CONTRACTARIAN

Imagine a world without rules. Nothing is illegal. Nothing is immoral. Everyone is absolutely free. This might sound like utopia to you, but according to 17th century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, it would actually be your worst nightmare. Hobbes called this hypothetical time, with no rules to govern our behavior, “the state of nature.” And he described life there as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” And he was probably right.

The land of do-as-you-please sounds great – until you realize that everyone else is also doing as they please. That’s when you find out that you have an abundance of freedom, but you do not have any security. Because, when everyone’s constantly watching their backs, whoever is the biggest bully will be able to dominate, simply by fear and aggression. And even if you happen to be the biggest bully, life’s not going to be any better, because when enough weaker bullies get together even the strongest can be overthrown. So, this type of system – a sort of anti-system, without rules and without order – is a terrible way to live. And Hobbes pointed out that rational people would want to change the system. They’d trade in some of their natural freedoms, in exchange for the security offered by civil society. The key to saving the world from chaos, he said, was a contract.

Hobbes didn’t think there was anything deeply real about morality. It’s not written in the stars, or waiting to be discovered by reason, or handed to us on stone tablets by the divine.

Morality, he believed, is not primitive, or natural. Instead, Hobbes proposed, anytime you get a group of free, self-interested, rational individuals living together, morality will just emerge. Because free, rational, self-interested people realize that there are more benefits to be found in cooperating than in not cooperating. Like, say I have an avocado tree growing outside of my house. I consider it mine, and I can take all the avocados I want from it.

You have a mango tree, and you can take all the mangoes you want. But sometimes avocado-have-ers grow tired of avocados, and mango have-ers grow tired of mangoes. This might actually be a bad example because is there any such thing as too much guacamole?! But sometimes you just really want a mango smoothie. And in the state of nature – where there are no rules – the only way for me to get a mango is to steal it. And the same goes for you and my avocados.

So we found ourselves living in a world where we steal from each other, which means that both of us are always on edge, and we see each other as enemies. But remember, we’re rational, so we find a better way. We make an agreement. We promise not to steal from each other. And we promise to trade, avocados for mangos. Now we have more security and a more interesting diet.

What we have created is a contract – a shared agreement – and suddenly, morality is born. This view, espoused by Hobbes and followed by many today, is known as contractarianism. Contractarians say that right acts are those that do not violate the free, rational agreements that we’ve made. And we make these agreements because we think they’ll make our lives better. So basically, we trade in some freedom for the benefits that come out of cooperative living. Avocado-for-mango contracts are pretty straightforward. We both want something, and we make an explicit contract that we both believe will result in us being better off. But some contracts aren’t so obvious.

We’re also bound up in a lot of implicit contracts – ones that we’ve never actually agreed to, but sort of find ourselves in. For instance, natural born citizens of the United States never agreed to follow the law of the land.

Immigrants who become citizens do; they have to engage in an explicit contract as part of the citizenship process. But for the rest of us, we are expected to follow all sorts of rules that we never agreed to follow. Now, if you try to explain to the cop who pulled you over that you never agreed to the speed limit, so you’re not bound to follow it, well, I’m pretty sure you’re gonna get a ticket anyway. And that might seem really unfair to you.

But contractarians will tell you that it’s not. Because you reap all kinds of benefits from being a part of this system. You get to drive on safe roads, drink clean water, and if your house catches on fire, people will show up and do their best to put it out.

Rights imply obligations, by Hobbes’ thinking, so when you take from the common pot – by enjoying the goods that the system provides – you are also expected to pay in. That’s what happens when you pay taxes, and when you show up for jury duty, and when you accept the punishment for violating the rules – even rules that you disagree with. So, contracts are a pretty brilliant way for making society not just survivable, but possible.

They save you from a situation that Hobbes described as a “war of all against all,” and puts you in this idyllic land where everyone cooperates. But can you really count on cooperation?

To explore that question, let’s head over to the Thought Bubble for some Flash Philosophy. In the 1950’s, Canadian mathematician Albert W. Tucker formalized an idea that had originally been posed by American game-theorists Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher.

Since then, many versions of this dilemma have been presented. But Tucker’s scenario goes like this: You and your partner in crime are both arrested and put in separate rooms for interrogation.

The prosecution doesn’t have enough evidence to convict you for your main offense. The best they can hope for is to give you each a year in prison on a lesser charge. So, the prosecution offers you each a deal: If you rat out your partner, they’ll let you go free.

But now you and your partner face a dilemma. If you both remain silent, you know you won’t get any more than a year in prison.

But if you’re enticed by the thought of doing no time at all – all you have to do is squeal, and you’ll go free while your partner does three years.

The problem is, enticed as you are by the offer, you know that your partner is thinking the same thing.

And if you each give up the other, then the prosecution will have enough evidence to send you both away for two years.

So now you think, no, it’s better to stay silent.

That way, you’ll only get the one year – as long as you can count on your partner to reason the same way. But what if he doesn’t? What if you stay quiet and your partner’s the rat? Well, that means you’re doing three long years, while he gets away scot-free.

Facing that unpleasant prospect, if you’re both rational agents, you’ll be drawn to the conclusion that looking out for yourself is the best option, because it carries with it the prospect of either zero or two years, rather than the one or three years that you might get if you stay silent. Thanks, Thought Bubble.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma shows us some interesting wrinkles in contractarianism. Even though it was rational for both prisoners to squeal, they’d actually have been better off if they could count on each other to stay quiet.

Cooperation pays, but only when you trust your fellow contractors to keep their agreements.

This is why a lot of defection occurs among strangers.

Defection is where you break the contract you’re in – whether you agreed to be in it or not – and you decide to look after your own interests, instead of cooperating. For example, the next time you’re driving during rush hour, you’ll see rampant defection.

Instead of following the rules, waiting their turn, and merging when they’re supposed to, people will speed down the shoulders and try to sneak up to the head of the merge lane – which ends up slowing down everybody.

But, you see much less defection among people who know each other, because when you flagrantly violate a contract among people you know, it comes with a heavy social cost.

There’s a special kind of moral outrage for somebody who freely makes an agreement they didn’t have to make, and then violates it.

Because, our whole society is built on the trust that people will keep their word.

But, there’s another important part of this theory – one we haven’t mentioned yet.

And that is: In order for a contract to be valid, the contractors must be free. You can’t force someone into a contract.

And the contractors must be better off in the system that the contract makes possible, than they would be outside of it.

Sure, there are probably some rules that don’t work in your favor all the time, but the system, overall, must make your life better than if you were on your own.

So contractarianism necessarily rules out things like slavery. Any given person will always be better off outside a system that enslaves her, so that type of system could never be legitimate, even if it’s agreed upon by the majority of the group.

And maybe you’ve noticed something else about this moral theory – something that’s distinct from, say, the divine command theory, or kantianism, or even utilitarianism.

With contractarianism, there is no morality until we make it up.

There’s nothing fundamentally “real” about it. But it becomes real, as soon as you and I agree that it is, because once we agree to particular rules, they become real, and binding.

So in a way, contractarianism is the most permissive of the moral theories we’ve looked at. Morality is determined by groups of contractors, so whatever they agree to, goes. Which means, of course, morality can change. If, as a group, we change our minds, we can simply modify the contract. Which is what happens, explicitly, when we change laws, and implicitly, with shifting social mores.

But contractarianism is still pretty rigid in some ways. If you take on an obligation, you have a duty to keep it. This theory starts with the assumption that we get to choose what responsibilities we incur, so we’re all held to a high standard for keeping the agreements we choose to make.

Next time, we’re gonna conclude our unit on moral theory with a look at virtue theory. Today, though, we learned about contractarianism.

We talked about Hobbes’ state of nature, and the implicit and explicit contracts. We learned about the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and the benefits, and costs, of violating contracts.

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And third, I think it’s false your claim that everybody would be better off outside of a system that enslaves them. In fact, if I recall correctly, there was a law in Rome, prohibiting slave owners to liberate them when they were old. While this may seem cruel, it was the opposite. By forcing the owners to keep them feed, you’ll ensure their survival. An old poor homeless ex-slave would probably die on the streets pretty fast. It’s not fair by any means, but it shows that some people in need would accept to lose their freedom in order to survive. While a “voluntary” slavery system (even when it has never really existed, as most slaves couldn’t decide to be set free) could work under the rules of contractarianism, it still feels wrong on a conventionally moral point of view, because you know those voluntary slaves can only choose living a miserable life, or death.

Am I the only libertarian who understands that corporations/businesses are entities that can do morally wrong things in the same way than an individual can? I don’t know how other libertarians think that a market completely free of regulations will always do what is morally right. This includes environmental issues too

You’re under the assumption that costumers will fight back if the market does something morally wrong. I would like to see some examples from you. I believe for the most part that what you are saying is true, however the only thing the free market has to fear is the loss of profit from the consumer once the consumer has realized that they have been taken advantage of. There’s no other punishment in place once the customer has realized they have been dooped. Private sector debt that was building up pre-Great Recession is an example of this in terms of loans

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Given all it requires for a monopoly is to have a person that has an efficient enough productive mean to get any competition out, then re-increase the prices to a level, higher than before, where is not profitable to ex-competitors to come back, we would have a relatively worst situation for consumers, where they can’t do anything about it since there’s only one person suplying the good. The practice will still be corrupt, so people would be tolerating corruption. There’s also the case of cartels.

Yes, but not many providers of basketball entertainment are able to charge almost $2000 for a season ticket. – it’s called a niche market. Some people buy expensive suits, dresses, purses, jewelry, etc. Those companies can charge a lot because of a differentiated product, not because they are the only ones selling clothing or accessories.

What part of history would you like to be verified? That lawsuits preceded environmental regulation? Here: https://mises.org/library/libertarian-manifesto-pollution Because the government is a monopolistic system that essentially only takes money from those who would pollute without actually fixing the problem or adhering to its own rules itself. I’m not arguing against laws. I’m arguing against monopolized law. I’m arguing for a system in which the victim gets compensated for damages rather than just a penalty imposed upon polluters that goes to the state, which itself is the biggest polluter on the planet (US DoD last time I checked). I’m arguing for market regulations, not state ones.

Contractarianism: gives birth to loopholearianism

What i understood from “Morality is nothing but a contract between rational individuals living in a society rather than a divine theory. ” am i correct? Its why some societies see it as moral to comit canibalism while others see it as inmoral to even eat meat of any kind.

Are you intentionally misrepresenting libertarians? The libertarian idea is not “let me use your roads but don’t tax me.” It’s “keep your roads, I don’t want them. If I want to use roads, I’ll pay for those roads I use. People who choose not to use the roads won’t be forced to pay for those people that do.”

You need state when you have a lot of people doing contracts (explicit or implicit) with each other. Like Hank said, the social cost of violating contract with someone you know (like the case with neighbors trading fruits) is big. Therefore your contract there is relatively save. But if millions of people doing contracts with millions of other people daily (e.g trade, using the street, not being mugged, etc), then those contracts are very risky, since if there are no law enforcement, the possibility of getting away with violating contracts is very big.

You can trade your avocados for mango smoothies, stealing is not the only option and that’s a contract that doesn’t have to be enforced by a state.

You could trade, but you would have no real assurance that you would have anything to trade with after people steal all of your stuff

The argument is whether the state is a better arbiter or not. The state would be mandatory, a third party contract arbiter could also be used and not be mandatory. Then the argument would be well the private third party may not choose to enforce such a contract, but the same thing applies to the state.

Sorry for the long reply, but it’s long because we’re talking about a very complex thing here. Simplifying it would be counter-productive. > Many of these things I don’t even want as a contract.

I don’t care if people are selling drugs or doing insider trading or “predatory lending.” That’s sort of my point. Do you not want them as contracts because you know how they will affect you and you don’t mind? Or on the contrary, because you don’t. And for your information, they WILL affect you. Just because you don’t know about things, doesn’t mean they won’t affect you.

I won’t get into how because the complexity of interconnectivity between all those rules are crazy complex (and to be honest it’s way outside my expertise). But they ARE real. Remember US housing crisis? That’s because of unregulated mortgage practices.

A lot more things like that are bound to happen if you don’t have state regulating things like that. Things that we don’t even know exist, let alone understand.

The state is how you get those regulations that allow for society to work, without every member having to know most of them.

About the war, how is that contradictory? Logically you can’t have big wars if you don’t have a large number of people working together. Otherwise you’ll just have skirmishes.

And you can’t have a large number of people if you don’t have the stability to support it. Government -> more stability -> more people working together -> risk for bigger wars. It’s similar to how humans can grow bigger cancers compared to, say, mice. Yes the cancers are bigger, but not because humans are inherently more cancer prone. It’s just because humans are bigger.