Two people selling and buying from each other while one of them is drunk is theft by the sober party. This might be an unpopular opinion, but it is fact. The logic is straightforward:
- Party A is drunk.
- Party A cannot give consent to transfer their property to somebody else.
- Party B wishes to offer a service or sell a good to Party A in exchange for goods, i.e. money.
- Party A and Party B go on with the transaction.
- Party B receives the good Party A gave to them.
- Party A cannot give consent to this exchange, thus Party A could not transfer title of the good to Party B.
- Party B does not have the right to own the good, and as such has committed theft.
This might be unsettling for many as it has some extreme real-world implications.
Amazon & Uber
Following from the logical necessity that exchange between two people while one is drunk is theft by the sober person, Amazon and Uber has stolen thousands of dollars.
Many drunk people have ordered products from Amazon plenty of times. Considering that a drunk person cannot consent to the transfer of their money because of their altered state of mind, Amazon was committing theft each time it accepted the money from the drunks. Again, some people might be uncomfortable acknowledging this conclusion, but it necessarily is true since an individual cannot give consent while not in their right mind.
Additionally, Uber has committed theft many times. Any instance where Uber has accepted money from a drunk individual is theft. Uber most likely committed theft dozens upon dozens of times on New Year’s even though their prices surged.
The conclusion that any and all people receiving goods from drunk people are committing theft might be uncomfortable, but if one wishes to be logically consistent, then they must accept this conclusion if they accept the premise. Any solutions to this widespread thievery will be difficult for companies and individuals to accept, but necessary if we are to live in a more just society.
BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE
Here is a slightly altered version of the first part of the post:
Two people having sex while one of them is drunk is rape by the sober party. This might be an unpopular opinion, but it is fact. The logic is straightforward:
Party A is drunk.
Party A cannot give consent to sex.
Party B wishes to have sex with Party A and vice versa.
Party A and Party B decide they will sleep together.
Party B and Party A has sex.
Party A cannot give consent to have sex, thus Party A would not have permission to have sex with Party A.
Party B did not have consent, and as such has committed rape.
If the first hypothetical seemed absurd, then the second hypothetical should seem absurd. They share an incorrect premise.
This premise is that when a person becomes drunk by their own will they are no longer able to give consent, and thus are not liable for their actions. The fatal flaw is that it fails to consider that the initial act of getting drunk was voluntary. They did not enter into an altered state of mind by incident of nature or aggression by another; instead they entered into an altered state of mind through their own voluntary actions.
When one realizes when a person becomes drunk by their own volition, i.e., voluntarily drunk, they are liable for their actions while drunk, a person can understand that sex is not rape and a market transaction is not theft when a party involved is drunk.
Of course, if a person involuntarily became drunk or drugged, e.g. roofied, then they would not be liable for their actions while drunk/drugged. If Person A had sex with Person B, an involuntarily drunk person, then Person A would have raped Person B because Person B could not give effective consent.
This nonsense that voluntarily drunk people cannot give consent to having sex is not only ludicrous but it is harmful as well. Universities are now treating all drunk sex as rape when the case is only non-consensual drunk sex is rape. This policy is dangerous because it can harm many innocent college students. People perceived as rapists, whether they truly are or not, have a strong social stigma attached to them and might receive stiff legal penalties such as imprisonment. The no-drunk-sex policy of universities and colleges will falsely charge students of rape and will also falsely label some as guilty of rape.
A person being charged with rape is an irreversible damage to their reputation in the community, even if proven there is not enough evidence to prove them guilty. People in general automatically label those charged with rape as rapists and treat them as such; the negative effects of a legal standard other than strict causality are clear here.
Furthermore, the definition of rape that includes all drunk sex leads to a contradictory conclusion. Suppose that Person A and Person B are voluntarily drunk, and they just matched on Tinder. One message leads to another and Person B is at Person A’s apartment, and they are both ready to go. According the before mentioned definition of rape, if they hook up, then they rape each other all the while neither consented to sex yet their own voluntary actions resulted in having sex. This makes no sense. If neither consented to having sex, no person coerced either into having sex, and nature did not make one fall into the other yet their purposeful actions lead to them having sex, then it could not have been rape.
A person might reply that rape did not occur, and simply that neither consented to having sex. This runs into an issue, however. The two parties involved did in fact have sex. There was no coercive power forcing one or both parties to have sex, nature did not cause them to have sex, and neither suffered an episode of involuntary movement, e.g. epilepsy, that caused them to have sex; however, their purposeful actions did lead to sex. Therefore, since there was no reason outside their direct control that caused them to have sex, then it implies that somewhere there was consent; if there was not consent in this case, then the two did not have sex.
Feminists have incorrectly defined rape, and it is not without effect on the real world and real people. While many scoff at philosophical considerations and discussions, this philosophical discussion is important because it affects the future of many innocent college students. We need to champion the idea that sex while voluntarily drunk is consensual sex.
