The global future of contract and trust

The American Thinker ^ | Jan. 14, 2005 | Christopher Chantrill

[Kitten Festival]

If a global society forms during the Twenty-first Century, will it necessarily be a contract society, built upon reciprocal trade and agreement, as many people think? Or could it be constructed upon other principles, for instance the left’s dream of universal sharing, nonviolence, peace, and justice, or the Isalmists’ dream of the world converted to Islam by the will of God and His holy warriors? Or will it be a global bureaucracy, a United Nations writ large, the centralized rule of the international experts?

When Sir Henry Maine wrote his famous dictum in Ancient Law that the movement of progressive societies was from “status to contract,” he was merely stating what seemed, to the Victorians, to be obvious. A stagnant and traditional society may base itself on status and hierarchy, but a dynamic and changing society must move to contract.

[Kitten Festival]

This essay is tremendous, a compelling, fascinating read by the author of a forthcoming book on the same topic. Shall we have a society based on contracts? Or on leftwingery? Read it all.