On Thu, 21 May 2009, Geoffrey Spear wrote:
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>> If two players agree privately to a document that includes a clause
>> "this is a public contract" (with the honest intent of publishing it
>> afterwards), do you have a private contract which later becomes
>> public, or no contract (until it is published)? -G.
>
> Under the current Disclosure rules, it looks like you can create a
> public contract without ever publishing it; if a contract says its
> Disclosure switch is Public then it is, even if the contract has never
> been published. Or does creating a contract as Public count as
> "flipping" the switch, thus making it impossible by R2178? Personally
> I think creating a switch in a certain position probably isn't the
> same as creating it in the default position and flipping it, but
> there's no precedent here.
I suppose one could argue that in R2162:
If an instance of a switch would otherwise fail to have a
possible value, it comes to have its default value.
means that whenever an entity is created (and thus its switches created
without being explicitly set) they begin in the default state. It might
be nice to say so more clearly in the Switches rule.
This would imply that if a switch is flipped "upon creation", it is
still created in the default state and flipped an instant thereafter.
This means it's impossible to create a contract switch in the public
state; it is created private and then flipped by publication only
as per R2178.
-Goethe
