The Paradox of A Work Contract

Trust and work - An employer-employee relationship requires trust. Here we show why that's incompatible with the idea of a "work contract". Meanwhile we see the growth of usage of the senseless concept of "Pseudolaw". We present evidences that the same paradox of "work contract" can be applied to most, if not any, contract. And, therefore, "Pseudolaw" can, by no means, be compared to the concept of "Pseudoscience", the underlying legitimate concept that the proposers of "Pseudolaw" use to (try to) leverage legitimacy from.

1. Direct to the point, the concept of "work contract" is paradoxical, at least for most Western jurisdictions. At least in those jurisdictions, any judge can interrupt a work contract if he finds that the trust in the relationship is broken. Note that, here, there is no argumentation needed about "who is to blame": maybe the judge will order one part to pay some costs, or find a part guilty for something that was brought into the case. But for the lack of the trust in the relationship to be assessed, no part has to be guilty for. In short, no trust, no employer-employee relationship.

2. Thus, (A) the validity of a "work contract" relies on mutual trust between signatories.

3. Now, what is a work contract? It is a "legal binding document" that forces parties into "rights and duties". For simplicity, we won't dive, here, in the definitions of "legal", "binding", "document", "right", "duty". Basically a work contract is a list of statements saying what comes into force if parties -- let's use this word -- "disagree".

Disagreement does not imply lack of trust. Disagreements are part of life. Trust, is, however, intrinsically, a concept that implies solution for disagreements. Shall a solution not come, then a third party (a mediator, or a governmental instance, like a courthouse) is enlisted to make a decision. This leads to the conclusion that any disagreement that cannot be solved by the parties themselves implies lack of solution for disagreements, which, in turn, therefore, implies lack of... trust.

4. Thus (B) the validity of trust relies on mutual agreement between signatories, that they will solve their disagreements by themselves, by pacific means.

5. If we take (A) and (B) at the same time into consideration, the conclusion is clear: if the parts cannot solve their disagreements internally, by themselves, it means that trust did not exist. Any work disagreement judicially disputed is a declaration of, at least by one part, of lack of trust. That is the end of the discussion, there is nothing more to argue, the trust-relationship is disrupted! The work relationship should not exist.

As a concrete example, why is an employee's salary stated on a work contract? Because the employee cannot trust that the employer will always correctly and timely pay that amount, without the need of an external conflict-solver. The act of signing a work contract with (employee's) rights is already a declaration of non-trust by the employee. And the act of signing a work contract with (employee's) duties, is already a declaration of non-trust by the employer.

(A + B) Therefore, (except for some reasons not brought in this article for simplicity), the very existence of a work contract is already a mutual declaration of non-trust, required to its existence. So, any work contract is void, if trust is a required condition.

6. Now, let's analyse other kind of contracts. If you hire a service, like, with your mobile carrier, you are not implied to trust you carrier. You need connectivity, there are limited suppliers on the market, and, if you don't trust any, you will be eventually forced to hire one. If the contract with a mobile carrier can be argued "optional", there are more obvious sort of contracts (telephony is normally "indirect" mandatory, you will be very likely excluded from essential services or acceptance from society if you deny hiring one). One of those obvious contracts is when you are obliged to hire a health insurance to travel, or, even to live in a place, like countries such as the Netherlands. This sort of contract are, a priori, arguably, non-void.

7. Thus (C), There may be sort of legitimate contracts, if they do not require trust.

8. Sometimes, we hire services without signing a contract, but which requires trust. If you go to a doctor, or hand out the key of your house for someone to inspect or to do some maintenance (or a quote for it, whatever) in your house, in the normal case, you do not sign any contract. In the worst cases, so many things could be wrong that the service provided by that third party would become no sense if one had to write, read and negotiate a contract for it. In this case, the contract is all based on trust. Touching your house or your body could potentially be very harmful, but in rare cases that goes so badly to justify a contract's enforcement.

9. Thus (D), There are trust relationships binding rights to duties for what a contract is never signed.

10. Your relationship with a lawyer is dependent of trust. Your lawyer cannot assist you, both "legally" and in practice, if there is no trust between the parts. And your lawyer cannot assist you without some sort of signature that you have authorized him to proceed in your behalf. There may exist some nuances, but your contract with your lawyer is surely not of the type (C) or (D).

11. Thus (E): A contract with a lawyer, by exhaustion, is a contract of the same type of a work contract: it relies on trust. And, as it contains duties and rights, a contract with a lawyer is so void as a work contract the case (A + B).

A common mistake of a lawyer's client is to think that the lawyer is "a friend", that he will solve "everything" for. This is a huge misunderstanding: A lawyer is a service provider just like any other. He has his own "legal situation", and will take his decisions based on his legal situation, not on yours. It is your task to let tracks that you have requested him this or that. There are "good" and "bad" lawyers (to be short), but the general rule-of-thumb is that a lawyer is to be compared as the mechanic of a car: if he is overloaded with work, he will do the quickest check as possible to find as little as possible (and you will think that you are happy because it did not cost you much money). If the garage is lacking work, he will check carefully for every possible detail, and let you decide what you want to be fixed (and you, non-expert, will take everything and pay more than you should, because "it is better to be safe than sorry" -- you will still be happy with him for his diligent work). The difference is that, normally, you can take your car to an independent garage that does independent diagnose: you will pay for the diagnose, but not for unneeded repairs. With a lawyer, normally there is no such an option: Depending on his workload, you will get non-diligent work or will pay more than necessary for.

12. Thus (F): Any contract that relies on trust is void if there are rights and duties signed in it. That is the case of work contract (A + B), or a contract with a lawyer (F). There are other sort of contracts, which don't rely on trust (C), and some trust relationships that don't have a contract signed (D).

13. We summarized (F) because they are the shortest formulations of the findings of this article, so far, and they are very important to be understood for the next step, that any contract is void (Ok, there are, arguably, nuances).

The question here is if the conflicts which don't rely on trust (C) or trust relationships that don't have a contract signed (D) are legitimate.

Services with non-signed contracts (D), in fact, do not really matter. A priori, it will be treated as mutual acceptance in Common Law jurisdictions, or a law of obligations in Civil Law jurisdictions. Regardless of their higher tradition, any country uses a mix of Common and Civil Law, some more than others. The underlying fact is that, for any jurisdiction, an "implicit contract" will be derived from the relationship (even if that could be arguably untrue, there, then, would be no contract at all, because no contract was signed!). So the requirement of trust is incompatible with the existence of an explicit contract (for all known types of contract involving trust).

14. Thus (G), If a relation of precedence between Trust and Contract can be derived, Trust precedes Contract. In any Western jurisdiction (if not in all), people are free to exercise Trust without signing a contract.

15. Thus (H), also, eventual "implicit contracts" derived from relationships for which no contract was signed cannot be used to legitimate the validity of any contract relying on Trust (D + G).

An equivalent formulation, In other words: non-signed, "implicit" contracts (D), would follow the same rule of non-validity of contracts relying on trust (F).

16. Then, the only legitimate sort of contract would be (C), the one that do not rely on trust. And here we find the last leap. To enforce the conditions of contract, a party must either: a - proceed in person, b - be supported by a solicitor, c - be supported by a lawyer. Although some corner cases may exist (still unlikely) a person cannot proceed to the highest instances of the "State of Law" in person, unless (if ever) for limited amounts of claims and specific cases, and also not represented by a solicitor. Indeed, a solicitor also will likely require a contract based on trust, so little difference makes. Indeed, in the majority of courts, they are not even allowed in. The normal case is that, for the fully enforcement of a contract, even if not based on trust, at some point, a lawyer will be required. Nevertheless, a contract with a lawyer is based on trust, and, thus void by moment of signing (F).

17. Thus (I), Any contract is void, because to be fully pledged and enforced, it will require a trust contract (with a lawyer), void from the moment of signing (F). Only corner cases and nuances are open yet to be argued, but corner cases and nuances are not the intended rule-of-thumb of the Spirit of the Laws.

18. So, not only the work contract is paradoxical for cyclically requiring trust, what makes the contract void -- a contract is already a sign of mistrust. Any kind of formal contract in the society will derive a contract based on trust, making them all void, except for possible corner cases and nuances.

The most influential decisions, regardless of being political, administrative, corporate, or judicial, are always held in private, in secrecy, behind closed-doors. What is put on paper is what was popularized as "Narrative", in the sense introduced by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (respect the reader or not that philosopher, we find the term itself useful to signify, in short, "an argument that is already 'bought' by a targeted audience"). The narrative-on-paper rarely reflects the real intentions of the decision-makers.

"Pseudolaw" and Historical Revisionism

19. Of course, the natural reaction of a "legalist" shall be to name this article "PseudoLaw" (now on, we call each one of them a "pseudolaw-claimer", not to confuse with what "legalist" may exactly mean in other contexts). It is unfortunate that for an intellectual debate nowadays, we have to defend first against ad hominem attacks, before pledging a chance to be taken serious for the arguments and not to have an article assessed for who or what the authors are.

Or, better, that is not even new. Such strategy is described in the stratagem 32 of Schopenhauer's "The Art of Being Right": "Put His Thesis Into Some Odious Category". By putting this article in the "odious" category of "Pseudolaw", the criticizer spare his efforts to counter-argue, because the authors are to be hated themselves. Yet, defending by citing Schopenhauer seems a poor strategy, because he is already condemned by history for whoever he was; regardless of his arguments making sense or not. Fact is that, when an article is classified as "Pseudolaw", normally is the author who is judged, not his writings. And, therefore, this is an Ad Hominem argument.

20. The "correct" way to defend ourselves, as authors, in the current society, would be to give information about ourselves, and prove that we are people of good intentions. We decided, however, to challenge this view. The reader will have to assess our text by reading it or, by his own choice, decide which "odious" category he wants to classify us. We will not give easy hints. In short, we do not believe that defending Ad Hominem arguments will make our Ad Rem arguments any better.

21. So, the first step to challenge the view of Pseudolaw and the possible classification of this article as one, is to look at the common-sense, the public opinion's definition for it. A quick check on today's Wikipedia page for Pseudolaw shows that such assessment is impossible. The construction of the concept of "Pseudolaw" is all based on subjective arguments: "adherent incorrectly believes exist"("incorrectly" is already a judgement of the article's writer, and not "Neutral point of view" as claimed by Wikipedia); "have called them frivolous and vexatious." ("frivolous" and "vexatious", how, "legally" that can be defined?); "legalistic gibberish" (again judgment), and so it goes. When not, the definition is based on the groups (if they ever did claim anything alike). Normally targeted groups under the "odious" category of "believing in pseudolaw" are anarchists, "freemen on the land", squatters, "sovereign citizen movement", but, since the qualification is subjective, anybody who is trying to imagine a different organisation for the society can soon be tagged as one. Because apparently the classification as "pseudolaw" comes at the taste of the classifier ("Pseudolaw belief can resemble mental illness"), we doubt if there is any sense on even disputing that. There seems to be no logical, philosophical or epistemological basis for the construct of "pseudolaw".

22. We find interesting to dive into that world of "pseudothings", whatever could be its name. Of course, nobody "serious" is willing to spend much time arguing against flat Earth, there is not even a Derrida-Narrative for it (cui bono, who would be benefiting from the narrative of a round Earth?). When it comes to mix Economics, Social affairs, Pharmacology and Laws, we see that things can get very cumbersome, so we would not dare to completely disqualify all the practices of "BigPharma" listed by claimers (if the reader thinks that that blog is written by a conspiracy theorist, the reader is invited to have a deep look on there).

23. From the groups that the public opinion claims to be "engaged in Pseudolaw", we found the most interesting to analyze here the "Freemen-on-the-land" movement (FOTL), although it is out of scope to go further into details. Their forums are full of people with diversified thoughts, from (those who would probably be called) "anarchists" to (those who would probably be called) "extreme white supremacists", so that we do not dare to classify it politically -- it seems a sui generis thing. What is interesting about that group is that, while some other sort of groups may engaged in violent combats, that group seems really to disturb whoever they meet with only intellectual debates, and a "passive" behavior in the courts (like refusing to be represented by a lawyer, denying the legitimacy of the decisions to the last consequences, but pacifically). What calls our attention is that their ethics is strongly built on a mix of deep anarchist theory and historical revisionism.

24. The historical revisionism of FOTL is based on revising the history from the Magna Carta, from 1215. Then a whole theory is built, to what the reader would likely agree to many points of them and disagree to many others. So, if there is a criticism possible there is, that the FOTL movement would be possible only for lands that are somehow historically bound to the Magna Carta (Some other claim's that the concept of "self-ownership" is a broader fundamental, which indeed derives from the anarchist theory, and then, the FOTL is world-wide valid).

25. Regardless of how derogatory views the reader can have about FOTL, there are legitimate questions brought by that movement. The first, it is an obvious one, since when the current laws, jurisdictions or legislation are "legally secure"? When a "State" proclaims a new constitution, does it throw away the all previous laws, and everything has to be built again from the scratch? Or, how does a constitution define what is to be thrown away from a previous legislation, and what is to stay? Is a country, that has a recent new constitution, exempt from historical revisionism, like returning artworks from their museums and treasury to their previous colonies, for instance? In other words, does a new constitution "legalizes it all"? Or conversely, should we discard completely the historical revisionism and historical attribution of wealth and possessions and start (re)attributing them according to human principles, like those ones from the anarchist theory? Or should we just disregard both historical revisionism and possession re-attribution, and continue to use the decisions based on the power of the force (which ultimately is what decides if decisions from a court, another country, an assembly, or any other "democratic" body will be enforced or not)?

Summarizing, here is a decision workflow: Q1 - (re)attribution of possession by human (q1a) or historical attributes (q1b) or by power of the force (q1c).

Q1B - Historical revisionism allowed (q1b1) or disallowed (q1b2);

Q1B1 - Historical revisionism allowed since a determined document like Magna Carta (q1b1a) or ad hoc determination of the stone-settling documents (q1b1b).

26. The decision chart above gives us an idea of how complex things can get; it is just a summary, and of course it could yet spread uncountable branches. Yet, in the modern "democracies" we tend 1 - to blindly neglect that the ultimate decision is done by the power of the force (when and individual or state is just too strong, nobody can convince him to do what he does not want to): ie, to bindly deny q1c; 2 - to blindly neglect arguments against the attribution of possession done by historical attribution ("inheritance and heritage are too complex and it is not worthy discussing it"): ie, to blindly neglect q1b ; 3 - to blindly believe that the attribution of possession by human values was already solved in the past ("a country or individual is richer because they or their ancestors worked more for it" or "peace treatments were already signed in fair conditions"): ie, to bindly take as solved q1a.

27. Sticking to the theme of this article (which is not to convince what should be done, but to argue about how weak our conception of Laws and Contracts can be), re-attribution by "human values" (like in the anarchist theories) would require something that probably no real Law is: revolutions and insurrections would be necessary, and the act of sedition is already very well criminalized in any modern "democracy". So, in these terms, a pseudolaw-claimer certainly considers Das Kapital of Marx or the grounds for the French revolution as "pseudolaw" -- there was certainly no previous laws in those piece of lands that admitted a USSR or a Republique to be formed. They were formed because, like the reader or not, the interested on forming those modern states could gather together enough power of force to impose the new way of doing laws.

28. Thus, for a "legalist", a "pseudolaw-claimer", or the public opinion, there seems to be no other source of legal security other than either those confirmed either by the possession of the power of the force, or by historic facts -- and thus, in the last case, historical revisionism is a legitimate tool to validate legal security.

29. If historic revisionism is an allowed tool for validating legal security, then we should look after the whole history and check exactly if there were legitimate states seized by other powers. We had a revision of millennia that would not fit in such small article, and, thus, we go straight to the main points.

The Magna Carta was issued during, in short, feudal times, in England. What "feudalism" was, from a legal perspective, has been studied by serious scholars, one of the most prominent being Elizabeth A. R. Brown, with her work on "The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe" (1974). What prominently seems to beg the question about the validity (or non validity) of the Magna Carta is in the lectures "The Constitutional History of England, Equity, and The Forms of Action at Common Law" of Frederic William Maitland (1887, 1888). He introduced a question that seems yet today to be answered: "Now were an examiner to ask who introduced the feudal system into England?". Maybe the best answer ever, even if not addressing Maitland exactly or even England, was brought by a French historian. In France, whatever they were, the feudal rights were abolished in the event of the nuit du 4 août 1789; but ... how were they there introduced? The model developed by Pierre Bonnassie, "mutation féodale", suggests that the feudal systems were exactly result of lack of State, pulverization of the authority; a society "proche de l'anarchie" ("L'œuvre historique de Pierre Bonnassie (1932-2005)" Michel Zimmermann 2006). In this case, the feudal system was already illegal, "pseudolaw"; the absence of authority could not be used to give birth to the authority of a state.

30. Analyzing further some dozens of centuries more, we could find that the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine to the Christianity, the foundation and his stampede to Constantinople, leaving behind the Roman Empire misruled, seems to be the most legally insecure act of at least some two thousand years in the Western civilizations. The "Barbarian invasions" were natural consequences of that act, and so, what is known as a "feudal system" was, by the lack of unified empires or states -- or authority -- slowly and unplannedly introduced along the following centuries. In this case, yes, the pseudolaw-claimers could argue that the Magna Carta cannot be used, but not because it has been replaced, but because the actual legitimate legislation would be the Roman Civil Code.

31. Thus, for a "legalist", a "pseudolaw-claimer", or the public opinion, to sustain the non-legitimacy of the Magna Carta, they should be open for a historical revision that leads most of the Europe back to the Roman Empire (and a further revision might lead to other older and unknown legally insecure facts). All changes in the establishment, in the status quo, were performed due to insurrections, sedition and seizure of power, acts that the current "democratic" lands criminalize, and, therefore, could not be justified to legitimate the establishment of the current modern states. Those conditions not fulfilled, the current "democratic" states are legitimizing that: the one who rules the lands are those who are able to organize the strongest power of force.

Pseudoscience vs Pseudolaw

32. We hear many terms used to classify vain attempts to classify works and theories as "scientific": protoscience, pseudoscience, fringescience. It is good to clarify them:

- Established science is the science that we are used to, it is the science made and confirmed by the usage of scientific method, in short.

- Pseudoscience is the "science" that has already received rebuttal, but keeps on being claimed by "pseudo-scientists", who keep on repeating the same claims, and not taking the rebuttals into consideration.

- Protoscience is where the confusion begins. Many scientific theories remain "protoscientific" for years. One notable example was the Einstein's general theory of relativity, which was not enough seriously taken for 8 years, until the Eddington experiment during the total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919. Many who are called pseudo-scientists nowadays claim their theories to be, in fact, proto-scientific. The key to determine is the rebuttal. If Einstein was not so serious taken, his theory also did not receive rebuttal.

- Fringescience, junk science etc. These are more derogatory terms, carrying emotional values, and of dubious epistemological utility.

The key issue with such a term "pseudolaw" is that it "jumps on the horse of the science", as Laws were a epistemologically comparable, a "sibling of" science.

33. As we have seen in the previous section ("Pseudolaw") is that what is pseudo and what is not pseudo, in laws, is so disputable as its counterpart. The reader may disagree completely with the determination of the facts (E.g. disagree to "Most legally insecure act was the flight of Constantine to Constantinople"), that is perfectly natural. But the same applies to any fact that can be claimed to be "non-pseudolaw": while historical revisionism is admitted, facts that were used to legitimate the current laws are open to dispute.

34. The reason that nobody can make an analogy between "pseudoscience" and "pseudolaw" is that what determines "pseudo" in "pseudoscience" is the falsifiability of claims, or the repetition of experiments already falsified. A rigorous scientific experiment replicated tomorrow will give the same answer as the one done anywhere else, any time in the past. Sometimes it does not, for flaws in the experimentation, but not for flaws in "science". That is completely different with "laws"; most states did not even exist some centuries ago; and some millennia ago, the "laws" were even more different. One cannot affirm that what is not law today will never be law someday -- we are bound to see collapses in the current game of power (who believes that our societies, with so many conflicts, will survive without insurrections for centuries?). The hear and rebuttal, in politic sciences, has no rule for ending and legal Laws, are not falsifiable: they are definitions, presumptions, assumptions, personal, subjective and moral judgments.

35. In very simple words: When a scientist talks about political, social, or any other human sciences, he is likely talking about measures or methodologies for running a social experiment. In that portion of the human science, very often they will use tools grabbed, for instance, from statistics. But there will always be a part of those "sciences" that is human, and not scientific; human sciences, in their whole, are always dependent on some sort of epistemological knowledge that cannot be falsified, like Moral.

36. Laws, furthermore, serve to morals, what, by no means, is comparable to science. When a state, group or individual commits to respect the laws, they are, normally, committing themselves to avoid the use of the force, either to grab respect, trust or simply to avoid insurrection. Science is completely different: even if there are moral barriers proposed for scientific experiments, shall a (powerful) state, group or individual not respect those barriers, their outcomes will be science, for the worst for the society it can be. Therefore, the term "Pseudolaw" is an usurpation of the credibility of the term "Pseudoscience", by those who refuses to confront the intellectual challenges proposed by groups who do not share the views of the public opinion.

Ethologia is a discrete group. You can reach us for comment on this at ethologia+paradoxwork@pm.me. This is a pre-print of a planned article, drafted on 2021. It is under grammatical revision.