comex wrote: > This has nothing to do with what a contract says. Obligations are > managed by the Rules and need not correspond to what we would call an > ordinary-language obligation, any more than a Land must be a part of > planet Earth or a Crop edible. Partnerships do devolve "legal > obligations" (R2145) on themselves into legal obligations on their > members; that the Rules *expressly* make these obligations > unpunishable and therefore not really ordinary-language obligations is > unimportant.
Furthermore, even if R1504 were ditched entirely in favor of the honor system (and even if the new rules didn't bother to mention the honor system), ordinary-language obligations would still arguably exist in the sense of a social contract. Common sense and the best interests of the game argue in favor of "obligation and punishability are separate", because in general it really isn't the partnerships' fault that the punishment rules are currently broken in this area. On the other hand, since the Law-abiding Partnership in particular intentionally abuses this brokenness, one can make a decent case for exiling it.
