The idea that billions of people from all different backgrounds from all around the world can live and work together would be laughed at by people from the past. But what we have accomplished is nothing short of remarkable. People of different faiths, ethnicities and origins live side by side. The main reason this is possible is because of the unspoken social contract. That social contract is now in jeopardy. Without a fair social contract there is the risk of complete societal collapse. If you read this you’ll know what a Death Capitalist is.
What is a social contract?
The following definition is from Wikipedia and describes the relationship between a state and a person.
The way I’m using it is to describe the unspoken but implied people to people relationships in a society.
In moral and political philosophy, the social contract is a theory or model that originated during the Age of Enlightenment and usually concerns the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.
Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority (of the ruler, or to the decision of a majority) in exchange for protection of their remaining rights or maintenance of the social order.
The starting point for most social contract theories is an examination of the human condition absent of any political order (termed the “state of nature” by Thomas Hobbes).
In this condition, individuals’ actions are bound only by their personal power and conscience.
From this shared starting point, social contract theorists seek to demonstrate why a rational individual would voluntarily consent to give up their natural freedom to obtain the benefits of political order.
We are able to coexist because we have an infrastructure and an unspoken but implied agreement that we can live together in a society determining a path for ourselves without coercion and violence from others because it is a fair and reasonable agreement that works for everyone.
So due to the landscape at this time such as a gig economy and an insufficient and exclusive survival structures such as the job market that unspoken contract is under threat and unconscionable. That contract has been broken and is not being fulfilled and is degrading so many in society are not able to survive under reasonable expectation or at all.
Let’s look more specifically at some types of social contracts:
Basic necessities are the basic elements that humans and animals need to survive and without which they will die or suffer unreasonably compared to the state of nature.
These are things like food and shelter, upward mobility and self determination.
Let’s start with some descriptive type models that can or do exist in societies regarding basic necessities.
A Progressive social contract is a infrastructure where society covers your basic needs.
Neutral social contract is an infrastructure where society doesn’t stop you from obtaining your basic needs.
Oppressive social contract is an infrastructure where society stops you from food & shelter unless you take orders.
In a progressive social contract society provides for your basic needs unconditionally like a UBI & access to the commons.
In a neutral social contract society doesn’t provide you basics but doesn’t stop you from accessing the commons for food & shelter like the entire animal kingdom.
In an oppressive social contract the state doesn’t provide basic needs and actively blocks you from the commons and does not provide a UBI.
In an oppressive social contract the less privileged are forced to work for the privileged for basic necessities (or tokens to access basic necessities). In an oppressive social contract the less privileged are forced to work for the privileged to survive.
What are the commons?
The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately.
Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values (social practice) employed for a governance mechanism.
Commons can be also defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates .
We, in western societies, are in an oppressive social contract now. Although it may not seem like it for those above a certain amount of money or resources. If those resources were taken away they would encounter the oppressive infrastructure.
The freed slaves after the Civil War realized that without land, without access to the Earth’s natural resources, they were still not free. They still were in a context where they had to work or die. Without land, land that they were taken from, without the commons, they went from chattel slavery to wage slavery. Many ended up working for the same slave masters they were supposedly to be freed from.
IIUC The social contract in western nations changed as the commons were enclosed and subsistence farming or subsistence homesteading was retired in the 1980s.
Without the Homestead Acts those in cities or towns or without property were excluded from land and accessing the natural resources the Earth provides.
Society in western nations went from a neutral / oppressive social contract to an oppressive social contract.
This article from explains the story of coerced proletarianization.
Make no mistake we are in an oppressive social contract. We are in societies that harm their citizens and cause preventable suffering.
What we can do to change it is move to a progressive social contract but there are obstacles in the way.
Important Note: If you are suffering and you tell someone and they dismiss it or they call you a liar that person is a gaslighter and or a sociopath. A sociopath is a person who has impaired empathy. They hear about suffering and then instead of a normal human emotional response of compassion, empathy, asking questions, believing you, supporting you, or helping you, they blame you or are callous and indifferent.
In western society we have a few distinguishing characteristics to the members of those societies that describe the people who live in that society.
Commons Capitalist
A Commons Capitalist is a person who supports living and working from a job and supports access to live off the commons.
So a person can work at a job for survival and or they can live off the Earth. They have access to enough of the Earth for housing and food and whatever they need to survive (but not commercialize).
Creative Commons Capitalist
A Creative Commons Capitalist is a person who supports a society that gives every member food and shelter (a UBI), supports access to the commons and supports a free market where people can choose to work but are not forced to work.
So people have a UBI that covers the societal costs of living, they can access and use the commons (the Earth) for living and personal use and they can work at jobs or offer jobs to others.
Death Capitalist
A Death Capitalist is a person who says only people who work for a capitalist can have food or shelter. Everyone, including those who work, are blocked from the natural resources of the Earth, blocked from the commons and no UBI is provided. This is what we have now in many capitalist countries. They support what in effect is siege warfare on their own people.
They say, “Work for a capitalist or die (we will let you starve and die)” Sort of like feudalism with a choice of masters.
Currently western nations are filled with Death Capitalists. That’s the default. Capitalist societies block their citizens from accessing the natural resources of the Earth. The Earth that they did not create. An Earth that was here before they were born and will be here after they die.
We’ve had death capitalists since the inception of the union.
Death capitalists supported slave labor and child labor. In fact, slave labor was “permitted” up until the end of the civil war. Child labor was “permitted” up until the 1930s.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_laws
Note: Someone can come up with better names for these things.
Death Capitalist characteristics are:
- Support the state blocking people from the commons, from natural resources of the Earth that they need for food and shelter
Additional but not common characters are:
- Put profit above everything else
- Have no limits on who they exploit
- Will support slavery or wage slavery (no minimum wage)
- Will have no cap on their own wages (no maximum wage)
meaning if they were a billionaire they would give themselves another dollar instead of giving that dollar to a starving person.
- Will use children for labor - Support the state or people destroying the way of life of the animals or their habitat, the commons, from natural resources of the Earth that they need for food and shelter. See colonization and the enclosure movements
- Exploit animals in horror factory farms. See US
- Ok with stealing other countries resources. See US and UK history
- Ok with colonizing or installing their way of life in other countries and communities. See the history of South America.
- OK destroying the environment directly by things like foresting or indirectly by dumping toxic waste or oil spills
- OK with other people doing all of the work but receiving non of the benefits (people living pay check to paycheck)
All capitalists are death capitalists unless they support a UBI, access to the commons and labor laws, maximum and minimum wages and fair property rights, natural rights, animal rights and environmental protections.
If you think of any other characteristics of death capitalists put them in the comments.
Workers who rent or people owning a home are not specifically capitalists. It’s a belief system.
Related next story:
Some ideas mentioned in some of my posts on Universal Basic Income are inspired from the writings and work of Thomas Paine, Karl Widerquist, Guy Standing, Scott Santens, Rutger Bregman and others advocates for UBI. Posts like these attempt to summarize some of what the problems and solutions they talk about but opinions are my own. Read their work and view the content because undoubtedly it is in greater detail and quality.
