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29 points

A social contact is an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection. Theories of a social contract became popular in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries among theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of explaining the origin of government and the obligations of subjects.

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30 points
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Interestingly enough. In France, the definition of freedom contains “my freedom ends where the freedom of others begins”. Freedom is therefore a social contract held by boundaries, as opposed to the individualist unbridled freedom from the USA.

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4 points

There’s a common phrase in the US, “the freedom to swing your arm ends at the tip of my nose”. The trouble is no one really agrees on the size of noses.

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4 points

The idea of a “social contract” is flawed in the sense that it is not a contract at all, as it is unilateral in nature.

Voting and taxation do not necessarily imply explicit consent with how government (the monopoly on violence) works.

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