a contract is a contract is a contract, I knew what I agreed to, and I was not about to break my word even if I wasn’t legally bound to it.
This strikes me as a … misguided personal interpretation of legal contracts: you’re playing a game straightjacketed by rules of your own devising. Laws are threats, not moral codes.
My personal view is that if I am bound by honor, I will act in good faith, and keep fastidiously to even the spirit of the agreement, even when no one is watching. If I am bound by law (or some other threat), you will get from me only what you can enforce, and only so long I am unwilling to pay the price you threaten to exact.
There was some rule (in my college dorm, I think) everyone was asked nicely to follow, and I did. Then a while later, they introduced a fine for breaking it, and I assessed the risk of that minor fine worth the convenience of breaking the rule, and never followed it again.
This strikes me as a … misguided personal interpretation of legal contracts: you’re playing a game straightjacketed by rules of your own devising. Laws are threats, not moral codes.
My personal view is that if I am bound by honor, I will act in good faith, and keep fastidiously to even the spirit of the agreement, even when no one is watching. If I am bound by law (or some other threat), you will get from me only what you can enforce, and only so long I am unwilling to pay the price you threaten to exact.
There was some rule (in my college dorm, I think) everyone was asked nicely to follow, and I did. Then a while later, they introduced a fine for breaking it, and I assessed the risk of that minor fine worth the convenience of breaking the rule, and never followed it again.