Paradigms of Social Justice and Obligation

IX. Incrimination and other violations of social contract

    Those consensual laws derived from ancestral mores share a fundamental belief in the social contract. Integrity, recognition, trust, fairness, and compassion guaranteed normative behavior. Ostracism from the group was the ultimate punishment, and more than adequate threat for one's life depended on it. Sociobiology has shown the great range and depth of behavioral programming appropriate to that environment. [Wilson,Barash, Trivers] While humans retain these deep motivations, our social environment has changed drastically. Remote, anonymous governments, corporations, or organizations cannot be treated like just another friend or neighbor, whose self-interest is bounded by mutual constraints.

    Growing totalitarian laws violate the social contract. When one person can inform on another because of a supposedly mutual economic exchange to the other's peril at the hands of the government, the social contract has been explicitly broken. But Americans calmly accept such occurences "in order to fight drugs". Not even children informing on parents provoke outrage. The children are heroic and dutiful to help their parents into prison. The indeterminate sentence now includes the indeterminate criminal charge, as police bargain with the Accused for his life, liberty, and property, not only to inform upon but entrap his acquantainces. Few aspects of American society have not been touched by the government sting; agents insinuate themselves into legal or illegal operations until they have netted sufficient guilt.

    Of course, "political machinations" (social alliances) are a fact of social life. The problem derives in part from the modern remoteness and anonymity of the agents involved - causing a lack of accountability and personal responsibility. In crowded cities, the robber does not likely know his victim, and neither much appreciates the motivations of the other. An individual has great difficulty contending with an organization and its faceless minions. When government (as the monopoly of force) usurped particular reciprocations (or revenge) that deterred crime, contextual constraints on behavior were removed. So also were potential victims less likely to prevent crime and defend themselves, if big brother protected them. Jeffrey Reiman describes the historical social contract between feudal lords and serfs. The landlords were obligated to take care of the serfs by protection and sustenance, and all serfs expected reasonable standards of subsistence. By contrast, a modern government that declares all property inviolable while slum children starve has clearly violated this social contract. Countless unreasonable standards (or if you would rather, "non-consensual") are now embedded in the judicial system that allow the greatest crimes to go unpunished, and unpunishable (pollution, product negligence, nuclear industry, processed food industry...). [Reiman]