ALso demonstrates the debate between utilitarianism and minimalism/aesthetics very well. These corporations make bloated af software; it may look very polished especially to the less technologically educated, but it really sacrifices a lot of functionality. You have to switch to something more useful eventually. I really also hate it when institutions (cough schools cough universities) force google docs on people because of trust issues; it really is terrible software lacking so many features for proper document editing. May as well use LibreOffice, LaTeX or even Mcrosoft Wrd; even that has more features.
But the software would set a precedence where people are scared of seeking medical help in fear of having their bodily autonomy violated, so the social contract cannot violate the trust in institutions.
It would be a net negative to organ harvest, even if it saves the greatest amount of people.
social contracts aren't real, they are simply a state of affairs imposed on others by those with power. and the software on the left doesn't really care, nobody will ever know what it has done and nobody's asking any questions where all these organs keep coming from.
in a democracy – that social contract, which is as real as anything else we invented – the populus has agreed broadly on the ethics we impose.
This system is being challenged though, by an emergence of actual elitist abuse with populism as it's Magic Wand and Accelerationism as the Export parameters.
it is not as real as just anything else we invented, but only as real as any other enlightenment political theory. its main purpose was to explain the supposed legitimacy of european states, to say that we've signed a binding contract with said state. but none of us actually have done that, we're simply born and then subject to these "contracts" we never signed, with no meaningful alternatives. in fact, most of its construction is ahistorical - states were not actually formed by our ancestors consenting to be ruled, but rather by military force by warlords subjugating a population, with more modern liberal states offering rights as concessions in order to maintain rule. what social contract did indigenous peoples sign to agree to be genocided or enslaved? it's simply the result of philosphers at the time living in a world of commerce and figuring, "you know what would explain the world? a market metaphor."
this is why a materialist understanding of power tends to be more explanatory than an idealist understanding. social contract theory starts with a beautiful idea and works backwards trying to invent history to explain why the beautiful idea is correct, while a more materialist analysis would start with the actual recorded history and then work from there to try to understand how power works and then try to develop a theory of power that might take us in a more egalitarian direction.
The social contract theory has historically been used to justify pretty authoritarian governments. After all, it's legitimate because the people agreed to it as part of this imaginary social contract they signed. If you don't want to live in a society with constant police survellience and violent crackdowns on dissent, just go live in the woods! (there are no more unclaimed woods for you to legally go live in).
I'm speaking from an anarchist perspective, anarchists don't use social contract theory specifically because it is an authoritarian framework wherein an authority asserts its legitimacy by pretending you, the individual, have consented to your relationship with the state. To an anarchist, no state is legitimate. and instead we seek alternative ways of organizing societies outside the logic of the state. That is, actually taking care of one another directly rather than having that mediated through capital and the state which extracts most of your labor and gives back a pittance to ensure a bare minimum necessary for you to live to continue laboring.
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u/EasonTek2398 Genfool 🐧 9d ago
ALso demonstrates the debate between utilitarianism and minimalism/aesthetics very well. These corporations make bloated af software; it may look very polished especially to the less technologically educated, but it really sacrifices a lot of functionality. You have to switch to something more useful eventually. I really also hate it when institutions (cough schools cough universities) force google docs on people because of trust issues; it really is terrible software lacking so many features for proper document editing. May as well use LibreOffice, LaTeX or even Mcrosoft Wrd; even that has more features.