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social_contract_model

Social Contract model

Draft by AZ

The Idea of a Social Contract

Children react against things that they decide are unfair to them. Even many animals will react against situations that they perceive to be unfair. When some people of our older generations see people with power and wealth claiming exemption from the laws and standards of behavior that apply to “ordinary people,” they may shake their finger and say, “What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” On a more formal level of discourse, people refer to the systemization of issues of fairness and equality under the law as the Social Contract

How can people be organized into a polity governed in accord with the social contract?

In families, failure of parents to be fair to each other can lead to broken homes. Failure of parents to be fair to their children can lead to children running away in childhood or adolescence or to their leaving home at maturity and never coming back.

In extended families, failure of individuals in older generations to be fair to individuals in younger generations can lead to conflicts and to weakness of the family in its conflicts or contests with other extended families.

In extended families that squeeze in fictive family members, the probability that some members with real genetic links with the family may be less than fair to members with only fictive family status is perhaps higher.

When even more tenuous links unite individuals into tribes or other groups with substantial populations, it appears likely that individuals with wealth and power may exert top-down threats and punishments to control situations when fairness is being ignored by contending parties.

There is no easy way to predict how a social contract can evolve and be accepted by people in complicated social situations and bound by preexisting social, religious, political, and family relationships.

It is possible, however, to abstract from the evolution of organizations such as Solidarity in Poland, and see how with many attempts.some of them failures, a simple electrician became the president of a great nation.

Forming Social-Contract Based Organizations

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social_contract_model.txt · Last modified: 2022/09/13 20:35 by 127.0.0.1