10th grade civics we did the whole thing about the social contract do you remember this I think if you're in the

United States you probably do man maybe they teach us everywhere else too I don't know

there's this guy John Locke another guy who came a little bit later on Jean-Jacques Rousseau

but Locke in particular talked about this concept,

the later we describe as a social contract wherein society is held together by this tacit agreement

that we make with all of our neighbors to say,

I'm going to give up a little bit of my freedom, you give up a little bit of your freedom

that we might otherwise have in a completely wild world with no government and it's just us in nature. We're going to lay down a little

bit of that freedom and the result is that effectively we will enjoy more

happiness, more prosperity and more freedom together by forfeiting just this teeny tiny little amount like

the amount where you can kill each other and rob other people. We're going to give

that up in favor of having some sort of central mediating power that adjudicates disputes between us and well

unfortunately Locke's idea is also going to require that adjudicating force that

you know solves disputes between people and keeps us safe and does the

mail and handles well frankly a bazillion other things they're going to have to collect a nominal

percentage of your income in order to do that.

Taxes, right?

There are two things in this life that are certain.

Death in taxes.

And so what happens then is you got this concept of a social contract.

I just remember thinking, okay, it's a contract and the contract

says that I signed up to be a part of this society, in this day and age on planet

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