CFJ 3813 asks us whether Agora is a contract. As noted by the caller, CFJ 3706 (Feb 9-14, 2019) asked a similar question. It was judged TRUE by G.
As I see it, the questions before me are: 1) Was CFJ 3706 judged correctly? 2) Has there been a change in circumstances since then that would affect that ruling? I’ll start with the second question. It appears that the version of the rule in question there was 8139/20. (The court admonishes G. for failing to include revision numbers in his rule citations, by the way.) The current rule, 8139/22, is largely similar, with the following changes: * Lowered the minimum party count to one. * "may make an agreement” -> "may publicly make an agreement” * “agreement between parties” -> “consent of all parties” throughout * The new stuff about provisions being public and the body/annex distinction * A requirement that things be permitted "explicitly and unambiguously” * Clarity in wording about asset changes Nothing here changes the fundamental nature of what a contract is. The addition of “publicly” is closest, but the agreements that form Agora were all (AFAIK) made publicly, so that doesn’t change anything. Therefore, this CFJ is TRUE iff 3706 was correctly judged TRUE. This leaves open the question of whether I should overturn that judgement. I certainly *want* to—Agora as a contract is unintuitive and inconvenient to deal with as Notary, and results in contract rules applying to Agora, which is weird. But can I? There is one point in 3706’s logic that at least isn’t clearly to me. I’ve reproduced it below: { - R1742 states that “Any group of two or more consenting persons (the parties) may make an agreement among themselves with the intention that it be binding upon them and be governed by the rules. Such an agreement is known as a contract.” This simply applied the label “contract” to this type of agreement. - Therefore, the “contract” label applies to Agora. } The R1742 quote in question could be interpreted in one of two ways: 1) It simply describes an existing thing that people can do "may make an agreement among themselves with the intention that it be binding upon them and be governed by the rules” and gives it a name. 2) It defines a new type of game action (forming a contract), analogous to creating a proposal, calling a CFJ, or any other action that is only possible because a rule defines it as such. G. went with #1 in his judgement, but did not explain eir decision or address the possibility of the second interpretation within the judgement. Before the judgement, G. initially seemed to believe #2 (https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-discussion/2019-February/053314.html): { Here, contracts are defined by how people MAY create them. This rule is not written retroactively (e.g. "all agreements that people have made in the past that fit these criteria are defined as contracts"), but such that it takes a specific, initial act of agreement to create contract. The Rules predate this creation mechanism. And Agora was not re-created by this creation mechanism since then. Therefore it is not a contract, in the R1742 sense. } D Margaux responded with something vaguely resembling #1 (https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-discussion/2019-February/053315.html): { I don’t see why it needs to have been created as a contract to be a contract. To me, it seems like “contract” is merely a term defined to encompass a certain class of entities (viz., agreements between players that are to be governed by the Rules). That class appears on its face to include Agora itself. Not sure why under the text of the Rule it makes any difference that Agora (and the agreement(s) that created Agora) preexisted the class defined by the Rule. Still seems like Agora is a member of that class of entities. } I agree with G’s initial judgement: the word “may” implies that we’re defining a class of action, not just naming an existing class of entity. Therefore, Agora is not a contract, because it was not created by the R1742 mechanism, because it didn’t exist yet. I find FALSE. --- That’s certainly a convenient judgement, but I’m not too convinced that I’m right about it—the ambiguity between #1 and #2 is pretty hard to parse. Therefore, I’m opening it up to feedback and additional arguments before I officially rule. Gaelan