Bandit bakers and the social contract
A YouTube user made a two-part video in which he gave replies to claims that he associates with libertarianism. I was quickly asked to give a response. I'm busy working on the follow-up to George Ought to Help at the moment, so I'm gonna keep this brief and I'll only address what I think was his strongest argument, his strongest claim.
He tries to defend the idea of the social contract and he's talking about explicit contracts. So he has in mind the contracts where a person signs. They signed this contract at some point in their life, and the contract includes clauses that say the person will abide by the laws of the government. The position of this YouTube user was that taxation, for instance, is made legitimate when an explicit contract of this kind is signed. Although I don't believe that such contracts are legitimate, in this video I'm gonna argue a more modest position or a weak claim: that the existence of a contract signed by a person is not necessarily binding on them.
If I'm successful in doing that, then the validity of the social contract that this YouTube user assumes to exist needs to be established. So here's a hypothetical. Imagine that together with a group of bandits, I invade a remote settlement. When I get there, I kill all the bakers, and then I set up my own bakery. I make it known that anyone who dares to make bread on their own will be killed. Next, I offer the surviving residents a deal. If they sign a contract stating that they will obey any of my commands, I will agree to sell bread to them. Included in the contract is a clause that says the resident can opt to leave the settlement at any time, which absolves them from having to follow my commands.
So one day, I issue the command that all residents who sign the contract must build a temple in my honor. Does the existence of the contract mean that my command is legitimate and must be obeyed by all those wishing to stay? I don't think so. In the hypothetical situation, I was using aggression to limit the choices of the people I was offering my deal to. In other words, my aggression had put the people who signed it under duress, and in my view, the contracts that were signed under this situation are void.
They are not binding. The way a state behaves and this gang of bandits in the thought experiment, both entities used threats of violence to prevent people from producing certain goods and services. They then established themselves as monopolists regarding providing these things. They then offer people a deal: abide by our rules and enjoy our goods and services, or leave.
So I hope you agree that the bread contracts offered by the bandits do not represent legitimate and binding agreements. This means that the background presence of aggression by one of the parties to a contract is important in determining whether the contract is valid. The presence of aggression can mean that such an agreement isn't binding.
I've shown how the state behaves in an analogous way to the bandits with regards to the use of threats of force to maintain a monopoly position. It remains to be demonstrated how the social contract between states and its subjects is meaningfully ethically distinct from the bandits' bread contracts. While this hasn't been established, the case for a social contract isn't persuasive.