I have argued against voluntary slavery contracts previously (see “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” Legal Foundations of a Free Society [LFFS], Part III.C.1; KOL285 | Disenthrall: Contracts with Stephan Kinsella; see also my query to Grok, appended below).
As I wrote in LFFS:
But in the case of an attempted voluntary slavery contract, the promisor, by saying, “I promise to be your slave,” or “I give my body to you” does not commit an act of aggression. It does not create any victim who has a right to retaliate against him. So if the would-be slave decides to renege on his promise and run off, the would-be master has no right to use force to stop him. It is always current consent that matters. If a girl promises a kiss at the end of the date and the boyfriend an hour later kisses her, she cannot claim it was nonconsensual. In effect, she communicated her consent, she set up a standing presumption that is reasonable to rely on—until and unless she changes her mind. If at the end of the date she announces she no longer wants a kiss, it is that consent that matters. It is always the most recent consent that matters since this is the best evidence for what was consented to. There is nothing in libertarianism that says people cannot change their minds. To simply state that you can make an irrevocable, binding promise is just question-begging since it is just another way of sneaking in the assumption that our bodies are alienable, even though our rights to our body do not stem from homesteading or acquisition but rather from our direct control of them.
Walter Block concedes this, and more, in our recent discussion (KOL442 | Together Strong Debate vs. Walter Block on Voluntary Slavery (Matthew Sands of Nations of Sanity)). As I wrote there, quoting the language above:
Walter then responds by saying that if you pay a prostitute $100 for sex and she backs out, you can’t force her to have sex, as it would be rape, you can only get your money back. But suppose you pay her an extra $900 to induce her to agree that she cannot change her mind, then if you force her it’s not rape (to which I respond, “Jesus!“). Of course it’s easy to see this logic could also apply to a girl you are dating. If she agrees to have sex with her date and the end of the date and agrees that she “cannot change her mind”, i.e., she in effect temporarily and partially transfers ownership of her body to her date and so she has no right to refuse sex; if he forces her it would not be considered rape. Let that sink in.
In any case, I was thinking about all this recently when I saw some sign that read “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone,” or something like this, in some restaurant or bar. Such disclaimers have always bugged me, just as when authors of scholarly articles include something like this disclaimer in a footnote: “The views expressed here are those of the author alone and should not be attributed to <Institution X>.”
What is the point of such “disclaimers”? Regarding the latter, no one has the power or right, in general, to “speak for someone else,” so why would this not simply be the default presumption? I can see some situations where one might appear to be speaking in one’s official capacity so a disclaimer is used to make it clear that it is just his personal views and not to be attributed to the institution with which he is affiliated. But supposed a law professor at School X writes a law review article making a given legal argument. Of course he is not speaking for X. Why is it necessary say so?
As for the former, why does the restaurant need to say “we reserve the right to refuse service”? What does it mean to “reserve the right”? Is this some “official” declaration? If you do not have this sign posted, has the restaurant forfeited its right to kick someone out or refuse someone service? I suspect the real purpose of such signs is not to literally “reserve a right” (which is unnecessary, and which cannot be done by a mere declaration anyway), but to simply serve as a warning to customers to behave, or they might be ousted, or to dress appropriately, if they want permission to enter, and so on. (In this, such signs are similar to signs in supermarket parking lots such as “We cannot be responsible for damage do your car.” Of course you can. And you might be, according to local property and tort law; your statement that you “cannot be” responsible does not make it so or change the local law!) (This is, by the way, unlike a “no trespassing” sign which is useful in that it can change the default presumption in a given area. See the example in “Reply to Van Dun: Non-Aggression and Title Transfer,” in LFFS, p. 290, default rules and knocking on a neighbor’s door to ask to borrow a cup of sugar.)
Likewise, to return to the hypothetical above about a girl on a date promising to give the guy a kiss at the end of the date: must she explicitly state ahead of time that although she promises to give him a kiss later, she “reserves the right” to change her mind? If she fails to make this statement, does that mean she has alienated her right to change her mind, so that the boyfriend can force her and she has no right to complain? This is obviously absurd. She does not need to state that she “reserves the right” to change her mind, because she always has the right to change her mind precisely because it is the most recent communication of consent that is relevant, that matters, and because changing one’s mind does not violate anyone’s rights, because it is not aggression—just as promising to do something is not aggression.
Appendix: Grok Queries
I asked Grok: “Where in Stephan Kinsella’s published writing does he argue against voluntary slavery contracts using the analogy that a girl who agrees to give a kiss to her date can change her mind?”
Stephan Kinsella explicitly uses the analogy of a girl who agrees to give a kiss to her date but can later change her mind in his book Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), specifically in Chapter 9, titled “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability.” In Part III.C.1 of this chapter, he discusses the nature of consent and its implications for contracts, including voluntary slavery agreements.
Here, Kinsella argues that consent is not a one-time, irrevocable act but an ongoing state that can be revoked. He illustrates this with the example: if a girl promises a kiss at the end of a date, her promise sets up an expectation or presumption about her future consent, but it does not bind her. If, when the moment arrives, she says “no,” her current refusal overrides her earlier promise because consent must be present at the time of the act. This, he contends, shows that promises about future actions are predictive rather than binding, as they depend on the individual’s continued willingness.
Kinsella extends this reasoning to voluntary slavery contracts, asserting that a person cannot irrevocably alienate their self-ownership through a contract. Just as the girl retains the right to change her mind about the kiss, a would-be slave retains control over their body and can withdraw consent to being controlled or punished by a “master.” He argues that ownership of one’s body inherently includes the right to control it, and no contract can transfer this right permanently to another, because at the moment of enforcement (e.g., when the master seeks to use force), the slave’s current dissent would render such force unjustifiable under libertarian principles, which prohibit aggression absent prior aggression by the slave.
This specific analogy and its application to voluntary slavery also appear in related discussions on his podcast, Kinsella on Liberty. For instance, in Episode 285 (“Disenthrall: Contracts with Stephan Kinsella”), he references this example while explaining libertarian contract theory, reinforcing that a promise to submit to slavery, like a promise to kiss, cannot be enforced if the promisor later retracts consent. The podcast draws directly from his written framework in Legal Foundations of a Free Society, making it a useful companion to locate his published argument.
Thus, the primary source for this analogy and its use against voluntary slavery contracts is Legal Foundations of a Free Society, Chapter 9, Part III.C.1.
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Does he make this argument or similar arguments in “The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract,” Papinian Press Working Paper #1 (Sep. 7, 2024), which can be found at https://stephankinsella.com/2024/09/tttc-wp-1/. See also the attached version.
In “The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract,” published as Papinian Press Working Paper #1 (Sep. 7, 2024), and mirrored in the attached document from Palgrave Handbook of Misesian Austrian Economics (forthcoming 2025), Stephan Kinsella does not explicitly use the analogy of a girl promising a kiss to her date and then changing her mind to argue against voluntary slavery contracts. That specific analogy, as noted earlier, appears in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (2023), Chapter 9, Part III.C.1. However, Kinsella does address voluntary slavery contracts in the 2024 working paper and makes a related argument grounded in the inalienability of the will and the nature of property rights, which aligns with the conceptual framework behind the kiss analogy.
In the section “Implicit Theft and Debtor’s Prison” (pp. 34-36 of the attached document), Kinsella critiques Rothbard’s theory of “implicit theft” and its implications for contract enforceability, including voluntary slavery. He agrees with Rothbard that voluntary slavery contracts are unenforceable, stating: “Rothbard (1998b, pp. 134–36) rightly argues that voluntary slavery contracts are not enforceable. As he observes, even after making a voluntary slavery contract, the would-be slave still retains his will, which is inalienable.” Kinsella supports this by referencing Rothbard’s view that self-ownership arises from “his mind’s command over his body and its actions” (Rothbard 1998e, p. 31), and he bolsters it with his own argument, drawing on Hoppe, that ownership of one’s body stems from direct control rather than homesteading (Kinsella 2023b, Part III.B; Kinsella 2023d, p. 52–53; Hoppe 2023, p. xvii). He argues that enforcing a slavery contract would constitute aggression against the would-be slave’s body, which is unjustifiable unless the slave had committed prior aggression.
While the kiss analogy is absent here, the underlying logic is similar: consent to future control over one’s body (whether for a kiss or slavery) can be revoked because the will remains inalienable, and enforcement against current dissent violates self-ownership. In the kiss example from Legal Foundations, the girl’s initial promise does not bind her if she later says “no,” reflecting the ongoing nature of consent tied to bodily control. Similarly, in the 2024 paper, Kinsella asserts that a slavery contract cannot be enforced because the slave’s retained will and bodily control override any prior agreement, rendering enforcement an act of aggression.
Kinsella further ties this to the Title-Transfer Theory of Contract (TTTC), arguing that contracts are about transferring title to owned resources, not binding promises to perform actions. Since one’s body cannot be alienated like external property (due to its inalienable link to the will), a slavery contract lacks a transferable title to enforce. This contrasts with Rothbard’s “implicit theft” notion, which Kinsella rejects as unnecessary and flawed, noting it could paradoxically justify debtor’s prison or slavery-like enforcement (pp. 35-36). By abandoning “implicit theft,” Kinsella avoids this contradiction and reinforces that voluntary slavery is unenforceable under TTTC because no property title to the body can be validly transferred.
Thus, while the kiss analogy itself is not present in the 2024 working paper, the argument against voluntary slavery contracts shares a conceptual kinship with it. Both hinge on the inalienability of the will and the revocability of consent over one’s body, framed here through property rights and the TTTC rather than the illustrative analogy. For the exact kiss analogy, one must still refer to Legal Foundations of a Free Society (2023), but the 2024 paper offers a parallel, more technical argument achieving the same conclusion.
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What about in “KOL442 | Together Strong Debate vs. Walter Block on Voluntary Slavery (Matthew Sands of Nations of Sanity)”, available at https://stephankinsella.com/as_paf_podcast/kol442-together-strong-debate-walter-block-voluntary-slavery/? Does Kinsella make a similar argument here?
