First Principles

In search of the Unified Theory of Conservatism

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The TRUE Nature of the “Social Contract” is NOT the Class Warfare of the Left

September 23rd, 2011 · 11 Comments

I think it’s a testament to the core goodness (or at least the desire to be good) of most people that we don’t, for the most part, want to take things that don’t belong to us, and that we aren’t entitled to.  It’s not that people don’t, of course.  But when they do, most people take great pains to justify their actions in their own minds and to their peers.

Some people say the person they’re stealing from have more than they need.  Some say their victims did something bad anyway, and so a thief is really just Karma’s agent.  But the most insidious actually claim they are owed it, going so far as to claim an implied contract.  A “Social Contract.”

What rubbish.

Take Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts’ likely Democratic Senate candidate next year, and her now-viral rant on the “Social Contract”:

“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever. No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Any first year law student knows that an actual Contract is “an agreement with specific terms between two or more persons or entities in which there is a promise to do something in return for a valuable benefit known as consideration.”  Both parties give something to the other, and in most cases, both parties come out ahead on the transaction.

Interestingly, Elizabeth Warren was a first year law student once.  She should get her money back from Rutgers Law.  Apparently in her world, if one person creates value via their labor, all the rest of us lazy schlubs who DIDN’T invent something or make something or risk something should get to just take a part of the profit, just because we live near the factory.  We never dealt with the factory owner.  We never signed anything.  But we’re still entitled.  And somehow, that defines a “contract”?

What this ignores (and what I haven’t heard a lot of in the criticism of Ms. Warren) is that everyone who pays taxes (and plenty of people who don’t) are getting the same benefit from our tax dollars as the factory owner!  In fact, since the rich guy almost certainly pays more for the same police service, we’re getting a much better deal out of it.  Oh wait – that’s right!  The factory owner is also part of “the rest of us”!

It’s telling she doesn’t include the productive classes of society in her use of the word “us”.

~~~

But here’s the true nature of my understanding of the “Social Contract” I actually participate in.

I don’t pay my taxes for the benefit of the factory worker, I pay them for MY benefit.

I pay for roads, because I want to drive to work on them.  I want to drive to stores and buy things that I want or need.  I want to take goods home from the market, and I want the market to have the goods in the first place.

I pay for police, because I don’t want to be accosted on my way home from wherever I am.  I don’t want the things I bought for me and my family taken from me, and if they are stolen, I want some help getting my stuff back.

I pay for fire services because I need help if my house is on fire.  If the brush behind my house catches, I’d rather it not spread to my roof.

I’m glad the factory owner also has access to roads and police and firemen, but not for his benefit.  I want him to have that access, because then I can access his product.  Or perhaps work in his factory and get a paycheck, which is also to my benefit.

I pay for schools for my children’s benefit.  I also benefit from having a population with a base level of education.  I personally benefit if my neighbors are literate and can do basic math, if for no other reason than they can ring up my order when I go out to eat.

That’s the real social contract.  I voluntarily pay my taxes, after getting a chance to help chose the person responsible for setting my tax rates.  I make that choice based in no small part on what and how much that policy maker has promised me he will spend.

I make that contract with my government for MY benefit.  I wish the factory owner well, but we don’t owe each other a damned thing.

We’ve both already paid up.  That “next kid who comes along” will pay his own taxes (I hope), and he’ll also enjoy those benefits for himself.

The only thing I think our generation owes “the next kid” is to not saddle HIS generation with the credit card bill for OUR stuff, so he can’t afford schools and police and firefighters and roads even if he wants them.

And here’s the greatest part – all of this self-interest actually helps EVERYONE!  Well, anyone willing to work hard and take advantage of the exceptionalism of our great nation, anyway.

~~~

Put it another way. Imagine the factory owner before he was a factory owner.  He’s the guy working down the hall from me.  We both pay the same in taxes, and get the same benefit – safety and a structure that gives us BOTH the opportunity to get rich if we have the will and the way.

Suddenly he has an idea, gets a loan, mortgages his house, and starts building The Next Big Thing and makes millions. Now he pays way more in taxes than me.

So yeah – he didn’t get rich on his own.  He had the benefit of living in a free society.  But he already paid for that, and now the difference between his bank account and mine are a result of HIS actions and choices, not society’s.  (That is, unless Society stops thinking of property rights as fundamental individual rights and starts feeling like they can help themselves to other people’s stuff, destroying said society in the process.  Or if Society has “bad luck.”)

He took advantage of an opportunity that I also had, but chose not to pursue.  How in the hell does he owe me for anything?

~~~

You hear this argument a lot from people who aren’t bright enough to understand the difference between “carefully limited government” and “total lawless anarchy.”  “I bet all those tea partiers enjoyed driving to their rally on those government roads.”  Is there a more dishonest strawman in our modern political discourse?

If ONLY the government only spent money on police and firefighters and roads and other such necessities!

~~~

Here’s what society didn’t bargain for.

We didn’t agree to waste millions on lavish conferences for the Department of Justice.

We didn’t agree to throw half a billion bucks down the drain in a futile attempt to prop up a failing company that just happened to be run by a big Obama donor.

We didn’t agree to pay our firefighters absurdly high salaries, or to pay them twice when they weren’t even working.

We didn’t agree to pay out $16.5 Billion in unemployment benefits for people who were actually employed.

We didn’t agree to pay out $48 Billion – nearly 10% of all Medicare payments! – to people not entitled to them, or for a bureaucracy not inclined to take this fraud seriously, or to expand the government medical bureaucracy and thus expand the opportunity for this type of graft.

We didn’t agree to pay for dead people to get millions in retirement benefits.

We didn’t agree to pay all those taxes so President Obama could pay off political cronies and unions in the name of “stimulus” that didn’t actually do anything to stimulate the economy.  (You could say it didn’t help “the rest of us”.)

~~~

Justifying bad behavior in the name of the “Greater Good” is surely as old as humanity.  Claiming some other tax-paying citizen “owes” you in the name of some “Social Contract” is just the latest version of this fig leaf.

It’s ironic that a system that rewards people acting in their own interests and for their own benefit is “selfish,” even though it leads to prosperity, while trying to dishonestly work people up in a frenzy of envy and jealousy to justify your taking of things you haven’t earned is considered the height of altruism and social conscience.

Tags: Class Warfare