paper shackles

Is a contract anything more than the mere semblence of colored atoms contrasted against the surface of another medium, designed in a fashion in which it contains arranged patterns recognizable to humans as the expression of inscrutable thought elements?

If that is so, can we still posit existant duties and enforcability consistent with libertarian application of justice for contracts, whether penned or merely verbally expressed?

I like to think that a contract derives it economic power from the market process, and not from the terms of enforcability and that this would be likewise true of the bonding companies which would serve to protect a system of free contracting.

An individual or firm who failed to meet their contractual duties and/or the bonding company which failed to remunerate the damaged parties would be quickly put out of business.

This is not to say that there could be no foundational ethic to support the rights and enforcabilty measures, but rather one should not have to posit the existence of contractual rights in order to uphold the ideal of free contracting.

Overall I'd like to think that the libertarian justice system can sleep securely, while the benign king of "good will" reigns as the final arbiter over civilzed society.