The Social Contract

The justification for a democratic social order is often based on the so called social contract, whereby citizens give their consent, pay taxes and pledge their obedience to their elected overlords in exchange for protection, justice, a civil society, order and all the rest of it. This creates a sort of a balance. The men of elevated justice take on the monstrous task of creating a social order, while the masses pay taxes and obey the rule(r)s. Also, there are checks. The men in power amass all the guns so as to make sure people obey their commands, while the people, on the other hand, have the right to vote the bums out of office every 4 to 5 years and vote in – new bums who take over the guns from the old bums along with the rights to tell everyone what to do. So far, so good.

There is one problem, however – no one has ever seen this contract. If it were a super hero, it would be the invisible man. It's the 10th planet of our solar system and the third twin baby. It would be the Bigfoot of contracts except there have actually been reported sightings of Bigfoot. There have, on the other hand, been no reported sightings of the social contract. At least none that I know of.

But since we are all driven to obey this mysterious contract, it would certainly behoove us to learn a little bit about the wording of it, would it not? Now again, I have not myself seen or signed it (drunk Fridays don't count), so I cannot testify to its contents first hand. Nonetheless, observing the world around me, I can imagine it looks a bit like this:

This is a contract between the governing people

and

The governed

1. The governing people shall henceforth be allowed to

·      Write any law that shall direct and prescribe behavior of the governed and command obedience

·      Write any number of nearly incomprehensible laws, of which ignorance and inability to comprehend them shall not exempt the governed of being guilty of violating them

·      Be the final arbiter and judge in any case of disagreement or conflict between the subjects of the governed or between the governed and the governing people themselves

·      Write different classes of laws, one class applying to the governed and another applying to themselves - the governing people

·      Take possession of all firearms and disallow possession of them by the governed – for their own safety

·      Demand payment from the governed in any size and from any sources deemed fit and appropriate by the governing people and assume debt which will have to be paid by the governed and their scions; these payments and debt can be changed at any time, subject to the governing people's discretion

·      Spend the collected money according to their discretion

·      Use force in case of non obedience by the governed

·      Inspect, regulate, license, control, survey, register, restrict, punish, label and supervise conduct of the governed to ensure compliance with the laws they have written

·      Change any of the above at any time and in any way deemed necessary or appropriate by the governing people

2. The governed people shall henceforth be allowed to

·      Have a 1/N (N = the number of voters) chance of replacing the governing people with new governing people who shall remain in control of all the powers listed in point 1. and be allowed to change them at will.

Would you sign this contract? Apparently we already have. It's a strange thing this collective amnesia thing. I have to go ask my neighbor if he remembers signing it...