house – by buying back your house or an equally good property. This despite him not directly taking your house away. If the secondary effect of criminality should receive restitution, however, then we have a nice conclusion. Criminals who cause people and businesses to buy insurance and put security guards and CCTV into their properties can rightly demand it from repeat offenders since it is their criminality which has caused their purchases.

Is there any way to avoid the conclusion you need to sell your house though once the contract is signed? Some people will say there is exploitation present because the buyer is taking advantage of the seller’s unjustly weak bargaining hand and that warrants stopping it. The problem with this reply is it applies to the three agreements already mentioned just as well. Socialists might actually affirm exploitation in the three agreements and to eliminate it propose the state provision of such services. This won’t do, because, state provision simply redirects the exploitation into the tax system. How? Instead of being forced to buy a private rifle to fight off the criminals you’re simply forced to do so by the state which increases taxes to finance armed state police.

Maybe where upholding the contract is too costly to one of the parties then it need not be enforced, because, important interests come before the trivial. Contradiction emerges. Imagine someone is forced to sell their life support machine to another who needs that specific life support machine too. If important interests alone should be upheld the contract should be both enforced and dropped simultaneously. Where no such conflict exists because one party will only suffer a minor loss from the contract not being enforced, we can ask should it be enforced? Yes. To answer otherwise implicitly denies home insurers can collect premiums coming from criminality, i.e., because, they’d not lose out much were premiums not to be paid (marginally speaking).