I don’t see any good reason to insist that, after the procedure, every asset belongs to exactly one body.
By way of analogy, when I married my husband, a number of assets became legally held in common. There simply is no answer to the question of which of us owns which part of the money in our checking account… we own it jointly; we both have the legal right to dispose of all of it as we choose. Obviously, this creates the potential for conflict, but the legal system doesn’t get involved in that conflict… it’s our problem.
Of course, marriage is a special relationship. But then, so is identical copyhood.
My initial instinct is for the law to stay out of it, other than to provide a mechanism whereby identical copies can contract with one another and enforce the terms of such contracts.
(And, no, I’m not a libertarian in general, but I do think it works OK as an approach towards relationships among equals.)
I am a libertarian in general, and if you want your assets owned jointly between you and your copies, I certainly have no objection to that. Presumably something indivisible like your vote in elections would then be used by consensus between all copies?
The only caveat I would suggest is that whichever way you want to do it, it’s best to make the decision and sign the appropriate documentation before you step into the copying machine. As with divorces and inheritance in our own time, the last thing you want is to run into a dispute after the fact.
Requiring consensus seems unnecessary. If we get one vote between us, then we get to vote once; that’s all the legal system has to concern itself with. Everything else is our own problem.
The courts have no interest in whether we agreed on a result, or whether one of us is currently chained to the wall in our basement, or whatever. (Well, the courts may have an interest in the latter for other reasons, but not as it applies to voting.)
I agree with your suggestion; I’m just saying this isn’t a legal complication, just a bit of good personal advice. (That said, my husband and I didn’t sign a prenuptual agreement when we got married, so my agreement with this advice is clearly relatively superficial.)
The analogy breaks down when you consider that a married couple can define property rights in case of a divorce (and create a legally binding contract) before even marrying, and in fact, can divorce. Whereas the relationship between copies of a person exists for the entire duration of their coexistence.
It seems unfair to preallocate property among otherwise identical copies of a person, but it’s certainly physically possible—and I can’t think of any reason why we’d want to prevent copies from negotiating their own ownership of property once their state vectors have diverged. Seems like a reasonable analogy to the economic side of divorce.
That is, I’d support a pair of copies legally filing for the equivalent of divorce. And just as with divorce, the couple needs to work out a division of assets at that point, perhaps with the “assistance” of a court of law, or a professional arbitrator.
Of course, if they signed a pre-duplication contract, that’s fine too, just as with divorcing couples today.
Incidentally, as a matter of law I’d expect a pre-duplication contract to be binding on both parties X and Y if and only if the law recognizes both X and Y as the original. If copy X is not the original, legally speaking, then copy X was not a signatory to that contract and is not bound by it.
I don’t see any good reason to insist that, after the procedure, every asset belongs to exactly one body.
By way of analogy, when I married my husband, a number of assets became legally held in common. There simply is no answer to the question of which of us owns which part of the money in our checking account… we own it jointly; we both have the legal right to dispose of all of it as we choose. Obviously, this creates the potential for conflict, but the legal system doesn’t get involved in that conflict… it’s our problem.
Of course, marriage is a special relationship. But then, so is identical copyhood.
My initial instinct is for the law to stay out of it, other than to provide a mechanism whereby identical copies can contract with one another and enforce the terms of such contracts.
(And, no, I’m not a libertarian in general, but I do think it works OK as an approach towards relationships among equals.)
I am a libertarian in general, and if you want your assets owned jointly between you and your copies, I certainly have no objection to that. Presumably something indivisible like your vote in elections would then be used by consensus between all copies?
The only caveat I would suggest is that whichever way you want to do it, it’s best to make the decision and sign the appropriate documentation before you step into the copying machine. As with divorces and inheritance in our own time, the last thing you want is to run into a dispute after the fact.
Requiring consensus seems unnecessary. If we get one vote between us, then we get to vote once; that’s all the legal system has to concern itself with. Everything else is our own problem.
The courts have no interest in whether we agreed on a result, or whether one of us is currently chained to the wall in our basement, or whatever. (Well, the courts may have an interest in the latter for other reasons, but not as it applies to voting.)
I agree with your suggestion; I’m just saying this isn’t a legal complication, just a bit of good personal advice. (That said, my husband and I didn’t sign a prenuptual agreement when we got married, so my agreement with this advice is clearly relatively superficial.)
The analogy breaks down when you consider that a married couple can define property rights in case of a divorce (and create a legally binding contract) before even marrying, and in fact, can divorce. Whereas the relationship between copies of a person exists for the entire duration of their coexistence.
It seems unfair to preallocate property among otherwise identical copies of a person, but it’s certainly physically possible—and I can’t think of any reason why we’d want to prevent copies from negotiating their own ownership of property once their state vectors have diverged. Seems like a reasonable analogy to the economic side of divorce.
This is a pretty science-fictional aside, though.
The legal relationship needn’t last forever.
That is, I’d support a pair of copies legally filing for the equivalent of divorce. And just as with divorce, the couple needs to work out a division of assets at that point, perhaps with the “assistance” of a court of law, or a professional arbitrator.
Of course, if they signed a pre-duplication contract, that’s fine too, just as with divorcing couples today.
Incidentally, as a matter of law I’d expect a pre-duplication contract to be binding on both parties X and Y if and only if the law recognizes both X and Y as the original. If copy X is not the original, legally speaking, then copy X was not a signatory to that contract and is not bound by it.