Definition
- The ‘Social Contract’ is the belief that individual freedoms should be given up in exchange for protection and benefits from the state. It is generally used as an attempt to legitimise pervasive theft of individuals via taxation.
Neither ‘social’ nor ‘contract’
“The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire” Voltaire
- ‘Contract’ is a misnomer if those involved don’t consent… ask yourself if you ever signed your social contract? There is no written contract, nor was there an opportunity to decline it. We are forced to be registered to the state at birth. Even if we were not forced, for a contract to be valid, all parties involved must be competent adults.
- The idea that theft is also a ‘social’ arrangement is also open to scrutiny. Tax collection by a centralised power disintermediates the ability for communities to share resources intelligently between each other.
Two wrongs don’t make a right
- The social contract is based on the premise that ‘two wrongs makes a right’; that there are many social ills in society that we can attempt to mitigate with funds obtained via coercive taxation. Morality aside, the utilitarian logic here is undermined by the wasteful spending that is characteristic of any artificial monopoly power.
“If you don’t like it, you can just leave”
- Today, there is no country on earth that is not run by an aggressing state. Therefore, there is currently no way of escaping being subjected to some involuntary form of ‘social contract’.
The real social contract