The Social Contract Theory

Todays media and entertainment have recently been flooded with movies and TV shows based on a post apocalyptic world where the world has fallen into disarray and it has become every man for themselves. While there have been many terrible crimes against humanity our world hasn’t submitted to dissolution and in large part we have remained united. The reason the world hasn’t fallen back into such a primitive state is because of the social contract theory; the social contract theory is a theory about creating rules for humanity. Due to the social contract theory people had to change the way they thought and made decisions and these personal decisions eventually had a ripple effect on the larger community. Unlike theories in physical science, social
There are no set rules to follow in the theory, but theory states that rules of the society should be based off of what free, equal, and rational people would agree to. Free, equal and rational people would not allow things such as killing, stealing, lying and discrimination to exist. To get these rules to work the individuals in the civilization must understand that they are much better off when they agree to trust in one another, and that these established rules will bring safety and stability. The rules of the society should not only benefit those who cooperate but they should also penalize those who don’t. It is critical that a central power or government exists to enforce these rules as well. If there is simply a law that states that people who steal will go to jail for a period of time but there is no one to ensure that the person goes and stays in jail, then the law is essentially useless. Although these principles date back thousands of years to when humanity ended an era of nomads and hunter-gatherers and began to establish tribes and modern civilizations, the principles were not brought to the forefront of discussions until the late
One of the main arguments is that not everyone is always going to follow the rules. There is the issue of free riders; people who benefit from everyone else’s contribution to society but don’t contribute anything themselves. While it may be unfair to others, it isn’t irrational to get the same benefits as someone else for free. If a family is cooking thanksgiving dinner and one person who didn’t help cook just shows up to eat, that person made the more rational decision. Also that person isn’t disrupting any part of society because the dinner still got made on time without them. On the opposite end of free riders are those in power who seek to gain more power or to keep control of what they already have. An example of this would be wealthy plantation owners who had slaves working on hundreds of acres of land. In those days people thought that black slaves weren’t whole humans and were barely different from animals, so to them they were not denying any free equal people of their rights. They can easily rationalize it, as being ok because having slaves is more efficient than the owner’s small family trying to farm hundreds of acres of land, and its saves more money because they aren’t hiring outside contractors for the work. Obviously now people know that slavery is wrong but during that timeframe it is hard to say how it goes against the social