It's not a literal contract. It's more a concept of societal structure. You go camping with a group of ten individuals. While out in the woods, you leave your tent unguarded with the unspoken expectation that other campers won't rob you of your belongings while they're unattended, and they expect the same as you. In the event someone breaks this contract, you expect that the rest of the group will side against this offender. With this functioning normally, you and your neighboring campers get along without having to even interact with each other.
Just the same, I go to work every day, and once all my family are out about their days, our house is unattended, because we don't expect our neighbors to loot us, and they expect the same. We've never signed a contract, nor spoken of this shared expectation. This is something neighbors simply do without thinking. Truly, we live in a society (youtu.be). I am 'free' to break this contract at any time, but there are consequences. If everyone abandons it, society (youtu.be)falls apart.
When the next neighborhood over comes and burns mine down because some jogger got ventilated for trying to murder someone, I am supposed to expect there to be consequences, because of the contract with the people in charge whose function is to maintain and enforce such things. When the police function as they should, their end of the contract is held and people can be expected to trust them, to some extent. When the government looks after its people as it is supposed to, we can trust it, relatively speaking. Sure, those people are just as 'free' to abandon their side of the contract, and to decide that their pets are allowed to burn whatever they want, and that they should import millions more, and that I should go extinct, then the contract is made null and void. Now, like a South African farmer, I may barricade my home. I may make sure someone is always at home to protect it, because my neighbors have ceased to be neighborly, my police have ceased to be fair, my government has ceased to represent me, now none of them are welcome near my damn tent.
I no longer wish to camp with them, not because the social contract is meaningless, but because they have made a new one without me. If all the campers rob and kill each other, then the camping trip falls apart. If all the campers rob and kill you, then you are not part of the camping contract.
Anyways, I'm going to go camping. Anyone is welcome to join me in this little society (youtube.com). I'm looking at this charming, promising little place outside Waco.
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