Social Minimum and Social Contract: A Comparison

Posted on Mar 8, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Social Minimum

The social minimum refers to the basic necessities and rights that a society must provide to its citizens to ensure a decent standard of living. These necessities can include food, housing, healthcare, and education. A society has a moral obligation to ensure that all citizens have access to the basic necessities of life, regardless of income or social status. The implementation of a social minimum can take many forms, such as guaranteed minimum income, universal basic income, and social housing.

Ethical Framework of the Social Minimum

  • Respect for the rights and dignity of all individuals, including the right to life, liberty, and security of person.
  • Promotion of equality and non-discrimination, including equal access to resources and opportunities.
  • Protection of vulnerable groups, such as children, the elderly, and those with disabilities.
  • Fair distribution of resources and opportunities, including access to healthcare, education, and employment.
  • Responsible stewardship of the environment and natural resources.

Different cultures and societies may have different understandings of what constitutes a social minimum ethical framework. These principles are not fixed but are subject to change as society evolves.

Social Minimum Measures

  1. Universal Basic Income (UBI): A guaranteed minimum income for all citizens, regardless of their employment status or income level.
  2. Universal Healthcare: Access to basic health services and treatments for all citizens, regardless of their ability to pay.
  3. Affordable Housing: Programs and policies that make it possible for all citizens to afford decent housing.
  4. Education: Free or low-cost access to education for all citizens, regardless of their income level.
  5. Social Security: Programs and policies that provide financial support to citizens who are unable to work due to disability, illness, or old age.
  6. Access to Basic Utilities: Electricity, clean water, internet, and public transport.

Welfare

Welfare refers to happiness, understood as the net balance of pleasure over pain that an individual experiences (Jeremy Bentham, 1789).

Welfare Problems

  • Adaptive Preferences: People born into deprived circumstances might adjust their expectations, becoming satisfied with their lot even if they are poor.
  • It is wrong to think that all that has fundamental value in human life is the amount of happiness or desire-satisfaction it contains. Being happy is valuable, but critics argue it is not the only thing that matters for how well our lives are going.

Resourcism

Resourcism is a concept aimed at finding an appropriate, neutral way of assessing the respective advantage in life enjoyed by different people. Although reasonable people disagree about what gives life fundamental value and meaning, they can agree that it is important to hold certain “all-purpose means” for pursuing their plans of life.

Criticism: It can seem “fetishistic” in its simplest form, focusing on resource holdings (income/wealth) without considering what different people can do or be with these holdings. Individuals’ needs differ due to differences in health conditions or natural endowments. Resourcism, as opposed to the capability approach, seems not to account for this variability.

Capability Approach

The Capability Approach posits that a person’s well-being is constituted by the “functionings” they achieve. These are:

  • Beings and doings can vary from good health, avoiding escapable illness and premature mortality.
  • “Functionings” include welfarist concerns, like “being happy,” but are not confined to them. A person’s capability is their power to achieve functionings: “a set of vectors of functionings, reflecting the person’s freedom to lead one type of life or another.”

Social Contract

A social contract is an agreement among members of a society in which they give up some individual freedom in exchange for protection and security provided by a government or other authority. Individuals come together to form a society and agree to certain rules and regulations to live together peacefully and orderly. It establishes the rules governing a society/state; the rules are legitimate because the governed themselves have mutually and freely consented to them. This concept has been developed by several philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Ethical Framework of the Social Contract

  • Protection of individual rights: The social contract guarantees the protection of individual rights such as life, liberty, and property.
  • Mutual consent: The social contract is based on the idea that individuals voluntarily agree to give up some individual freedom in exchange for protection and security.
  • The rule of law: The social contract establishes a system of laws and institutions that ensure the protection of individual rights and the maintenance of social order.
  • Fair distribution of resources: The social contract may include the idea of fair distribution of resources, such as wealth and opportunities.

Social Contract Measures

  • Establishing a system of laws and institutions: This includes creating a legal system that protects individual rights and a system of courts and law enforcement.
  • Providing basic public goods and services: This includes providing essential services like education, healthcare, and infrastructure.
  • Protecting individual rights: This includes implementing laws, policies, and programs that protect individuals from discrimination and abuse.
  • Ensuring the rule of law: This includes ensuring that all laws are applied fairly and uniformly.
  • Protecting the environment: This includes implementing policies and programs that protect the environment and promote sustainability.

Social Contract Theory

The theory starts with the claim that human beings originally lived in a state of nature, where they had perfect freedom from external authorities.

The state of nature is dangerous and inconvenient. While one’s natural rights to life, liberty, and property still exist, no one is sure how to enforce and apply these rights fairly and impartially without an authority.

To escape the state of nature, people contract, or mutually agree, to give up their perfect freedom to guarantee these natural rights and live in a fair and just society.

The social contract establishes the rules governing a society or state; the rules are legitimate because the governed themselves have mutually and freely consented to them.