Anyhow, to get back on topic:

A doctor is mowing his grass and notices a commotion down at the corner. A kid was riding his bike and a car hit him. The doctor rushes down and:

A: Gives aid without thinking twice.

B: Shakes down the other neighbors standing around for fees before or after giving aid.

Why should one approach be right in the neighborhood but another be right in a larger scale?

Thanks for stating the obvious. I mean that genuinely.

Haha, well everything else has failed.

Who did he say "I disagree to those terms" to, the nocturnal bunny rabbits? When the seller and the apparently interested buyer-turned-thief last parted company, the offer was left open.

I want my ****ing unicorn

HEAD ASPLODE

Well, at least the Death Star analogies don't seem so silly now. I think we can consider Strawn as having done the politics forum a favour by presenting the silliest analogy in the history of the Internet.

btw, I suppose we should congratulate Strawn on knocking down his strawman.

I put a price tag of $1,000,0000,000 on that just before he destroyed it! I demand monies and ponies!

I'm afraid little Zurvan spends far too much time being a pompous ass and pays far too little attention to diligently composing logical posts.

Considerable room for improvement.

D+

Strawn: You made up a ridiculous argument and acted as if you proved something.

Fail.

Im actually still confused on what you're trying to say with the whole seller buyer thief scenario.

I don't necessarily know where the discussion is going, just the sense there is a logical problem that needs exploring.

It seems that where property rights and voluntary agreements are supreme, whatever personal value you set on a unique (implying scarce in some capacity) item of your property becomes the market value of same when you offer to exchange it for that price, and no one has the authority to impose a different value on it. It they don't like your price, they don't have to buy. Of course, if someone, say, destroys it by accident, there is no implication of acting to override your valuation (because they did not act in a capacity which acknowledges your terms), and market value will unfortunately have to suffice as the liability.

Market value isn't the price at which you're willing to sell. Not an expert, but according to Wikipedia, it's the price where demand is highest. For our purposes here (a single, unique object), I think we could call it a price at which a sale could be made, which implies both parties leave happy.

In the case that the object is destroyed or stolen, obviously the owner should be compensated for his loss. That does not mean that the destroyer/thief has to pay whatever number the owner says. If the two can come to an agreement with a private negotiation, there's obviously no problem. If not, then a third party (ie, a judge), gets involved to mediate the dispute. Using pretty basic common sense, and probably some research in to the market for similar items, he could come to an agreement that - even if it doesn't make both sides really happy - is fair.

Okay, market price is better because market value implies an equivalent exchange already happened.

If someone accidentally destroys the object, they did not have purpose to do so and therefore neither could they have acted in cognizance of your offer. No contract is implied, so either market value or litigated liability applies. If, on the other hand, they act with notice of the price at which you are making the object available for exchange, they must abide by your terms if they deprive you of it.

Isn't the fact that they've stolen it an explicit rejection of your terms?

I've done another read of the wkipedia article on this. I think it would be an interesting argument in a court where a thief is arguing that he stole, and the victim is arguing it was the acceptance of a contract where the thief didn't pay.

However, here is a key point from Wikipedia, which is a quote from what appears to be an important legal case

I think that by showing up after a discussion took place (even though no explicit disagreement took place) and removing the item when the owner wasn't around doesn't meet this standard. Again, this appears to be an explicit rejection of the terms offered.

It would be awesome if a lawyer could actually clear this up. But from my view, the common sense result here is that the value is set by an arbitrator/judge, and not at the whims of the guy who had it stolen - even if his whims came pre-theft. This is based purely on the fact that the goal of a judge is to come to a fair decision for all parties.

ETA: The key point in the quote is "in light of surrounding circumstances" imo. The situation you described is clearly theft with the surrounding circumstances. If the seller offered the item and the person picked it up and walked away without comment, you may have a case, but, I think even then it seems more like theft than agreement, and for a transaction of that size, this sort of contract may be considered invalid.

Yea, this. If the buyer/theif had bought 5 similar items from the seller before for the sellers asking price, then stole one, i think the seller would have a case the buyer/thief owed him his asking price, even if it was well above market value of the item.

The key difference is that in Stateland, a person's claim to his property can be legally (if not morally) overruled through the actions of a government judge with other priorities.

However, in ACland I understand that no one has a superior claim to your property than you do, until you transfer ownership through voluntary exchange.

In the latter scenario therefore, a thief simply cannot act in disregard of your offer. The price you assign the object is the only legitimate price it can be transacted for, and no power is recognized as being able to revalue it.

OK, so according to the "seller" the thief owes the seller forty xillion dollars.

Now what?

All we're talking about here is a bunch of opinions. The fact that A thinks B owes him X doesn't mean people C, D, E and F also have to believe the same thing.

And what's to say that in ACLand, a mutually agreed upon judge can't overrule the arbitrary and malicious value a victim of theft assigns to an object?

Cannot legally act in disregard. He has stolen it. At that time, mutually agreed upon judge will decide the level of compensation. Because it's an arbitration process designed to be fair to both sides, in the case of a seller with inflated views of the value of his own property, the judge will not award him a trillion dollars for his lost lawn chair.

If plaintiff A can make the case that B owns him X on principles all ACists accept, then everyone will pretty much have to agree. That's the idea anyway.

What I meant was that the price the owner sets follows the object regardless of whether the thief even knows about it, much less acknowledges it.

An inalienable right of property implies the final authority to set its price. If someone besides the owner can set the price of an object, property rights are not absolute, and you're back under the state.

The bad guy voluntarily waved his right to fair, and accepted the property owner's existing published assessment (whatever that may be), when he chose to violate a fellow ACist's inalienable right to property.

If someone can simply steal an object valued by its owner many times higher than market price, but only owe compensation of market price (plus a few penalties), the owner's right to determine the terms on which he will exchange his property is not absolute, and there is a higher authority which can overrule the owner-property relationship.

The point you are missing, I think, is that he doesn't owe him X, he owes him the item that was stolen + some other compensation for the trouble he caused/etc. If he can't return the actual item a judge will determine what fair compensation is. What the victim claims the missing item was worth to him is certainly on factor the judge would consider, but I'm sure a much more important factor would be the item's market value.

False dichotomy itt

No, he didn't. He waived his right to some amount of his property that he owes to his victim as compensation.

You are ascribing something to AC that doesn't exist. I will resist calling that a straw man and assume it's an unintentional misunderstanding, despite having corrected you on it already. Absolute rights to your property does not mean what you say it means.

The thief still has rights to his property. Some of that property is owed to his victim as compensation for the theft. The amount that is owed to the victim is not determined by the victim. It cannot be, otherwise the victim could take an unreasonable amount as compensation, which is effectively theft.

Because we have a fairly untenable situation when two individuals disagree on the value of an object, an arbitrator is brought in to determine its true value. The victim could argue his lawn chair is worth $1M to him, but I think he'd be hard pressed to find a judge that would agree to take that much money from the thief for compensation - which is effectively aiding the victim in stealing from the thief.

Of course. The amount that is owed to the victim was determined by the thief and the victim together. This happened when the thief voluntarily transacted for the property after being noticed of its price, which the owner has an absolute right to set as long as he does not force anyone to exchange with him.

You're back to your implied in fact contract theory? Even though I showed that doesn't really apply here?

Just because you're asserting that the two came to an agreement doesn't mean it actually happened. No reasonable standard would say that those two people agreed on a price, and the buyer just happened to come by & pick it up when nobody was looking, and then forgot to pay.