On the Social Contract

What is the best way to tell if someone’s defense of the so-called “social contract” is complete and utter bullshit? The defense is made after a people have been violently conquered. Show me a time and place where a government originated in accordance with social contract theory and not in accordance with coercive domination by one group of people over another, and I’ll give it some consideration. The problem is, you probably can’t. To my knowledge, no government ever originated as a social contract among all affected parties. Quite the contrary. Government is an institution of the political means, the use of coercion over other people, and every government in practice today originated in exactly this way. Ergo, every government on this planet is a criminal organization. Understanding and acknowledging this basic political truth is the first step toward figuring out what we can do about it. And that’s today’s two cents.