A Social Contract?

Once again, you assign blame to the enforcers of the law and not the law itself. The politicians are far more at fault than the police. All they do is whatever they're told. I suppose the upper echelons of police forces could be held more accountable, but...

The simplest solution is to have no laws that are bad for the police to enforce. Then it wouldn't really matter... besides, the only thing I can really think of where your whole strategy of "don't say anything and nullify all the juries" would even matter is drug cases. In fact, that's the only really huge law I can think of that's an actual legitimate problem... I suppose the laws against gay marriage are bad, too, but not in the same way; you can't get jailed over that.

W Hen the worker controls the means of production entirely, countries stop making money.

^ Basically. When you attack and destroy the rich, the business leaders and those who would centralize economies into the systems we have now the end result is always the same. Everyone becomes poor and nothing gets done or made.

That is so wrong, I can't even blink. I mean, not only is it dishonest, it's selfish. You don't change things by actively seeking their downfall. Think about it: If you were trying to make a Twinkie-making machine use blue cream filling instead of white, would you go about it by throwing a literal wrench into the works, or would you dismantle only the relevant section, and fix that one bit?

The aforementioned Thoreau, King, and Gandhi, who were actually successful at what you're trying to do, would never have even conceived of such a notion. Gandhi didn't lie in court, he led by example: he allowed his physical body to be ruined on a regular basis so he could show people how free that made his spirit. Thoreau and King both willingly spent time in prison on unjust charges. What you're suggesting is the Guy Fawkes system of democracy, which has been more or less proven to be bunk.

Those people believed in the rule of law: I don't.

Laws should only be respected when they're good and practical. When they aren't, they're fair game to disrupt and sabotage until they're no more.

edited 4th Dec '11 2:56:11 AM by SavageHeathen

Most of Savage Heathen's ideas map directly to less extreme ideas I hold. The social contract is for the benefit of all people, not just the ones in government, so a contract that benefits those people who govern at the expense of those who don't cannot be valid. (Then again, I dislike the idea of killing people, whether they govern or not . . .)

I've always gone under the assumption that this is what society is based on, or at least, should be. I very much approve of the idea of the social contract, I did so ever since I learned Hobbes ideas.

edited 4th Dec '11 5:13:51 AM by Excelion

What kind of social contract? Hobbesian, Lockean, Rousseauan? Perhaps even Rawlsian?

I don't think much of contractarianism, to be honest. Even Hobbes treated the state of nature as a hypothetical notion, something that we must avoid rather than something we have escaped. The terms of an Hobbesian social contract are only justified if two requirements are met: first, the state of nature must be proven to exist in fact; second, the state of nature must inevitably be a state of war.

Of course, I'm disinclined to agree with Hobbesian absolutism, and Rousseau's social contract doesn't seem coherent to me. If we must have a social contract, it may as well be a Lockean one.

The only contracts I recognize are the ones I explicitly agree to. Anything else is simply a rationalization of force.

This is true and the reason why I quite oppose the idea of inherent "duties" (why should I be inherently obligated to do anything? I hate the fact that "neutrality" is viewed as anything other than neutral in many cases.)

Duties aren't a bad concept, but I should at least willingly bear it because I get something in return. For example: I shouldn't be inherently obligated to help other people who are threatened, but I should do so if I want to be able to expect the same help should something ever happen to me. (Golden rule and all)

We agree to the laws, both those that forbid actions or command them, because at the end of the day it is extremely benefitial to ourselves. That is what I understand under a social contract.

The problem with this is that we are:
a) Born into society by chance
b) Shaped by our environment
c) Legally we can't form contracts on our own until the age of 18

c) can be contested, for example, that even children should have the right to do so (technically they do have the right, it's just that they need a representative in the form of the parent).

The social contract only truly works if we imagine being the person we are while subtracting the society we lived in from our life up until now, and then decide we want to live in an existing society of our choice, instead of living in a cave like a hermit. This obviously doesn't work, but it's still a wonderful theory.

edited 4th Dec '11 7:52:56 AM by Excelion

Savage: Those people didn't believe in the law. They all hated the law that they were trying to remove. They just managed to do so because they knew what they were doing, and you and they share an objective. Not even listening to them would be like trying to conquer the world while thinking Alexander the Great was a moron.

33: We're arguing less about the terms and conditions of a social contract, and more on whether it should be binding.

edited 4th Dec '11 10:18:03 AM by TheEarthSheep

In my opinion, I quite strongly favour the idea of a social contract - if you wish to enjoy the benefits and advantages bestowed upon you as a member of the said society, you are beholden to its' laws. If you've got a beef with said laws, change them within the system. If you attempt to harm the society with no good reason (i.e. a dystopia/dictatorship, draconian laws on the whole, etc.) then you should be held fully accountable for what you have done - perhaps moreso, since you have violated the social contract. Generally, the optimal strategy is to obey the system and tweak it as necessary depending on how fair/free it is. The government doing something you don't like is never an excuse for antagonising it. As I said before, change the contract, not the government behind it (within reason, naturally).

Naturally, with certain types of government this is difficult or impossible, but I believe democratic/free states are more benevolent than people give them credit for. They may not be able to react quickly on occasion, and they can sometimes be unjust, but on the whole they will try to do what is best for its' citizens. Governments are not monolithic groups that cackle in their towers of horror and despair while plotting the best way to cause suffering. Quite simply, they are large groups of people like you and me trying to do what's right/best.

Please keep in mind that I am assuming in all cases that said society is democratic and free in all respects; the rules change somewhat for dictatorships and so on. I apologise if I went off-topic here, by the way.

EDIT:

In short, any decent social contract should be binding - otherwise, why have it at all?

edited 4th Dec '11 10:54:37 AM by Flanker66

Naturally, with certain types of government this is difficult or impossible

It honestly isn't. Witness the tyrannical regimes in the Middle East that have yet to undergo a revolution: when the government realized that popular opinion had swung against it, it immediately ushered in reforms that made the law much more tolerable than it had been previously.

Every government is a democracy, regardless of whether it calls itself that. No government can act against the will of the people, as history has shown time and time again.