"And people do more or less enter into an invisible social contract just by living in any modern nation state, wherein, they quite rightly expect the state to provide at least some degree of prosperity, safety and stability."

No they don't.

When Daffy says "invisible" social contract, what he means is "non-existent".

Contract requires offer, acceptance and consideration. Where is the offer, where is the acceptance? Prove it, Daffy.

That's like me saying you "invisibly" accept the moral guardianship of the Catholic church just by being born in a society where the Catholic church presumes and pretends such moral guardianship. It's non-factual, non-logical, circular, craven, nonsense.

Social contract theory always attempts to ascribe a legitimacy to the State *after the fact*, as it were, always ignoring the history and facts about how states originate.

But the very fact that you have to resort to fictions and circularities disproves your own argument.

The fact is, no State, anywhere, ever, at any time, has ever originated from a social contract.

The State is that group in society claiming a legal monopoly over the initiation of force and threats, and over property expropriation. States originate from conquest, plunder, exploitation and serfdom; or by succession from a pre-existing State.

ISIS is an incipient state. That's what States are, and where they come from.

States have a permanent need of legitimation, without which the protection racket will collapse. So the State forms a symbiosis with the intellectual class, whose services are typically valued low in the market. The intellectuals preach to the masses that Pharaoh is not just a king, but a God, he makes the rivers to flow, and so on, and in return, the State gives the intellectual class a comfortable living at above market rates, protected from having to provide a service that anyone voluntarily pays for.

The modern version, is state-sponsored intellectuals preaching that the State is all-knowing, all-powerful and benevolent - in fact a God, who can cure the sick ('health policy'), fine-tune the weather ('climate change'), balance the species of nature ('sustainability'), make wealth by special rituals ('monetary policy'), justify aggressive war by lies ('defence policy'), and make 'rights' based on aggressive violence by mere declaration.

The question is not whether you want your fictions to be true; the question is whether they are true, and they are not.

Social contract theory is simply nonsense, and *always* relies on by Bill's and Daffy's methodology: baldly assume and assert it without proof, expect everyone else to share your beliefs, and then when challenged, fall back to mere circular insistance.

Bill, Daffy
EVIDENCE the contract.

Prove it. Go on. If you can't, SAY SO, don't wriggle and evade and equivocate and fictionalise.

If it's not in writing
a) admit it
b) admit it's in breach of the Statute of Frauds legislation
c) explain why writing is required to evidence the contract for a car, but not for your life and property and freedom, and
d) explain how you know what the terms are. Don't tell me, let me guess - unlimited obedience and submission to government, right?

Daffy
Can you imagine how stupid it would be if someone alleged a "side" of politics that supposedly includes people who believe in the maximum of personal liberty, classified in with Stalin and Mao? That's how stupid it is to talk of an alleged "right" side of politics.

Jardine has already stolen much of my response, regarding the obvious fact that there is no such "social contract".

But overall I still liked this article.

Orwell's "1984" describes a situation where the citizens are told that the presumably-good state, is presumably fighting a bitter war with two other formidable (but unseen) powers - of which one, is an "ally" while the other is "evil". Yet the "war" is dynamic and as the roles of those two other powers interchange nearly daily at short notice, we are left to wonder whether they actually ever existed.

In my childhood when I was shamefully naive to the extreme, I was similarly exploited by a boy who "enlisted" me in a secret group. Since the group was so secretive, I was only allowed to know one other member - him, my commander. We were the goodies of course and there was supposed to be another, sinister, group which we were "combating". I couldn't of course really know anything about the other evil group because everything was so top-secret. Rumours were passing that such-and-such was in that other enemy group, but nobody could tell for sure. The bottom line, to cut it short, is that I had to give away all my pocket-money as taxes to support the war-effort.

The way to stop this bigger-than-life terrorism, is to turn off the projector. Even in Israel's worst years with wars and Palestinian uprising at the max, when Israelis were blown up in restaurants and buses, looking at the summaries at the end of each year, road-accident casualties always exceeded the casualties of war and terror taken together. If states truly wanted to stop terrorism, all they needed was to stop reporting it. But of course, that would go against their interests - they need terror to survive. The media of course is no-less responsible as their business-model relies on sensationalism.

JKJ suggests a society in which there are predators and prey, with predation unchecked by any state. A bit like Lenin's advocacy of a social order based on violence untrammelled by law. Except that his bright idea resulted in an all-pervading STATE based on violence and untrammelled by law, in which "democratic centralism" dictated that every member of every ruling committee, if rolled on an issue, was obligated to defend the decision in the deliberations of lower committees. At the very top, if anyone dissented Stalin would nod and a couple of soldiers would seize the dissenter and drag him off to the Lubyanka.

But without a state I would be prey, with no protection. No thanks.

The trick is to put in charge of the state a parliament elected by the people, the vast majority of whom are not predators and therefore are potential prey. Despite the purchase of political parties (e.g. Lying Nasty Party and Another Liberal Party, LNP and ALP) by the predators, the Enlightenment-based culture of the majority is (for now) strong enough to curb outright predator control of parliament and thence the state.

This is a big improvement on anarchy, and remains so as long as cultural traditions are able to hold the predators in check. Whether or not this is called a "social contract" is mere semantics just so long as these cultural traditions hold sway.

Our cultural traditions are weakened by antidemocratic cultures such as Islam and the tribal savagery of parts of Africa, which is why the predators facilitate their importation.

Dear Julian,

Predators and prey are with us since the animal-kingdom and prehistory, so what JKJ suggests is not a society of predators and prey, but merely a society with one less predator - the state.

Your post can be summarised by: "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail".

As for me, I know that being a hammer is a quick false-solution which only makes things worse in the long term, so even being prey is better - as like-it-or-not, we already are anyway.

If truly all you care about is to avoid being a prey, with no pinch of desire to predate or impose your own cultural traditions on others, then may I suggest that there are other and better ways to protect oneself and one's family, other than by forming states, thus becoming a ruthless predator yourself.

Tough luck, I already live in Australia while having nothing to do with your "Enlightenment-based culture". I am not here to disturb you - I am here to live my life, peacefully, yet if you choose to consider me your enemy, then you cannot expect my support against the Muslim invasion: wherever there is a state and its government, I already live as a Dhimmi anyway, so nothing to lose.

Yuyutsu, if predators were unopposed by an organised state, unless it was a state they owned, your life whatever you believe and wherever you live would rapidly become unbearable and invite suicide to end it. Kumbaya in any form wouldn't stop the predators. You and I live in relative peace and freedom thanks to the state's hammer, something I am able to recognise and appreciate. While the Battle of the Coral Sea was raging we all stared down the abyss with the protection of the state swept away by predators.