Continuing my screed, a society that does not insist that its members give as they can, get as they need, will find that many of its members, particularly those who are severely lacking in any of the basic necessities, fail to develop the sense of participation in the social contract--and fail to develop the allegience to the contract itself. At the other end of the spectrum are those so greatly benefiting from the society that they come to think that they are above the duty to contribute, that their mere existence is contribution enough to warrant them ever greater slices of the societal pie. In reality, the greatest contribution they have to make to society IS their elephantine share of the pie.

But notice that I said in my previous post that society's members should benefit to the degree that it fosters their contribution: many people are clearly motivated to great, creative contributions by the opportunity to enhance their share of the pie--this is how their ultimate contribution is fostered. But, dammit, no one member's contribution is so great that he deserves to accumulate a pieshare greater than that held by a third of all the rest of the membership.

There is another important problem with the way the social contract is interpreted and administered: We are now a global society and cannot escape that fact. All mankind are members of that society: yet ninety-five percent of the world's people are considered by the holders of the big slices of the pie to be not members of the society but resources for exploitation.

--seedignoredbutstillranting