In our updated Social Contract as a function of peace, Basic Income is, as a matter of logic and not ideology, a part of the agreement following the technological tower of Babel presented by industrial automation. Basic income means beer and bacon sold. The machines are doing all the work. What you do is....and presto! Every citizen and permanent resident is a recipient! Was their a war to raise the cost of a parking ticket? You have the power and the legislation and in fact, you have the binding legislation in place under the emergency powers to whatever is necessary and it will not be your party to get the credit unless your party is in office right now. Read more. Click here. The populace left to itself always wills the good, but left to itself it doesn’t always see what that is. The general will is always in the right, but the judgment that guides it isn’t always enlightened. It ought to be •made to see objects as they are, and sometimes as they ought to appear to it; •shown the good road it is in search of, •secured from the seductive influences of individual wills, •taught to look carefully at other places and times, and •made to weigh the attractions of present and sensible advantages against the danger of distant and hidden evils. Individuals see the good that they reject; the public wills the good that it doesn’t see.

6. The law By the social compact we have given the body politic •existence and •life; now it is up to legislation to give it •movement and •will. The basic act that forms the body and pulls it together does nothing to settle what it must do in order to survive. It’s the nature of things that makes an item good and in conformity with order—human agreements don’t come into it. All justice comes from God, who is its sole source; but if we knew how to draw it from that high source we wouldn’t need government or laws! No doubt there is a universal justice emanating from reason alone, but this justice can be admitted among us only if it is mutual. In the absence of natural sanctions. . . .the laws of justice are ineffective among men. . . . Agreements and laws are needed to join rights to duties and relate justice to its object. In the state of nature where everything is common, I don’t owe anything to someone to whom I haven’t promised anything; I recognize as belonging to others only what is of no use to me. It’s not like that in the state of society, where all rights are fixed by law. But what, when we come down to it, is a law? As long as we settle for attaching only metaphysical ideas to the word, we’ll go on arguing without understanding one another. If someone tells us what a law of nature is, that won’t bring us any nearer to knowing what a law of the state is. I have already said [page 15] that there is no general will directed to a particular object. [Rousseau’s proof of that, which follows, is severely compressed. The present version eases it out in ways that the ·small dots· convention can’t easily signify.] We are to suppose that the general will of populace x dictates that (for example) individual person y is to be given a pension. Either y is a member of x or he isn’t. (i) If he isn’t, then x’s will doesn’t count as a general will in relation to him—it may have absolutely nothing to do with y’s own will. (ii) If y is a member of x, i.e. a part of x, then x’s will that y receive a pension is a relation between whole and part that makes them two separate beings, •x-without-y and •y. But x-without-y isn’t the whole; and while this relation persists it’s a relation between two unequal parts; and it follows that the will of one is no longer in any respect general in relation to the other. But when the whole people decrees for the whole people, it is ·not looking outside itself, but· considering only itself; and if a relation is then formed, it is ·not between two separate objects, but only· between two aspects of a single entire object, with no need to split it into two parts. In that case the matter about which the decree is made is, like the decreeing will, general. This act is what I call a law. When I say that the object of laws is always general, I mean that law considers subjects collectively and considers kinds or actions, never a particular person or action. Thus the law can decree that there shall be privileges, but it can’t name anyone who is to get them. It can set up different classes of citizens, and even stipulate the qualifications for belonging to each of these classes, but it can’t pick out any individuals as belonging to this or that class. It can establish a monarchy with hereditary succession, but it can’t choose 18 The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau 26. The law a king or name a royal family. In short, any action that has an individual object falls outside the scope of the legislative power. We see at once that on this account of things certain questions can be laid aside. ‘Whose business it is to make laws?’ (They are acts of the general will.) ‘Is the prince is above the law? (·No·, because he is a member of the state.) ‘Can the law be unjust?’ (·No·, because nothing is unjust towards itself.) ‘How can we be both •free and •subject to the laws? (·There’s no problem about this·, because the laws are nothing but records of our volitions.) We see further that because the law unites universality of will with universality of object, nothing that a man—any man—commands on his own initiative can be a law. That holds even for the sovereign: what he or it commands with regard to a particular matter is not a law but a decree, an act not of sovereignty but of magistracy. So I give the name ‘republic’ to any state governed by laws, whatever form its administration takes; for only when the laws govern does the public interest govern, and the public thing is something real. [Rousseau expected his readers to recognize that chose publique (= ‘public thing’) is in Latin res publica, which is the origin of république (= ‘republic’).] Every legitimate government is republican;8 what government is I will explain later on. Laws are really only the conditions of civil association. Because the populace is subject to the laws, it ought to be their author: the conditions of •the society ought to be regulated solely by those who come together to form •it. But how will they do this? By a common agreement? By a sudden inspiration? Does the body politic have an organ—·like vocal cords and a tongue·—to declare its will? Who can give it the foresight to formulate and announce its acts in advance? or how is it to announce them in the hour of need? How can a blind multitude, which often doesn’t know what it wills because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out for itself such a great and difficult enterprise as a system of legislation? The populace left to itself always wills the good, but left to itself it doesn’t always see what that is. The general will is always in the right, but the judgment that guides it isn’t always enlightened. It ought to be •made to see objects as they are, and sometimes as they ought to appear to it; •shown the good road it is in search of, •secured from the seductive influences of individual wills, •taught to look carefully at other places and times, and •made to weigh the attractions of present and sensible advantages against the danger of distant and hidden evils. Individuals see the good that they reject; the public wills the good that it doesn’t see. Both need guidance. Individuals must be made to bring their wills into line with their reason; the populace must be taught to know what it wills. If that is done, public enlightenment leads to the union of understanding and will in the social body: the parts are made to work exactly together, and the whole is raised to its highest power. For this there has to be a law-maker. 8 I apply this word not merely to aristocracies and democracies but quite generally to any government directed by the general will, which is the law. To be legitimate, the government must be not identical with the sovereign, but its minister; so even a monarchy can be a republic. I’ll clarify this in Book 3. 19