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Comment by Jabanga | Hacker News Reader

>You realize that's not in the slightest bit true, don't you?

What isn't true?

>For example: Under contract law, there are certain rights that _you are legally not permitted to give away_. You can't actually sell yourself into slavery.

A court will void contractual provisions like this, based on a comprehensive body of case law that establishes what constitutes consent. This is a universe away from what you're defending here, which is a federal agency prosecuting individuals because they entered into some investment transaction without 'permission' from said regulatory agency.

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You wrote:

> Of course. We don't restrict the rights of the entire population to engage in voluntary interactions to preempt crime.

I gave one example of many of the ways in which we absolutely do restrict the rights of the entire population to engage in voluntary interactions to preempt crime. We limit the types of contracts that everyone can engage in, to prevent a subset of them that would be used abusively. As another example, we place restrictions on freedom of assembly -- voluntary interactions of groups of people -- based upon location and time of day because of the potential to create a disturbance, not the fact of having done so. And so on.

>I gave one example of many of the ways in which we absolutely do restrict the rights of the entire population to engage in voluntary interactions to preempt crime.

Yes I can see how you interpreted my comment that way. I meant we should not do that. In writing it, I was thinking along the lines of "you don't do [some unethical thing]" as a normative statement, not a description of what you don't do. The wording I chose doesn't make that at all clear, so your interpretation is understandable.

>We limit the types of contracts that everyone can engage in, to prevent a subset of them that would be used abusively.

Like I said: A court will void contractual provisions like this, based on a comprehensive body of case law that establishes what constitutes consent. This is a universe away from what you're defending here, which is a federal agency prosecuting individuals because they entered into some investment transaction without 'permission' from said regulatory agency.

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