[jjoonathan]

> The "Social Contract" you are talking about is no contract at all. It is imposed by force, you are given no chance to sign, a false choice (red or blue!) and only 1/385millionth of a say in it.

For the vast majority of people, contracts provided by the market are an even worse false choice: Maslow's Hierarchy imposes needs on every individual, fixing the supply of labor at a lower bound which is empirically observed to lie far above the demand for it, thereby commoditizing the unskilled worker and coupling his salary to the minimum dictated by his Maslow needs rather than to the value he creates. The difference goes to his employer, and a non-governmental tax is exacted upon each of his purchases that is distributed to local capital-holders according to their wealth, exacerbating the imbalance in an exponential feedback loop. There is no remedy when his employer resorts to wage theft (frequently), because the justice system requires time and capital that he does not have to achieve the simplest forms of redress. There are conditions for dissolution, but he fears them, because written between the lines are an economic certainty that will dash him repeatedly against the rocky shores of unemployment and homelessness.

This is a laughable notion of consent. When did he agree to have Maslow's needs imposed upon him? When did he agree to abide by the rules of a game that systematically disadvantages him? When did he agree to initial conditions that give him far less than 1/400millionth of a share in economic power? This is the very opposite of what someone with a choice would have chosen.

The only things this hypothetical worker has going for him came from the government: minimum wage laws (and yes, I believe these are a good thing, since wages in commoditized labor markets tend towards the lower end rather than the higher end of the economically feasible range), worker safety standards, subsidized food and health care, education for his children, and so on. None of this is speculation: we can look to history to see what happened when government did not "intrude" on these areas of life.