The Yoke of Co-operative Service 135 adultery is a threat to the integrity of the free market’s contractual order. Sowell’s  analysis is superb. If the following paragraph were un- derstood and implemented by societies that regard themselves as Christian – and even by societies that do not regard themselves as Christian – the world would prosper economically. Writes  Sowell: “Someone who is going to work for many years to have his own home wants some fairly rigid assurance that the house will in fact belong to him – that he cannot be dispossessed by someone who is physically stronger, better armed, or more ruthless, or who is deemed more ‘worthy’ by political authorities. Rigid assurances are needed that changing fashions, mores, and power relationships will not suddenly deprive him of his property, his children, or his life. Informal rela- tionships which flourish in a society do so within the protection of formal laws on property, ownership, kidnapping, murder, and other basic matters on which people want rigidity rather than continuously negotiable or modifiable relationships  .“20 Libertarian   Contracts A  major  theoretical  dilemma  for  the  modern  libertarian  or anarcho-capitalist  is the problem of the lifetime contract. Each man is seen as the absolute owner of his own body. He therefore can legit- imately make contracts with other men that involve his own labor services.  He is absolute~ sovereign over his own person.  This is the theoretical foundation of almost all libertarian thought. “The central core of the libertarian creed, then, is to establish the absolute right to private property of every man: first, in his own body, and second, in the previous unused natural resources which he first transforms by his labor. These two axioms, the right of self-ownership and the right to ‘homestead,’ establish the complete set of principles of the liber- tarian system.”21 But then there arises the problem of slavery:  the kj2time contract. Man, the absolute sovereign agent, seems to be able to sign away  hti autonomy in such a contract. To say that man cannot legitimately sign such a contract — that such a contract is not morally or legally binding – is to say that there are limits placed on this autonornou”s sovereignty of man. This is the libertarian’s version of the old ques- 20. Ibid., p. 32. 21. Murray N. Rotbbard, For a New Liber@ The Libertarian Man~esto  (rev. ed.; New York: Collier, 1978), p. 39.