“
Every love relationship rests on an unwritten agreement unthinkingly concluded by the lovers in the first weeks of their love. They are still in a kind of dream but at the same time, without knowing it, are drawing up, like uncompromising lawyers, the detailed clauses of their contract. O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.
”
”
Milan Kundera (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)
“
Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisements said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighborhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches. Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: 'Learn, guys...
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Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
“
Start with that. Chaos. No control, no law, no government at all. Like being in the arena. Where do we go from there? What sort of agreement is necessary if we're to live in peace? What sort of social contract is required for survival?
”
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Suzanne Collins (The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0))
“
Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and the contract and the agreement between us and Heaven has been settled and accomplished. It’s time to put the devil to flight and make these demons tremble and pay the price.
”
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John Ramirez (Fire Prayers: Building Arsenals That Destroy Satanic Kingdoms)
“
In regard to the so-called social contract, I have often had occasion to protest that I haven't even seen the contract, much less been asked to consent to it. A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration. I've never received an offer from my rulers, so I certainly have not accepted one; and rather than consideration, I have received nothing but contempt from the rulers, who, notwithstanding the absence of any agreement, have indubitably threatened me with grave harm in the event that I fail to comply with their edicts.
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Robert Higgs
“
...The fact is that Dale and Grady had made a pact long before they ever came into this earthly existence. This is why so often there is one physical death that follows another. They are from the same soul family. They are so intertwined that they need to leave together. They are all returning home together.
”
”
Kate McGahan (Jack McAfghan: Return from Rainbow Bridge: A Dog's Afterlife Story of Loss, Love and Renewal (Jack McAfghan Pet Loss Trilogy Book 3))
“
This fierce defender of private property—this man for whom contracts were to be sacred covenants—expressly denied the sanctity of any agreement that stripped people of their freedom.
”
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Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton)
“
Oh, a good deal, I think. Start with that. Chaos. No control, no law, no government at all. Like being in the arena. Where do we go from there? What sort of agreement is necessary if we’re to live in peace? What sort of social contract is required for survival?
”
”
Suzanne Collins (The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0))
“
Let’s get one thing straight,” he says, his voice menacing. “I don’t have a wandering eye, never have, never will. And I signed a contract with you. That means I belong to you and you belong to me until our obligations are fulfilled within our agreement. Do you understand?
”
”
Meghan Quinn (A Not So Meet Cute (Cane Brothers, #1))
“
Besides, what’s fair isn’t always equal. We’re mates—not a business contract with a reciprocal agreement.
”
”
K.M. Shea (Fated (Pack of Dawn and Destiny, #3))
“
People from context cultures tend to view personal bonds and informal agreements as far more binding than any formal contract. People from content cultures don't believe the deal is finalized until everyone has signed on the dotted line. And therein lies the potential for conflict.
”
”
Carol Kinsey Goman (The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work (Bk Business))
“
After changing shape several times, the ball eventually turned into a huge face. It floated alongside the air-car. This time, time instead of sending him a mental message, the face spoke out aloud and the whole air-car vibrated with its intensity. “If you are foolish enough to renege on your contract, you will be severely punished. For your sake, I hope you wouldn’t do such a thing.” When Tarmy made no attempt to respond, the face turned and pressed itself against the millipede-free window. A moment later, Tarmy felt the fat slug entering his mind, the sign that the face was attempting to use its powers to obtain his response by other means. But as the slug dug deeper, Samantha’s cover stories began springing out of the corners of his mind. Instead of obtaining Tarmy’s agreement, all that the face saw was a burning army transporter surrounded by bodies. Undeterred, the face continued its assault. Samantha had anticipated that Tarmy might come up against an adept, so the mental images of death and destruction flowed unchecked. After failing to break Tarmy’s defences, the face removed the slug and tried reason. “You can’t win, Mr Tarleton, so why don’t you do yourself a favour and cooperate? It will be better for you in the long run. Now, where is the miniature pulse drive engine?” Tarmy realised why the millipedes hadn’t been allowed to attack. It was obvious that the Great Ones were hoping to retrieve the engine. When Tarmy didn’t respond, the face said, “I am prepared to overlook your desertion if you agree to tell us where the engine is and also honour your contract by showing us how to convert the engine into a bomb.
”
”
Andrew R. Williams (Samantha's Revenge (Arcadia's Children, #1))
“
The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau speculated that states are formed by a social contract, a rational decision reached when people calculated their self-interest, came to the agreement that they would be better off in a state than in simpler societies, and voluntarily did away with their simpler societies. But
”
”
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel)
“
To have a society, you first need an institutional framework: that’s constitutional law. You need a system of punishment: that’s criminal. You need to know that you have a system in place that will make those other systems work: that’s civil procedure. You need a way to govern matters of domain and ownership: that’s property. You need to know that someone will be financially accountable for injuries caused you by others: that’s torts. And finally, you need to know that people will keep their agreements, that they will honor their promises: and that is contracts.
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
Whether a negotiation concerns a contract, a family quarrel, or a peace settlement among nations, people routinely engage in positional bargaining. Each side takes a position, argues for it, and makes concessions to reach a compromise.
”
”
Roger Fisher (Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In)
“
When you feel weak in spirit, think about the agreements you made with yourself about how to live an honourable life. We all have them, but unfortunately the contracts are often written in invisible ink when they should be signed in blood.
”
”
Suzanne Hayes (I'll Be Seeing You (I'll Be Seeing You, #1))
“
What you may not know is that this course load reflects—beautifully, simply—the very structure of our society, the very mechanics of what a society, our particular society, needs to make it work. To have a society, you first need an institutional framework: that’s constitutional law. You need a system of punishment: that’s criminal. You need to know that you have a system in place that will make those other systems work: that’s civil procedure. You need a way to govern matters of domain and ownership: that’s property. You need to know that someone will be financially accountable for injuries caused you by others: that’s torts. And finally, you need to know that people will keep their agreements, that they will honor their promises: and that is contracts.
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
Aren’t you supposed to sign a contract and receive benefits after two years?” “Oh, boy. You don’t know anything about part-time work, do you? There are no part-time jobs where you sign a contract and get benefits. Start work tomorrow. Yes, sir. It’s like that. You get a verbal agreement, start working, they pay you sometimes through your bank account, sometimes through your husband’s bank account.
”
”
Cho Nam-Joo (Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982)
“
the relationship that Jane Goodall has with the chimpanzees of Gombe—and that Dian Fossey had with the mountain gorillas she studied, and Biruté Galdikas has with the wild orangutans of Tanjung Puting—is different. There is a trust between human and animal, a privileged trust unlike any other. The contract for that trust is not written by the human: the animals are the authors of the agreement. The relationship is on the animals’ terms.
”
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Sy Montgomery (Walking with the Great Apes: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas)
“
presses, and in our implied agreement with the old scytheman it is of the essence of the contract. I
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Bram Stoker (Dracula (Illustrated))
“
Because it is impossible to foresee all problems, fear-based contracts are more likely to lead to confusion (and further lawyer fees) than to create clarity and satisfaction.
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Stewart Levine (The Book of Agreement: 10 Essential Elements for Getting the Results You Want)
“
I am available to work in the police body camera department...but I will not be signing a non-disclosure agreement!
”
”
Steven Magee
“
Of a real, true contract, on whatsoever subject, there is no vestige in Rousseau's book. To give an
exact idea of his theory, I cannot do better than compare it with a commercial agreement, in which
the names of the parties, the nature and value of the goods, products and services involved, the
conditions of quality, delivery, price, reimbursement, everything in fact which constitutes the
material of contracts, is omitted, and nothing is mentioned but penalties and jurisdictions.
"Indeed, Citizen of Geneva, you talk well. But before holding forth about the sovereign and the
prince, about the policeman and the judge, tell me first what is my share of the bargain? What? You
expect me to sign an agreement in virtue of which I may be prosecuted for a thousand
transgressions, by municipal, rural, river and forest police, handed over to tribunals, judged,
condemned for damage, cheating, swindling, theft, bankruptcy, robbery, disobedience to the laws of
the State, offence to public morals, vagabondage,--and in this agreement I find not a word of either
my rights or my obligations, I find only penalties!
"But every penalty no doubt presupposes a duty, and every duty corresponds to a right. Where then
in your agreement are my rights and duties? What have I promised to my fellow citizens? What
have they promised to me? Show it to me, for without that, your penalties are but excesses of
power, your law-controlled State a flagrant usurpation, your police, your judgment and your
executions so many abuses. You who have so well denied property, who have impeached so
eloquently the inequality of conditions among men, what dignity, what heritage, have you for me in
your republic, that you should claim the right to judge me, to imprison me, to take my life and
honor? Perfidious declaimer, have you inveighed so loudly against exploiters and tyrants, only to
deliver me to them without defence?
”
”
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century)
“
Japanese contracts were vague; they wouldn’t stand up in Canadian courts, for in Japan they didn’t have to. If an agreement wasn’t working out for both parties, company managers would just talk it over and settle any differences.
”
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Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy)
“
Decolonization is the process whereby we intend the conditions we want to live and social relations we wish to have. We have to supplant the colonial logic of the state itself. German philosopher Gustav Landauer wrote almost a hundred years ago that "the State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships." Decolonization requires us to exercise our sovereignties differently, and reconfigure our communities based on shared experiences, ideals, and visions. Almost all indigenous formulations of sovereignty--such as the Two Row Wampum agreement of peace, friendship, and respect between the Haudenosaunee nations and settlers--are premised on revolutionary notions of respectful coexistence and stewardship of the land, which goes far beyond any Western liberal democratic ideal.
Original blog post: Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory and Practice.
Quoted In: Decolonize Together: Moving beyond a Politics of Solidarity toward a Practice of Decolonization. Taking Sides.
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Harsha Walia
“
Society mediates between the extremes of, on the one hand, intolerably strict morality and, on the other, dangerously anarchic permissiveness through an unspoken agreement whereby we are given leave to bend the rules of the strictest morality, provided we do so quietly and discreetly. Hypocrisy is the grease that keeps society functioning in an agreeable way, by allowing for human fallibility and reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable human needs for order and pleasure. When Buckley and Wambaugh said bluntly that it’s all right to deceive subjects, they breached the contract whereby you never come right out and admit you have stretched the rules for your own benefit. You do it and shut up about it, and hope you don’t get caught, because if you are caught no one — or no one who has any sense — will come forward and say he has done the same thing himself.
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Janet Malcolm (The Journalist and the Murderer)
“
No governments in modern history save Apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany have segregated as well as the United States has, with precision and under the color of law. (And even then, both the Third Reich and the Afrikaner government looked to America’s laws to create their systems.) U.S. government financing required home developers and landlords to put racially restrictive covenants (agreements to sell only to white people) in their housing contracts. And as we’ve already seen, the federal government supported housing segregation through redlining and other banking practices, the result of which was that the two investments that created the housing market that has been a cornerstone of building wealth in American families, the thirty-year mortgage and the federal government’s willingness to guarantee banks’ issuance of those loans, were made on a whites-only basis and under conditions of segregation.
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”
Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together)
“
Arnold Wilson complained he had to spend time bridging the cultural gap between the British “who cannot say what they mean and Persians who do not always mean what they say.” The British, he declared, saw a contract as an agreement that would stand up in court; the Persians simply saw it as an expression of intentions.
”
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Peter Frankopan (The Silk Roads: A New History of the World)
“
He added one catch: She must sign a noncompete agreement, a contract designed so that she could never again compete with him. This was something he wished he’d done before. The absurdity of imposing a noncompete agreement on a ninety-nine-year-old woman was far from lost on him. Nevertheless, Buffett was taking no chances.
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Alice Schroeder (The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life)
“
Damn you,” he muttered, wiping at her tears with his fingers. “I could throttle you for putting us both through this.” “You told me not to come back,” she sobbed in painful relief. “I was so afraid to try… Y-you sounded so final…” “I thought I was losing you. I didn't know what the hell I was saying.” He crushed her against his pounding heart, running his hands over her hair and completely disheveling it. “You said no s-second chances.” “A thousand chances for you. A hundred thousand.” “I'm sorry,” she wept. “I'm so sorry—” “I want you to marry me,” Zachary said in a guttural voice. “I'm going to bind you with every agreement and contract and ritual known to man.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Where Dreams Begin)
“
A Russian philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin said that "the self is the gift of the other" It seems to me most true now. The genes I carry, the clothes I wear, the food I eat all have come through the hands of others. Even those words I write now, my vocabulary, are not only mine. They are an agreement, a social contract between the two of us.
”
”
Rhonda Riley (The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope)
“
But fairness is not the only, or even the most important, consideration in law: the law is not always fair. Contracts are not fair, not always. But sometimes they are necessary, these unfairnesses, because they are necessary for the proper functioning of society. In this class you will learn the difference between what is fair and what is just, and, as important, between what is fair and what is necessary. You will learn about the obligations we have to one another as members of society, and how far society should go in enforcing those obligations. You will learn to see your life—all of our lives—as a series of agreements, and it will make you rethink not only the law but this country itself, and your place in it.
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
But fairness is not the only, or even the most important, consideration in law: the law is not always fair. Contracts are not fair, not always. But sometimes they are necessary, these unfairnesses, because they are necessary for the proper functioning of society. In this class you will learn the difference between what is fair and what is just, and, as important, between what is fair and what is necessary. You will learn about the obligations we have to one another as members of society, and how far society should go in enforcing those obligations. You will learn to see your life—all of our lives—as a series of agreements, and it will make you rethink not only the law but this country itself, and your place in it. pp.116-7
”
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Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
I’ll let you in on a secret. There are actually three kinds of “Yes”: Counterfeit, Confirmation, and Commitment. A counterfeit “yes” is one in which your counterpart plans on saying “no” but either feels “yes” is an easier escape route or just wants to disingenuously keep the conversation going to obtain more information or some other kind of edge. A confirmation “yes” is generally innocent, a reflexive response to a black-or-white question; it’s sometimes used to lay a trap but mostly it’s just simple affirmation with no promise of action. And a commitment “yes” is the real deal; it’s a true agreement that leads to action, a “yes” at the table that ends with a signature on the contract. The commitment “yes” is what you want, but the three types sound almost the same so you have to learn how to recognize which one is being used. Human
”
”
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It)
“
Trump was the only modern president who had never met most of his senior advisers and cabinet appointees before he won the presidency; his three top White House aides—Priebus, Bannon, and Kushner—had never served in government either. He approached the new bureaucracy in much the same way he had a family-run business, demanding that employees sign agreements that would prevent them from ever speaking publicly about the experience. The White House counsel made clear to some staff that the contracts were not enforceable.
”
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Maggie Haberman (Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America)
“
[I]t is wrong to think of conversion as the decision of a man or as an agreement or contract between a man and God in which grace comes to a man only as a result of his decision to allow it. For one thing such an idea suggests that men before they are converted occupy a position of neutrality or of balance or equilibrium, and that a man by his decision is able to tip the balance one way or the other, to allow grace or to resist it. But any conscious decision, any turning to God, comes about as a result of being turned by God, by being regenerated.
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Paul Helm (The Beginnings: Word and Spirit in Conversion)
“
The politician Patrick Henry is best known to history for his provocative speech to the 1775 Virginia convention in support of the American Revolution, where he allegedly shouted: “Give me liberty or give me death!” In 1789 Henry led a coalition of companies that successfully secured an agreement with the state of Georgia to buy thirty-five million acres of land close to the Yazoo River (mostly within what is now Mississippi). When word of the deal leaked, the public reacted angrily, and the Georgia government quickly modified the contract to appease them. It
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Zephyr Teachout (Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United)
“
To have a society, you first need an institutional framework: that’s constitutional law. You need a system of punishment: that’s criminal. You need to know that you have a system in place that will make those other systems work: that’s civil procedure. You need a way to govern matters of domain and ownership: that’s property. You need to know that someone will be financially accountable for injuries caused you by others: that’s torts. And finally, you need to know that people will keep their agreements, that they will honor their promises: and that is contracts.” He
”
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Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
This agreement predates our marriage," Elara said into the sudden silence, pronouncing each word clearly. "According to the contract you signed, it is exempt from your input. I don't need your permission. This exchange will go forward. And you will remember that you are a married adult responsible for the welfare of four thousand people. You'll reach deep down, find a pair of big-boy pants, and put them on. If I can pretend not to cringe every time you touch me in public, you can pretend to be civil. Bury that hatchet, and if you can't, hide in your room while they're here.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Iron and Magic (The Iron Covenant, #1))
“
Jean-Jacques Rousseau speculated that states are formed by a social contract, a rational decision reached when people calculated their self-interest, came to the agreement that they would be better off in a state than in simpler societies, and voluntarily did away with their simpler societies. But observation and historical records have failed to uncover a single case of a state’s being formed in that ethereal atmosphere of dispassionate farsightedness. Smaller units do not voluntarily abandon their sovereignty and merge into larger units. They do so only by conquest, or under external duress.
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Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
“
Marriage is a contract unlike any other contract in life. You marry for love. But your signature on the marriage certificate is all about rights, duties, and property. It’s a legally binding contract that knows nothing of love. If the love dies, all you have left is a resentful ex-spouse and the marriage certificate. There’s nothing more terrible than an ex-spouse with a ten-ton axe to grind, and no agreement on how your common property is to be divided. It usually leads to all-out war that is more vicious than any legal battle in business and could easily lead to your financial and emotional ruin. Always get a prenup. It’s just too risky not to.
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”
Donald J. Trump (Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life)
“
A counterfeit “yes” is one in which your counterpart plans on saying “no” but either feels “yes” is an easier escape route or just wants to disingenuously keep the conversation going to obtain more information or some other kind of edge. A confirmation “yes” is generally innocent, a reflexive response to a black-or-white question; it’s sometimes used to lay a trap but mostly it’s just simple affirmation with no promise of action. And a commitment “yes” is the real deal; it’s a true agreement that leads to action, a “yes” at the table that ends with a signature on the contract. The commitment “yes” is what you want, but the three types sound almost the same so you have to learn how to recognize which one is being used.
”
”
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
“
If a contract, either civil or natural, could still bind the
king and his people, there would be a mutual obligation; the will of the people could not set itself up as
absolute judge to pronounce absolute judgment. Therefore it is necessary to prove that no agreement
binds the people and the king. In order to prove that the people are themselves the embodiment of eternal
truth it is necessary to demonstrate that royalty is the embodiment of eternal crime. Saint-Just, therefore,
postulates that every king is a rebel or a usurper. He is a rebel against the people whose absolute
sovereignty he usurps. Monarchy is not a king, "it is crime." Not a crime, but crime itself, says Saint-Just;
in other words, absolute profanation.
”
”
Albert Camus (The Rebel)
“
In the elaborate con that is American electoral politics, the Republican voter has long been the easiest mark in the game, the biggest dope in the room. Everyone inside the Beltway knows this. The Republican voters themselves are the only ones who never saw it. Elections are about a lot of things, but at the highest level, they’re about money. The people who sponsor election campaigns, who pay the hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the candidates’ charter jets and TV ads and 25-piece marching bands, those people have concrete needs. They want tax breaks, federal contracts, regulatory relief, cheap financing, free security for shipping lanes, antitrust waivers and dozens of other things. They mostly don’t care about abortion or gay marriage or school vouchers or any of the social issues the rest of us spend our time arguing about. It’s about money for them, and as far as that goes, the CEO class has had a brilliantly winning electoral strategy for a generation. They donate heavily to both parties, essentially hiring two different sets of politicians to market their needs to the population. The Republicans give them everything that they want, while the Democrats only give them mostly everything. They get everything from the Republicans because you don’t have to make a single concession to a Republican voter. All you have to do to secure a Republican vote is show lots of pictures of gay people kissing or black kids with their pants pulled down or Mexican babies at an emergency room. Then you push forward some dingbat like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin to reassure everyone that the Republican Party knows who the real Americans are. Call it the “Rove 1-2.” That’s literally all it’s taken to secure decades of Republican votes, a few patriotic words and a little over-the-pants rubbing. Policywise, a typical Republican voter never even asks a politician to go to second base. While we always got free trade agreements and wars and bailouts and mass deregulation of industry and lots of other stuff the donors definitely wanted, we didn’t get Roe v. Wade overturned or prayer in schools or balanced budgets or censorship of movies and video games or any of a dozen other things Republican voters said they wanted.
”
”
Matt Taibbi (Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus)
“
What you may not know is that this course load reflects—beautifully, simply—the very structure of our society, the very mechanics of what a society, our particular society, needs to make it work. To have a society, you first need an institutional framework: that’s constitutional law. You need a system of punishment: that’s criminal. You need to know that you have a system in place that will make those other systems work: that’s civil procedure. You need a way to govern matters of domain and ownership: that’s property. You need to know that someone will be financially accountable for injuries caused you by others: that’s torts. And finally, you need to know that people will keep their agreements, that they will honor their promises: and that is contracts.” He
”
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Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
And finally, you need to know that people will keep their agreements, that they will honor their promises: and that is contracts.” He paused. “Now, I don’t want to be reductive, but I’ll bet half of you are here so you can someday wheedle money out of people—torts people, there’s nothing to be ashamed of!—and the other half of you are here because you think you’re going to change the world. You’re here because you dream of arguing before the Supreme Court, because you think the real challenge of the law lies in the blank spaces between the lines of the Constitution. But I’m here to tell you—it doesn’t. The truest, the most intellectually engaging, the richest field of the law is contracts. Contracts are not just sheets of paper promising you a job, or a house, or
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Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
I can easily believe, that there are more invisible than visible beings in the universe. But who will declare to us the family of all these, and acquaint us with the agreements, differences, and peculiar talents which are to be found among them? It is true, human wit has always desired a knowledge of these things, though it has never yet attained it. I will own that it is very profitable, sometimes to contemplate in the mind, as in a draught, the image of the greater and better world, lest the soul being accustomed to the trifles of this present life, should contract itself too much, and altogether rest in mean cogitations, but, in the meantime, we must take care to keep to the truth, and observe moderation, that we may distinguish certain from uncertain things, and day from night.
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Thomas Burnet (Archaelogiae philosophicae: sive, doctrina antiqua de rerum originibus, libri duo)
“
Furthermore, the social contract makes sense only if future generations are included in it. The purpose is to establish an enduring society. At once, therefore, there arises that web of non-contractual obligations that links parents to children and children to parents and that ensures, willy-nilly, that within a generation the society will be encumbered by non-voting members, dead and unborn, who will rely on something other than a mere contract between the living if their rights are to be respected and their love deserved. Even when there arises, as in America, an idea of ‘elective nationality’, so that newcomers may choose to belong, what is chosen is precisely not a contract but a bond of membership, whose obligations and privileges transcend anything that could be contained in a defeasible agreement.
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Roger Scruton (How to Be a Conservative)
“
God is offering us a contract. He says that if certain terms are accepted, he will provide a certain result. Guaranteed. The main item to be accepted is Jesus." Ashby took a drink of his margarita and shrugged. "Now," Rachel continued, "anyone who does not accept Jesus is making a counter offer to God, changing the terms of God's contract. So is there an agreement? No. Not unless God accepts those changes." "Will he?" Ashby asked. "I don't know. No one does. Every Christian, including me, is acting as an agent for God. An agent cannot change the material terms of the contract. If someone wants to make a counter offer, there is no way I can say he has reached an agreement with God. But I can say that if you meet God's terms, you definitely will have an agreement. And that leaves the ball strictly in your court.
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James Scott Bell (Final Witness)
“
It must be understood that a society’s dominant mode of material production, i.e., the “hegemonic” method of organizing the relations of material production (such as manufacturing and food production), conditions the overall character of the society more than any other of its features does. This is because the society is erected on the basis of material production; the first task for a society is to reproduce itself in its specific form, which presupposes the reproduction of a set of production relations. Social relations will tend to evolve that make possible the reproducing of the relations of production. In the spheres of economic distribution, of politics, of sexual relations, of intellectual production, and so on, social structures and ideologies will tend to predominate that are beneficial, “functionally selected” with respect to the dominant mode of production.5 Therefore, a movement that aims for fundamental transformations in society should not limit itself to the sphere of distribution, as do consumer co-ops, credit unions, and housing co-ops, nor the sphere of gender relations, as does the feminist movement, but should concentrate on changing the mode of production (with its correlative property relations), as does worker cooperativism. Such cooperativism on a societal scale, involving “a federation of free communities which shall be bound to one another by their common economic and social interests and shall arrange their affairs by mutual agreement and free contract,”6 is not only a more socially rational way of organizing production than capitalism but also a more intrinsically ethical way (even apart from its potential allocative efficiencies).
”
”
Chris Wright (Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States)
“
So the reasonable man, if he were in a state of nature, would see that he had to give up the right he would there have--the right to do or take anything and invade anybody--provided everyone else would do so at the same time (for otherwise he would 'expose himselfe to Prey' to all the others).
This clearly would require an agreement or contract, a concerted act by which they all renounced their rights of nature at the same time. But it would be no use agreeing just to give them up. For men would still be appetitive creatures, and would be apt to take back some of their old rights whenever they saw an immediate advantage in doing so. They would therefore have to do more than agree to give up their natural rights. They would have to transfer them to some person or body who could make the agreement stick, by being authorized to use the whole combined force of all the contractors to hold them to it.
”
”
Thomas Hobbes
“
The Levellers . . . only change and pervert the natural order of things: they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. . . .
Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withhold), the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. . . . In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. . . .
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. . . .
Society is, indeed, a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure; but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. . . .
You would not cure the evil by resolving that there should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the Gospel— no interpreters of law, no general officers, no public councils. You might change the names: the things in some shape must remain. A certain quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names— to the causes of evil, which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice. . . .
The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular leaders in all the great members of the commonwealth are to be covered with the 'all-atoning name' of Liberty. . . . But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths. . . . To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teach obedience, and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government, that is to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.
”
”
Edmund Burke
“
You're One Ls," Harold had said. "And congratulations, all of you. As One Ls, you'll be taking a pretty typical course load: contracts; torts; property; civil procedure; and next year, constitutional and criminal law. But you know all this.
"What you may not know is that this course load reflects- beautifully, simply- the very structure of our society, the very mechanics of what a society, our particular society, needs to make it work. To have a society, you first need an institutional framework: that's constitutional law. You need a system of punishment: that's criminal. You need to know that you have a system in place that will make those other systems work: that's civil procedure. You need a way to govern matters of domain and ownership: that's property. You need to know that someone will be financially accountable for injuries caused you by others: that's torts. And finally, you need to know that people will keep their agreements, that they will honor their promises: and that is contracts." p116
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
In this class, you will of course learn the mechanics of contracts—how one is created, how one is broken, how binding one is and how to unbind yourself from one—but you will also be asked to consider law itself as a series of contracts. Some are more fair—and this one time, I’ll allow you to say such a thing—than others. But fairness is not the only, or even the most important, consideration in law: the law is not always fair. Contracts are not fair, not always. But sometimes they are necessary, these unfairnesses, because they are necessary for the proper functioning of society. In this class you will learn the difference between what is fair and what is just, and, as important, between what is fair and what is necessary. You will learn about the obligations we have to one another as members of society, and how far society should go in enforcing those obligations. You will learn to see your life—all of our lives—as a series of agreements, and it will make you rethink not only the law but this country itself, and your place in it.
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
one day Milo contracted with the American military authorities to bomb the German-held highway bridge at Orvieto and with the German military authorities to defend the highway bridge at Orvieto with antiaircraft fire against his own attack. His fee for attacking the bridge for America was the total cost of the operation plus six per cent and his fee from Germany for defending the bridge was the same cost-plus-six agreement augmented by a merit bonus of a thousand dollars for every American plane he shot down. The consummation of these deals represented an important victory for private enterprise, he pointed out, since the armies of both countries were socialized institutions. Once the contracts were signed, there seemed to be no point in using the resources of the syndicate to bomb and defend the bridge, inasmuch as both governments had ample men and material right there to do so and were perfectly happy to contribute them, and in the end Milo realized a fantastic profit from both halves of his project for doing nothing more than signing his name twice.
”
”
Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
“
Milo's planes were a familiar sight. They had freedom of passage everywhere, and one day Milo contracted with the American military authorities to bomb the German-held highway bridge at Orvieto and with the German military authorities to defend the highway bridge at Orvieto with antiaircraft fire against his own attack. His fee for attacking the bridge for America was the total cost of the operation plus six percent, and his fee from Germany for defending the bridge was the same cost-plus-six agreement augmented by a merit bonus of a thousand dollars for every American plane he shot down. The consummation of these deals represented an important victory for private enterprise, he pointed out, since the armies of both countries were socialized institutions. Once the contracts were signed, there seemed to be no point in using the resources of the syndicate to bomb and defend the bridge, inasmuch as both governments had ample men and materiel right there to do so and were perfectly happy to contribute them, and in the end Milo realized a fantastic profit from both halves of his project for doing nothing more than signing his name twice.
”
”
Joseph Heller (Catch 22)
“
Pedigree was the centerpiece of Supreme Court chief justice Roger B. Taney’s majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision (1857). Though this case assessed whether a slave taken into a free state or federal territory should be set free, its conclusions were far more expansive. Addressing slavery in the territories, the proslavery Marylander dismissed Jefferson’s prohibition of slavery in the Northwest Ordinance as having no constitutional standing. He constructed his own version of the original social contract at the time of the Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitutional Convention: only the free white children of the founding generation were heirs to the original agreement; only pedigree could determine who inherited American citizenship and whose racial lineage warranted entitlement and the designation “freeman.” Taney’s opinion mattered because it literally made pedigree into a constitutional principle. In this controversial decision, Taney demonstrably rejected any notion of democracy and based the right of citizenship on bloodlines and racial stock. The chief justice ruled that the founders’ original intent was to classify members of society in terms of recognizable breeds.
”
”
Nancy Isenberg (White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America)
“
I just have to ask these questions. Are you DEA? FDA? NICB? NHCAA? Are you a private investigator hired by any private or governmental entity? Do you work for a medical insurance company? Are you a drug dealer? Drug addict? Are you a clinician? A med student? Getting pills for an abusive boyfriend or employer? NASA?” “I think I have insomnia. That’s my main issue.” “You’re probably addicted to caffeine, too, am I right?” “I don’t know.” “You better keep drinking it. If you quit now, you’ll just go crazy. Real insomniacs suffer hallucinations and lost time and usually have poor memory. It can make life very confusing. Does that sound like you?” “Sometimes I feel dead,” I told her, “and I hate everybody. Does that count?” “Oh, that counts. That certainly counts. I’m sure I can help you. But I do ask new patients to come in for a fifteen-minute consultation to make sure we’ll make a good fit. Gratis. And I recommend you get into the habit of writing notes to remind yourself of our appointments. I have a twenty-four-hour cancellation policy. You know Post-its? Get yourself some Post-its. I’ll have some agreements for you to sign, some contracts. Now write this down.” Dr. Tuttle told me to come in the next day at nine A.M.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
If we were to trace the arc of this resplendent moment to its uncertain trajectory, we might arrive at a time 10,000 years hence in which our story is likely to be told, albeit in the past tense, with the requisite degree of speculation and inconsistency and according to the values, perceptions and prevailing paradigms swirling about its storyteller—who, most certainly, would be just as alien and unseemly to us as we, in our primitive ways, would seem to him... Of course, we can suppose there to be some level of idealization in the storytelling—even if he...were to examine fastidiously all records of our associations, contracts, interactions, transactions and endeavors, he would still come away with his own set of presumptions, in a manner, no different than the sort to be drawn away through the course of taking epistemological preference. Certain facts, agreements and events will unduly be assigned a preponderance of emphasis whilst others, though critical in their own time and to its chief actors, will be glossed over for their lack of sexiness to the keen observer of historical fact. Certain moments will be lost and others manufactured in their place, and these conscripted fabrications will define future idealizations of this moment of time—this, as you are sure to find, deeply critical moment in the history of our species.
”
”
Ashim Shanker (Inward and Toward (Migrations, #3))
“
There is a great deal of testing going on early in the relationship. The misogynist is defining for himself—often without even realizing it—just how far he can go. Unfortunately, his partner believes that by not confronting or questioning his behavior when he hurts her feelings, she is expressing her love for him. Many women fall into this trap. We have been taught since we were little girls that love is the answer. It will make everything better, all we have to do is to get a man to love us and then life will be good and we will live happily ever after. We have also been taught that in the service of getting that love, certain behaviors are expected of us. Some of those are "smoothing things over," backing down, apologizing, and "making nice." As it turns out, these are the very behaviors that encourage the misogynist to mistreat his partner. It is as if we've made both a spoken and an unspoken contract, or agreement, with the misogynist. The spoken agreement says: I love you and I want to be with you. The unspoken agreement, which comes from our deepseated needs and fears, is far more powerful and binding. Your part in the unspoken agreement is: My emotional security depends on your love, and to get that I will be compliant and renounce my own needs and wishes. His part of that agreement is: My emotional security depends on my being in total control.
”
”
Susan Forward (Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them: When Loving Hurts and You Don't Know Why)
“
Now, I don’t want to be reductive, but I’ll bet half of you are here
so you can someday wheedle money out of people—torts people, there’s nothing
to be ashamed of!—and the other half of you are here because you think you’re
going to change the world. You’re here because you dream of arguing before the
Supreme Court, because you think the real challenge of the law lies in the blank
spaces between the lines of the Constitution. But I’m here to tell you—it doesn’t.
The truest, the most intellectually engaging, the richest field of the law is
contracts. Contracts are not just sheets of paper promising you a job, or a house,
or an inheritance: in its purest, truest, broadest sense, contracts govern every
realm of law. When we choose to live in a society, we choose to live under a
contract, and to abide by the rules that a contract dictates for us—the
Constitution itself is a contract, albeit a malleable contract, and the question of
just how malleable it is, exactly, is where law intersects with politics—and it is
under the rules, explicit or otherwise, of this contract that we promise not to kill,
and to pay our taxes, and not to steal. But in this case, we are both the creators of
and bound by this contract: as citizens of this country, we have assumed, from
birth, an obligation to respect and follow its terms, and we do so daily.
“In this class, you will of course learn the mechanics of contracts—how one is
created, how one is broken, how binding one is and how to unbind yourself from
one—but you will also be asked to consider law itself as a series of contracts.
Some are more fair—and this one time, I’ll allow you to say such a thing—than
others. But fairness is not the only, or even the most important, consideration in
law: the law is not always fair. Contracts are not fair, not always. But sometimes
they are necessary, these unfairnesses, because they are necessary for the proper
functioning of society. In this class you will learn the difference between what is
fair and what is just, and, as important, between what is fair and what is
necessary. You will learn about the obligations we have to one another as
members of society, and how far society should go in enforcing those
obligations. You will learn to see your life—all of our lives—as a series of
agreements, and it will make you rethink not only the law but this country itself,
and your place in it.
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
Political philosophers of the Enlightenment, from Hobbes and Locke, reaching down to John Rawls and his followers today, have found the roots of political order and the motive of political obligation in a social contract – an agreement, overt or implied, to be bound by principles to which all reasonable citizens can assent. Although the social contract exists in many forms, its ruling principle was announced by Hobbes with the assertion that there can be ‘no obligation on any man which ariseth not from some act of his own’.1 My obligations are my own creation, binding because freely chosen. When you and I exchange promises, the resulting contract is freely undertaken, and any breach does violence not merely to the other but also to the self, since it is a repudiation of a well-grounded rational choice. If we could construe our obligation to the state on the model of a contract, therefore, we would have justified it in terms that all rational beings must accept. Contracts are the paradigms of self-chosen obligations – obligations that are not imposed, commanded or coerced but freely undertaken. When law is founded in a social contract, therefore, obedience to the law is simply the other side of free choice. Freedom and obedience are one and the same. Such a contract is addressed to the abstract and universal Homo oeconomicus who comes into the world without attachments, without, as Rawls puts it, a ‘conception of the good’, and with nothing save his rational self-interest to guide him. But human societies are by their nature exclusive, establishing privileges and benefits that are offered only to the insider, and which cannot be freely bestowed on all-comers without sacrificing the trust on which social harmony depends. The social contract begins from a thought-experiment, in which a group of people gather together to decide on their common future. But if they are in a position to decide on their common future, it is because they already have one: because they recognize their mutual togetherness and reciprocal dependence, which makes it incumbent upon them to settle how they might be governed under a common jurisdiction in a common territory. In short, the social contract requires a relation of membership. Theorists of the social contract write as though it presupposes only the first-person singular of free rational choice. In fact, it presupposes a first-person plural, in which the burdens of belonging have already been assumed.
”
”
Roger Scruton (How to Be a Conservative)
“
Less is more. “A few extremely well-chosen objectives,” Grove wrote, “impart a clear message about what we say ‘yes’ to and what we say ‘no’ to.” A limit of three to five OKRs per cycle leads companies, teams, and individuals to choose what matters most. In general, each objective should be tied to five or fewer key results. (See chapter 4, “Superpower #1: Focus and Commit to Priorities.”) Set goals from the bottom up. To promote engagement, teams and individuals should be encouraged to create roughly half of their own OKRs, in consultation with managers. When all goals are set top-down, motivation is corroded. (See chapter 7, “Superpower #2: Align and Connect for Teamwork.”) No dictating. OKRs are a cooperative social contract to establish priorities and define how progress will be measured. Even after company objectives are closed to debate, their key results continue to be negotiated. Collective agreement is essential to maximum goal achievement. (See chapter 7, “Superpower #2: Align and Connect for Teamwork.”) Stay flexible. If the climate has changed and an objective no longer seems practical or relevant as written, key results can be modified or even discarded mid-cycle. (See chapter 10, “Superpower #3: Track for Accountability.”) Dare to fail. “Output will tend to be greater,” Grove wrote, “when everybody strives for a level of achievement beyond [their] immediate grasp. . . . Such goal-setting is extremely important if what you want is peak performance from yourself and your subordinates.” While certain operational objectives must be met in full, aspirational OKRs should be uncomfortable and possibly unattainable. “Stretched goals,” as Grove called them, push organizations to new heights. (See chapter 12, “Superpower #4: Stretch for Amazing.”) A tool, not a weapon. The OKR system, Grove wrote, “is meant to pace a person—to put a stopwatch in his own hand so he can gauge his own performance. It is not a legal document upon which to base a performance review.” To encourage risk taking and prevent sandbagging, OKRs and bonuses are best kept separate. (See chapter 15, “Continuous Performance Management: OKRs and CFRs.”) Be patient; be resolute. Every process requires trial and error. As Grove told his iOPEC students, Intel “stumbled a lot of times” after adopting OKRs: “We didn’t fully understand the principal purpose of it. And we are kind of doing better with it as time goes on.” An organization may need up to four or five quarterly cycles to fully embrace the system, and even more than that to build mature goal muscle.
”
”
John Doerr (Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs)
“
When I visited my father yesterday, I went upstairs to my old room. For a time after my marriage the maid had occupied it. It was unused now, and I found in it many of the objects I had kept around me ten years ago, before I left for school. There was a Persian print over the bed, of a woman dropping a flower on her interred lover - visible in his burial gown under the stones; a bookcase my mother had bought me; a crude water color of a pitcher and glass done by Bertha, some nearly forgotten girl. I sat in the rocking chair, feeling that my life was already long enough to contain nearly forgotten periods, a loose group of undifferentiated years. Recently, I had begun to feel old, and it occurred to me that I might be concerned with age merely because I might never attain any great age, and that there might be a mechanism in us that tried to give us all of life when there was danger of being cut off. And while I knew it was absurd for me to think of my “age,” I had apparently come to a point where the perspectives of time appeared far more contracted than they had a short while ago. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of “irretrievable.” This rather ordinary and, in some ways mean, room, had for twelve years been a standard site, the bearded Persian under the round stones and the water color, fixtures of my youth. Ten years ago I was at school; and before that… It was suddenly given me to experience one of those consummating glimpses that come to all of us periodically. The room, delusively, dwindled and became a tiny square, swiftly drawn back, myself and all objects in it growing smaller. This was not a mere visual trick. I understood it to be a revelation of the ephemeral agreements by which we live and pace ourselves. I looked around at the restored walls. This place which I avoided ordinarily, had great personal significance for me. But it was not here thirty years go. Birds flew through this space. It may be gone fifty years hence. Such reality, I thought, is actually very dangerous, very treacherous. It should not be trusted. And I rose rather unsteadily from the rocker, feeling that there was an element of treason to common sense in the very objects of common sense. Or that there was no trusting them, save through wide agreement, and that my separation from such agreement had brought me perilously far from the necessary trust, auxiliary to all sanity. I had not done well alone. I doubted whether anyone could. To be pushed upon oneself entirely put the very facts of simple existence in doubt. Perhaps the war could teach me, by violence, what I had been unable to learn during those months in the room. Perhaps I could sound creation through other means. Perhaps. But things were now out of my hands. The next move was the world’s. I could not bring myself to regret it...
This is my last civilian day... I am no longer to be held accountable for myself; I am grateful for that. I am in other hands, relieved of self-determination, freedom canceled.
Hurray for regular hours!
And for the supervision of the spirit!
Long live regimentation!
”
”
Saul Bellow (Dangling Man)
“
When I visited my father yesterday, I went upstairs to my old room. For a time after my marriage the maid had occupied it. It was unused now, and I found in it many of the objects I had kept around me ten years ago, before I left for school. There was a Persian print over the bed, of a woman dropping a flower on her interred lover - visible in his burial gown under the stones; a bookcase my mother had bought me; a crude water color of a pitcher and glass done by Bertha, some nearly forgotten girl. I sat in the rocking chair, feeling that my life was already long enough to contain nearly forgotten periods, a loose group of undifferentiated years. Recently, I had begun to feel old, and it occurred to me that I might be concerned with age merely because I might never attain any great age, and that there might be a mechanism in us that tried to give us all of life when there was danger of being cut off. And while I knew it was absurd for me to think of my "age," I had apparently come to a point where the perspectives of time appeared far more contracted than they had a short while ago. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of “irretrievable.” This rather ordinary and, in some ways mean, room, had for twelve years been a standard site, the bearded Persian under the round stones and the water color, fixtures of my youth. Ten years ago I was at school; and before that… It was suddenly given me to experience one of those one of those consummating glimpses that come to all of us periodically. The room, delusively, dwindled and became a tiny square, swiftly drawn back, myself and all objects in it growing smaller. This was not a mere visual trick. I understood it to be a revelation of the ephemeral agreements by which we live and pace ourselves. I looked around at the restored walls. This place which I avoided ordinarily, had great personal significance for me. But it was not here thirty years go. Birds flew through this space. It may be gone fifty years hence. Such reality, I thought, is actually very dangerous, very treacherous. It should not be trusted. And I rose rather unsteadily from the rocker, feeling that there was an element of treason to common sense in the very objects of common sense. Or that there was no trusting them, save through wide agreement, and that my separation from such agreement had brought me perilously far from the necessary trust, auxiliary to all sanity. I had not done well alone. I doubted whether anyone could/. To be pished upon oneself entirely put the very facts of simple existence in doubt. Perhaps the war could teach me, by violence, what I had been unable to learn during those months in the room. Perhaps I could sound creation through other means. Perhaps. But things were now out of my hands. The next move was the world's. I could not bring myself to regret it...
This is my last civilian day... I am no longer to be held accountable for myself; I am grateful for that. I am in other hands, relieved of self-determination, freedom canceled.
Hurray for regular hours!
And for the supervision of the spirit!
Long live regimentation!
”
”
Saul Bellow (Dangling Man)
“
When I visited my father yesterday, I went upstairs to my old room. For a time after my marriage the maid had occupied it. It was unused now, and I found in it many of the objects I had kept around me ten years ago, before I left for school. There was a Persian print over the bed, of a woman dropping a flower on her interred lover - visible in his burial gown under the stones; a bookcase my mother had bought me; a crude water color of a pitcher and glass done by Bertha, some nearly forgotten girl. I sat in the rocking chair, feeling that my life was already long enough to contain nearly forgotten periods, a loose group of undifferentiated years. Recently, I had begun to feel old, and it occurred to me that I might be concerned with age merely because I might never attain any great age, and that there might be a mechanism in us that tried to give us all of life when there was danger of being cut off. And while I knew it was absurd for me to think of my "age," I had apparently come to a point where the perspectives of time appeared far more contracted than they had a short while ago. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of “irretrievable.” This rather ordinary and, in some ways mean, room, had for twelve years been a standard site, the bearded Persian under the round stones and the water color, fixtures of my youth. Ten years ago I was at school; and before that… It was suddenly given me to experience one of those one of those consummating glimpses that come to all of us periodically. The room, delusively, dwindled and became a tiny square, swiftly drawn back, myself and all objects in it growing smaller. This was not a mere visual trick. I understood it to be a revelation of the ephemeral agreements by which we live and pace ourselves. I looked around at the restored walls. This place which I avoided ordinarily, had great personal significance for me. But nit was not here thirty years go. Birds flew through this space. It may be gone fifty years hence. Such reality, I thought, is actually very dangerous, very treacherous. It should not be trusted. And I rose rather unsteadily from the rocker, feeling that there was an element of treason to common sense in the very objects of common sense. Or that there was no trusting them, save through wide agreement, and that my separation from such agreement had brought me perilously far from the necessary trust, auxiliary to all sanity. I had not done well alone. I doubted whether anyone could/. To be pished upon oneself entirely put the very facts of simple existence in doubt. Perhaps the war could teach me, by violence, what I had been unable to learn during those months in the room. Perhaps I could sound creation through other means. Perhaps. But things were now out of my hands. The next move was the world's. I could not bring myself to regret it...
This is my last civilian day... I am no longer to be held accountable for myself; I am grateful for that. I am in other hands, relieved of self-determination, freedom canceled.
Hurray for regular hours!
And for the supervision of the spirit!
Long live regimentation!
”
”
Saul Bellow (Dangling Man)
“
These negative-sum games of coercion and extortion lead to highly inefficient outcomes, and they can only be avoided by carefully crafting the ex ante rules to avoid such coercion and extortion. These coercive threats that make negative-sum games possible, and that decrease the payoffs of positive-sum games, cannot be neatly distinguished in practice from innocent externalities: any act or omission of one party that harms another, i.e. any externality, doubles as a threat, whether a tiny threat or a large threat, from which an extortion premium, its size depending on the size of the threat, can be extracted. In order to try to distinguish coercion, and the extortion it gives rise to, from an "innocent" externality that can be cured by efficient bargaining, there are ways to exclude some of these extreme possibilities from the prior allocation of rights. And indeed criminal and tort law do this: they distinguish purposeful behavior from negligent, and negligent from the mere unfortunate accident. But any such ex ante distiction contradicts the claim that the Coase Theorem applies to any prior allocation of rights. Voluntary bargaining cannnot give rise to tort and criminal law. Quite the opposite is true: at least a basic tort law is necessary to make voluntary bargaining possible. Tort law (and the associated property law which defines boundaries for the tort of trespass) is logically prior to contract law: good contracts depend on good tort and property law. Without a good tort law already in place, nobody, including the "protection firms" posited by anarcho-capitalism, can engage in the voluntary bargains that are necessary for efficient outcomes. This is not to claim that the polar opposite of anarcho-capitalism must be true, i.e. that "the government" along the lines we are familiar with is necessary. Instead, a system of political property rights that is unbundled and decentralized is possible, and may give rise to many of the benefits (e.g. peaceful competition between jurisdictions) promised by anarcho-capitalism. But political property rights are not based on a Rothbardian assumption of voluntary agreement -- instead, in these systems the procedural law of political property rights, as well as much of substantive property rights and tort law, is prior to contract law, and their origin necessarily involves some degree of coercion. Political and legal systems have not, do not, and cannot originate solely from voluntary contract. Both traditional "social contract" justifications of the state and the Rothbardian idea that contracts can substitute for the state are false: in all cases coercion is involved, both at the origin and in the ongoing practice of legal procedure. In both cases the term "contract" is used, implying voluntary agreement, when the term "treaty", a kind of agreement often forced by coercion, would far more accurately describe the reality. The real task for libertarians and other defenders of sound economics and law is not to try to devise law from purely voluntary origins, an impossible task, but to make sure the ex ante laws make voluntary bargaining possible and discourage coercion and extortion (by any party, including political property rights holders or governments) as much as possible.
”
”
Anonymous
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An automobile yields to its driver regardless of his expertise and dexterity. If a driver decides to run a car into a solid wall, the car will hit the wall without objection. Riding a horse, however, presents a different perspective. It matters to the horse who the rider is, and a proper ride can be achieved only after a series of information exchanges between the horse and the rider. Horse and rider form an information-bonded system in which guidance and control are achieved by a second degree agreement (agreement based on a common perception) preceded by a psychological contract.
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Jamshid Gharajedaghi (Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity: A Platform for Designing Business Architecture)
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In putting an agreement together, there are further transaction costs. Negotiations can be drawn out. Bargainers sometimes overreach in trying to squeeze out a good bargain, causing an impasse and spoiling what could have been a mutually beneficial deal. After the fact, there are still other transaction costs. Monitoring work costs time and money. The enforcement of contracts and the prevention and settling of disputes do not come for free. If agreements are not watertight, productive opportunities may be forgone.
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John McMillan (Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets)
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Mercy.
Do any of the gods care about such things or only that their contracts and agreements are fulfilled?
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T.K. Thorne (Angels at the Gate)
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Real empowerment comes from having both the principles and the practices understood and applied at all levels of the organization. Practices are the what to do’s, specific applications that fit specific circumstances. Principles are the why to do’s, the elements upon which applications or practices are built. Without understanding the principles of a given task, people become incapacitated when the situation changes and different practices are required to be successful. When training people, we often teach skills and practices, the specific how to of a given task. But when we teach practices without principles, we tend to make people dependent on us or others for further instruction and direction. Principle-centered leaders are men and women of character who work with competence “on farms” with “seed and soil” on the basis of natural principles and build those principles into the center of their lives, into the center of their relationships with others, into the center of their agreements and contracts, into their management processes, and into their mission statements. The challenge is to be a light, not a judge; to be a model, not a critic.
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Stephen R. Covey (Principle-Centered Leadership)
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Being an entrepreneur requires a great amount of trust and confidence. It requires bold moves and big ideas that change the way people think about life. When entrepreneurs become less confident and less trusting effectiveness diminishes. When they get burned by their partners they do learn, but they learn bad lessons. They learn to spend more time covering their own butts. They learn to spend more time and money writing contracts and agreements.
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Mike Moyer (Slicing Pie: Fund Your Company Without Funds)
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Take for example, a contract with a section entitled “Default; Breach; Remedies.” Why not change this subhead to “What Happens If Parties Cannot Adhere to This Agreement?
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Janelle Orsi (Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy: Helping People Build Cooperatives, Social Enterprise, and Local Sustainable Economies)
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The March 26, 1979 Agreement between Israel and America states in quite simple, easily understood terms that if Israel’s “security” is “threaten(ed),” including “an armed attack against Israel” that the United States “on an urgent basis” will “be responsive to military and economic assistance requirements of Israel.” That’s not very subtle diplomatic language for ‘if you are invaded militarily, we’ll respond militarily.’ Frankly, it might have been better from a Genesis 12:3 perspective (“I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you”) if the 1979 military defense agreement with Israel had been 202 pages, with multiple sub-parts, and several whereas clauses, instead of two pages which can’t be easily misinterpreted. Any lawyer will tell you that the most difficult contract to defeat by finding a ‘loophole’ is a contract that is short, simple, and straight forward. That’s exactly what America signed with Israel about thirty years ago.
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John Price (The End of America: The Role of Islam in the End Times and Biblical Warnings to Flee America)
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For my last 15 years at United I had a rolling one-year contract and an agreement that if I was sacked I would be entitled to two years’ salary, even if I turned up and started managing Manchester City the day after I was fired. That was more than enough for me.
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Alex Ferguson (Leading: Lessons in leadership from the legendary Manchester United manager)
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Because unity in faith is a gift, dialogue can never be a search for compromise, never have as a goal a negotiated agreement like a business contract.
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Francis George
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A quiet peacefulness stole through him, dimming the sharp sense of loss. His arms contracted around her, the pressure fierce.
“I’m coming to find you once the trial’s over,” he murmured against the top of her head.
She kissed his chest. “You’d better.”
“We’re not done,” he told her. “Not by a long shot.”
She hummed in agreement and caressed his chest with her fingertips. Nate stroked the length of her spine, savoring the silky texture of her skin. He missed her already and she was still lying naked in his arms.
“Just a few more days and this’ll all be over.”
“Don’t make me wait too long, okay?”
“I won’t.” He leaned his head back, tipped her chin up with one hand until she met his eyes. If there was even a tiny part of her that doubted his intentions, he wanted that cleared up now. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone before.”
Her eyes softened and she smiled that serene smile that soothed him deep inside. “Me neither.”
He could drown in this woman and die a happy man. He admired her so damn much. “You’re strong, baby. So much stronger than you even realize. You’ve got this.”
“Have I got you, though?”
Normally the question would have freaked him out. Hearing it from her made him feel insanely possessive. “Yeah, you’ve got me, baby.” He was falling so hard and so fast, and it didn’t even faze him.
“Then I can handle everything else on my own,” she whispered, and pulled his mouth down to hers.
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Kaylea Cross (Avenged (Hostage Rescue Team, #5))
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Later that day Julie and I got into a conversation about authorised biography after I told her about Owen. “It [authorised biography] verges on autobiography,” she said. “Yes, it does,” I agreed. “You’re not going to be able to put in the shit,” she declared. But she fully understood my position. “There have been a number of cases,” I pointed out, in which biographers had signed agreements with estates stipulating they could not interfere “because the biographer is afraid that as in a romance, when the family falls out of love with you, then you’re stuck. But I just think that changes the atmosphere, to face Michael with a contract and say, ‘Sign this.’ I couldn’t do it.” Julie agreed, “I don’t think that would work with Michael. He would put his back up.
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Carl Rollyson (A Private Life of Michael Foot)
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Shake Law (Shake), is a free iPhone app that makes writing contracts simple, especially when dealing with agreements that would normally be verbal.
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Jason SurfrApp (Creativity For Sale: How I Made $1,000,000 Wearing T-Shirts and How You Can Turn Your Passion Into Profit, Too)
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In the end it’s the tax-deferred 1031 exchange that gets massive use by Millionaire Real Estate Investors. This program in the IRS tax code allows you to sell and buy properties without having to declare capital gains or pay those taxes. It’s a very straightforward procedure, but it takes some planning. First, you need to hire a 1031 Qualified Intermediary before you close on the sale of one of your properties. That person will act as your guide and escrow agent as you move through the sale of one property and the purchase of the next. After the sale of your “relinquished property” you have 45 days to identify the “replacement property” and a total of 180 days to close on that second property. You want to be looking for the replacement property before or during the marketing of the property you are selling. If you find a good opportunity, you can enter into a contract with a right to assign clause if your first property does not sell or with a 1031 clause in the purchase agreement if it does. Many people have the mistaken notion that you are exchanging your property with someone else: You take theirs, and they take yours. In some cases that can be done, but it is neither the purpose nor the requirement of a 1031 exchange. A 1031 exchange is designed for you to “exchange” one property in your portfolio (sell it) and replace it with another one that you wish to buy. It allows you to keep purchasing larger, more expensive properties without having to pay capital gains taxes on the ones you sell. This is a wonderful way to keep your money working for you.
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Gary Keller (The Millionaire Real Estate Investor)
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Real empowerment comes from having both the principles and the practices understood and applied at all levels of the organization. Practices are the what to do’s, specific applications that fit specific circumstances. Principles are the why to do’s, the elements upon which applications or practices are built. Without understanding the principles of a given task, people become incapacitated when the situation changes and different practices are required to be successful. When training people, we often teach skills and practices, the specific how to of a given task. But when we teach practices without principles, we tend to make people dependent on us or others for further instruction and direction. Principle-centered leaders are men and women of character who work with competence “on farms” with “seed and soil” on the basis of natural principles and build those principles into the center of their lives, into the center of their relationships with others, into the center of their agreements and contracts, into their management processes, and into their mission statements. The challenge is to be a light, not a judge; to be a model, not a critic. Section 1 PERSONAL and INTERPERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS
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Stephen R. Covey (Principle-Centered Leadership)
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Respect yourself, others, the elders and the young ones
Respect your peers, colleagues, manager, and your clients or customers
Respect yours and other people’s partner, relationship and marriage
Respect yours and others culture, religion, faith and God.
Respect time, business meetings, appointment, agreements or contracts.
Respect life, nature, rules and the law.
Respect if you want to be respect and respect if you want to make it in life.
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D.J. Kyos
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We have all unknowingly entered into agreements or soul contracts in the spirit world which direct our behavior in the present moment.
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Laurence Galian (666: Connection with Crowley)
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On one occasion he capitulated to the drinking of a talented gardener whose sprees he agreed to tolerate so long as the man confined them to certain holidays. In his employment contract, Washington stated that he would be given “four dollars at Christmas with which to be drunk four days and four nights; two dollars at Easter, to effect the same purpose; two dollars at Whitsuntide to be drunk for two days; a dram in the morning and a drink of grog at dinner at noon.” It was typical of Washington’s thoroughness to pin down such an agreement in writing.
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Ron Chernow (Washington: A Life)
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the best agreement was an honest contract that benefited both sides. “That way,” he’d said, “the two parties are earnest in their mutual participation because each sees the advantage to adhering to the contract.
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S.H. Jucha (The Silver Ships (Silver Ships, #1))
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Shervin Pishevar’s other star investment, Uber, was embroiled in its own case about whether it was as humble and powerless as it claimed. A group of drivers had sued Uber, as well as its rival Lyft, in federal court, seeking to be treated as employees under California’s labor laws. Their case was weakened by the fact that they had signed agreements to be contractors not subject to those laws. They had accepted the terms and conditions that cast each driver as an entrepreneur—a free agent choosing her hours, needing none of the regulatory infrastructure that others depended on. They had bought into one of the reigning fantasies of MarketWorld: that people were their own miniature corporations. Then some of the drivers realized that in fact they were simply working people who wanted the same protections that so many others did from power, exploitation, and the vicissitudes of circumstance. Because the drivers had signed that agreement, they had blocked the easy path to being employees. But under the law, if they could prove that a company had pervasive, ongoing power over them as they did their work, they could still qualify as employees. To be a contractor is to give up certain protections and benefits in exchange for independence, and thus that independence must be genuine. The case inspired the judges in the two cases, Edward Chen and Vince Chhabria, to grapple thoughtfully with the question of where power lurks in a new networked age. It was no surprise that Uber and Lyft took the rebel position. Like Airbnb, Uber and Lyft claimed not to be powerful. Uber argued that it was just a technology firm facilitating links between passengers and drivers, not a car service. The drivers who had signed contracts were robust agents of their own destiny. Judge Chen derided this argument. “Uber is no more a ‘technology company,’ ” he wrote, “than Yellow Cab is a ‘technology company’ because it uses CB radios to dispatch taxi cabs, John Deere is a ‘technology company’ because it uses computers and robots to manufacture lawn mowers, or Domino Sugar is a ‘technology company’ because it uses modern irrigation techniques to grow its sugar cane.” Judge Chhabria similarly cited and tore down Lyft’s claim to be “an uninterested bystander of sorts, merely furnishing a platform that allows drivers and riders to connect.” He wrote: Lyft concerns itself with far more than simply connecting random users of its platform. It markets itself to customers as an on-demand ride service, and it actively seeks out those customers. It gives drivers detailed instructions about how to conduct themselves. Notably, Lyft’s own drivers’ guide and FAQs state that drivers are “driving for Lyft.” Therefore, the argument that Lyft is merely a platform, and that drivers perform no service for Lyft, is not a serious one.
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Anand Giridharadas (Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World)
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According to Ivar, he and Dr Glowacki reached a final agreement on July 2, 1925, just days before the new participating preferred shares were to be sold. Ivar’s assistant, Karin Bökman, said she witnessed the signatures to the secret deal; she certified the translation of the original contract, as did a Polish notary. Dr Glowacki signed on behalf of the “Treasury of the Polish State,” and Ivar signed on behalf of International Match Corporation.32 Ivar apparently didn’t need to use the stamp he had prepared with a facsimile of Dr Glowacki’s signature. Like the B Shares, this contract was a marvel of financial innovation. First, the agreement provided for the creation of a new Dutch company called N.V. Maatschappij Garanta, or Garanta for short. Garanta would be incorporated in Amsterdam, and its shares would be owned by Polish citizens nominated by Dr Glowacki. Garanta would take over the entire match industry in Poland, from production to sale. Garanta also would assume “certain exchange losses which have been sustained by International Match Corporation in connection with financial transactions in Poland. This item is to be carried as an asset on the books of Garanta.”33 Apparently, Ivar had continued gambling on foreign exchange rates during 1925. This time, though, he had used International Match’s money, and this time he had lost. The secret agreement shifted those losses from International Match to Garanta. Durant and Berning were unaware of these losses, or their transfer.
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Frank Partnoy (The Match King: Ivar Kreuger and the Financial Scandal of the Century)
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There was one major problem with this provision. International Match did not have 17 million dollars. Indeed, International Match did not have any money. Remember that Ivar previously had moved all of the cash International Match had raised from the gold debentures to Continental, the Liechtenstein subsidiary. Then, he had used the cash from the participating preferred shares to repay the gold debentures. That meant all the money was gone. In order to comply with the secret Poland contract, International Match would need to raise another 17 million dollars right away. In other words, Ivar had signed a promise to give Poland 17 million dollars he didn’t have. The second Poland agreement also contained some extraordinary protections for International Match, terms that would have impressed Lee Higginson’s bankers, if they had seen them. For example, Ivar obtained an agreement that if “for one reason or another” Garanta did not earn enough profit to pay the 24 percent interest payments due to Poland, those payments would be covered by “the income of the Polish Alcohol Monopoly or … the Polish Tobacco Monopoly.”34 In other words, Ivar obtained a promise of payment supported not only by the match monopoly, but by unaffiliated monopolies on alcohol and tobacco. Ivar also included a binary foreign exchange option, a kind of derivative contract, to protect International Match from any declines in the value of the dollar: “International Match Corporation shall have the right to obtain payment of interest in Dutch guilders or US dollars according to its choice and for all such payments one dollar shall be counted as 2½ guilders.”35 Given that Garanta’s shareholders would be nominated by Dr Glowacki, how would Ivar retain control of Garanta? Here, as well, Ivar created another innovative financial provision: During the first four years until October 1, 1929, International Match Corporation shall have the right to appoint the managing director of Garanta who is alone entitled to sign for the company. On or after October 1, 1929, International Match Corporation has the right to acquire 60 percent of the shares at par.36 This option term secured both initial control over Garanta and the right to own a majority of Garanta’s shares in the future. Either way, Ivar, not Dr Glowacki, would have control.
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Frank Partnoy (The Match King: Ivar Kreuger and the Financial Scandal of the Century)
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A wage-labor contract is, ostensibly, a free contract between equals—but an agreement between equals in which both agree that once one of them punches the time clock, they won’t be equals any more.
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David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years)
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A smart contract is code that can create and transform arbitrary data or tokens on top of the blockchain to which it belongs. Powerfully, it allows the user to trustlessly encode rules for any type of transaction and even create scarce assets with specialized functionality. Many of the clauses of traditional business agreements could be shifted to a smart contract, which not only would enumerate but also algorithmically enforce those clauses.
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Campbell R. Harvey (DeFi and the Future of Finance)
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An amendment and restatement is an amendment which amends the agreement by restating it in its entirety, with the amendments incorporated into the body of the new contract.
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Charles M. Fox (Working With Contracts: What Law School Doesn't Teach You, 2nd Edition (PLI's Corporate and Securities Law Library) 2nd Edition)
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for example, guarantees, promissory notes and security agreements.
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Charles M. Fox (Working With Contracts: What Law School Doesn't Teach You, 2nd Edition (PLI's Corporate and Securities Law Library) 2nd Edition)
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By the time the national team prepared to compete in the 2013 Algarve Cup in late February and early March, collective bargaining agreement negotiations had ramped up considerably. With the team’s existing contract having been expired since the end of 2012, the players were also no longer bound by the no-strike clause in their contract and a boycott was on the table. In February 2013, while the team was in Nashville for their final friendly match before the Algarve Cup started, discussion turned to whether they should go on strike and skip the upcoming tournament in Portugal. “We decided as a team that we want to go on strike to get more money for our new CBA, and we were going to go on strike until we understood everything about the NWSL, before we were forced to decide which team to play for in allocation,” says Hope Solo. “There were a few players in the room that didn’t know how to vote, but the rest of the team raised our hands and said it’s time to take a stand.
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Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women Who Changed Soccer)
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Following is a sample list of some points you will want to include in your business plan. These can all be organized in a very professional manner in a notebook that includes tabs. • Executive summary. Include a one- or two-page summary of your plan. • Mission statement. Include one or two paragraphs that succinctly state your purpose. • Background. Present information about yourself and your experience. • Financial statement. List your assets, liabilities, and net worth. • Site location. Include a list of benefits, maps, and proximity to shopping and schools. • Demographics. Present information about the people living in the area (income, education, etc.). • Competitor analysis. Determine who your competitors are and present average rents and sales comparisons. • Marketing strategy. Define your target market (tenants, buyers, etc.). • Financial analysis. Include historical and pro forma operating statements. • Improvements. Define capital improvements to be made to the property. • Purchase agreement. Include your sales contract with the seller. • Exhibits. Include photographs of the property, tax returns, sample floor plans, and the like.
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Steve Berges (The Complete Guide to Buying and Selling Apartment Buildings)
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First, you need to hire a 1031 Qualified Intermediary before you close on the sale of one of your properties. That person will act as your guide and escrow agent as you move through the sale of one property and the purchase of the next. After the sale of your “relinquished property” you have 45 days to identify the “replacement property” and a total of 180 days to close on that second property. You want to be looking for the replacement property before or during the marketing of the property you are selling. If you find a good opportunity, you can enter into a contract with a right to assign clause if your first property does not sell or with a 1031 clause in the purchase agreement if it does.
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Gary Keller (The Millionaire Real Estate Investor)
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It is clearly evident that unethical and corrupt practices were the bedrock of Prannoy Roy journalism. After getting the Doordarshan contract through patronage and a quid pro quo, he shrewdly cashed out over Rs.23 crores (to his personal account in 1994-95) in a short span of few years (see Table 1 below) by selling shares at astronomical valuations to a foreign investor. Simply put, through political patronage he built a business and cashed out for personal profit. Table 1. Source: NDTV public issue prospectus filed with SEBI in 2004. Date of transfer No. of Equity Shares (Face value of Rs.10) Cost per Shares (Rs.) Price (Rs.) Nature of payment No. of Equity Shares (of Face Value of Rs.4) post splitting 21 Oct 1994 48,140 10 675 Cash 120,350 16 May 1995 99,070 10 675 Cash 247,675 Jul 21 1995 121,625 10 675 Cash 304,063 Aug 22 1995 81,481 10 675 Cash 203,702 After inking favorable deals with Doordarshan, many people in Central Government in 1997 helped NDTV to clinch a magical figure deal with Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV[3] during the liberalization period. The Lutyens Delhi’s cozy club arm twisted Murdoch into an agreement with Prannoy Roy’s NDTV to launch the Star News channel.
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Sree Iyer (NDTV Frauds V2.0 - The Real Culprit: A completely revamped version that shows the extent to which NDTV and a Cabal will stoop to hide a saga of Money Laundering, Tax Evasion and Stock Manipulation.)
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A habit contract is a verbal or written agreement in which you state your commitment to a particular habit and the punishment that will occur if you don’t follow through. Then you find one or two people to act as your accountability partners and sign off on the contract with you.
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James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones)
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list of documents that may be required. It can look intimidating, especially if you’ve not been actively involved in your family finances, but don’t panic. If you can’t find all of them or don’t have access, there is a later step in the divorce process called “discovery,” when you can legally compel the other side to provide copies of anything else you need: •Individual income tax returns (federal, state, local) for past three years •Business income tax returns (federal, state, local) for past three years •Proof of your current income (paystubs, statements, or paid invoices) •Proof of spouse’s income (paystubs, statements, or paid invoices) •Checking, savings, and certificate statements (personal and business) for past three years •Credit card and loan statements (personal and business) for past three years •Investment, pension plan, and retirement account statements for past three years •Mortgage statement and loan documents for all properties you have an interest in •Real estate appraisals •Property tax documents •Employment contracts •Benefit statements •Social Security statements •Life, homeowner’s, and auto insurance policies •Wills and trust agreements •Health insurance cards •Vehicle titles and/or registration •Monthly budget worksheet •List of personal property (furnishings, jewelry, electronics, artwork) •List of property acquired by gift or inheritance or owned prior to marriage •Prenuptial agreements •Marriage license •Prior court orders directing payment of child support or spousal support Your attorney or financial advisor may ask for additional documents specific to your case. Some of these may not be applicable to you.
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Debra Doak (High-Conflict Divorce for Women: Your Guide to Coping Skills and Legal Strategies for All Stages of Divorce)
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A smart contract is a secure and unstoppable computer program representing an agreement that is automatically executable and enforceable.
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Imran Bashir (Mastering Blockchain: A Deep Dive Into Distributed Ledgers, Consensus Protocols, Smart Contracts, DApps, Cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, and More)
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The essence of authority, as he saw, was Law—that is, fiat—that is, effective communication running one way only. The essence of a libertarian system, as he also saw, was Contract—that is, mutual agreement—that is, effective communication running both ways. ("Redundance of control" is the technical cybernetic phrase.)
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Robert Anton Wilson (Coincidance: A Head Test)