Freeing the slaves was, I would argue, rewriting contract law on a large and massive scale. Slaves were owned, there were contracts stating as much, and they were voided en masse and without compensation.
Various treaties with various American Indian tribes, which one could interpret as contracts, were also voided.
And, may I quote the U.S. Supreme Court in Holden v. Hardy to you: "... the fact that both parties are of full age and competent does not necessarily deprive the state of the power to interfere where the parties do not stand upon equality, or where the public health demands that one party to the contract shall be protected against himself..."
Legality and historical precedence aside, I do not necessarily agree with all the policies of the new administration.
As of yet, I haven't seen evidence of wide-spread contract abrogations. Mortgage lenders aren't, for example, being forced to change the terms of mortgages. While there are discussions of allowing judges to change the terms of mortgages, those discussions seem to be in response to a very real problem: mortgages whose ultimate owners and unknown and banks who are refusing to do something (anything!) with foreclosed properties. Replacing CEOs has happened, but only after, say, the CEO walked to DC, hat in hand-- then held that hat out to ask for a large sum of money. I am reminded of the saying about playing with fire.
Bonus compensation limits are troubling, and I am not in favor of them. But, then again, the previous high levels of bonuses were also troubling. I was not in favor of them. We are seeing an overreaction, but it's an overreaction to an extreme circumstance.
>Various treaties with various American Indian tribes, which one could >interpret as contracts, were also voided. Those were actually agreements between two sovereign nations, and as with all such, you don't have to follow them if you have a bigger army.
So, I see the point you're trying to make. But all of those are voiding contracts to the benefit of third parties. The slaves didn't have a voluntary contract with the plantation owners. As cynic51 points out, treaties aren't really contracts enforceable in the same way that private contracts are; the bigger army wins.
As for the HvH decision, the arguments centered around miners and smelters working excessive hours as a threat to their health. When you're working for scrip and owe your soul to the company store, you're little more than a slave. In may ways the decision was more an emancipation proclamation than an abrogation of voluntary contract law. There was clear malfeasance on the part of the mine owners.
In this instance, we're dealing with mutual greed. Yes, there was predatory lending, but it made up the minority of cases. Yes, there was active deception on the part of independent loan brokers, but it too was the minority. The majority of cases were people being greedy, overreaching their own capabilities for short-term gain, and hooking up with similarly-motivated business entities willing to enable that behavior.
... I've never bought into the "too big to fail" argument, because it's a simile for "too big to be stupid" -- which is clearly false.
We are seeing an overreaction to extreme circumstances -- but government overreactions tend to create longer-term problems than the original problems themselves. There's plenty of valid arguments that the government's last series of major overreactions in this area directly led to the current crisis. (New Deal -> FHA -> Fannie/Freddie -> Carter Community Reinvestment Act -> Subprime Lending -> 2008)
Sprinkle liberally with some corporate profiteering and mix 'till done.
But there were any number of points in that chain where a bit of sitting-down-and-shutting-up on the part of the government would have derailed the march of destruction by closing off, rather than opening wider, the portals to debt exploitation of low-income households.
Various treaties with various American Indian tribes, which one could interpret as contracts, were also voided.
And, may I quote the U.S. Supreme Court in Holden v. Hardy to you: "... the fact that both parties are of full age and competent does not necessarily deprive the state of the power to interfere where the parties do not stand upon equality, or where the public health demands that one party to the contract shall be protected against himself..."
Legality and historical precedence aside, I do not necessarily agree with all the policies of the new administration.
As of yet, I haven't seen evidence of wide-spread contract abrogations. Mortgage lenders aren't, for example, being forced to change the terms of mortgages. While there are discussions of allowing judges to change the terms of mortgages, those discussions seem to be in response to a very real problem: mortgages whose ultimate owners and unknown and banks who are refusing to do something (anything!) with foreclosed properties. Replacing CEOs has happened, but only after, say, the CEO walked to DC, hat in hand-- then held that hat out to ask for a large sum of money. I am reminded of the saying about playing with fire.
Bonus compensation limits are troubling, and I am not in favor of them. But, then again, the previous high levels of bonuses were also troubling. I was not in favor of them. We are seeing an overreaction, but it's an overreaction to an extreme circumstance.
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>interpret as contracts, were also voided.
Those were actually agreements between two sovereign nations, and as with all such, you don't have to follow them if you have a bigger army.
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As for the HvH decision, the arguments centered around miners and smelters working excessive hours as a threat to their health. When you're working for scrip and owe your soul to the company store, you're little more than a slave. In may ways the decision was more an emancipation proclamation than an abrogation of voluntary contract law. There was clear malfeasance on the part of the mine owners.
In this instance, we're dealing with mutual greed. Yes, there was predatory lending, but it made up the minority of cases. Yes, there was active deception on the part of independent loan brokers, but it too was the minority. The majority of cases were people being greedy, overreaching their own capabilities for short-term gain, and hooking up with similarly-motivated business entities willing to enable that behavior.
... I've never bought into the "too big to fail" argument, because it's a simile for "too big to be stupid" -- which is clearly false.
We are seeing an overreaction to extreme circumstances -- but government overreactions tend to create longer-term problems than the original problems themselves. There's plenty of valid arguments that the government's last series of major overreactions in this area directly led to the current crisis. (New Deal -> FHA -> Fannie/Freddie -> Carter Community Reinvestment Act -> Subprime Lending -> 2008)
Sprinkle liberally with some corporate profiteering and mix 'till done.
But there were any number of points in that chain where a bit of sitting-down-and-shutting-up on the part of the government would have derailed the march of destruction by closing off, rather than opening wider, the portals to debt exploitation of low-income households.
Reply
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