In general, I’m willing to extend a fair amount of trust to other people. For example, when driving, I trust other drivers to stay in their lane.
However, when drivers swerve all over the road, I stop extending that trust in an instant—those drivers broke trust with me. That’s because they broke the social contract that says they will respect other people’s use of the road. Worse, they take my autonomy and personal power away because their behavior creates the potential for physical danger to everyone on the road.
That’s much worse than flipping the Bozo bit. (The Bozo bit is when we are clueless or annoying. I know I’m too often clueless and annoying to others. However, I try very hard not to betray other people’s trust in me.)
Now, some large companies have changed their corporate terms of service so they have royalty-free rights to my intellectual property. I do not want to extend that power to them. I trusted them to be good corporate citizens and stick with their original terms of service. As a consequence of their perceived power, they betrayed my trust in them.
They betrayed the literal and the social contracts.
These two examples occur when other people have more power over my life or business than I want them to have. These people (companies are full of people) choose to take power that does not belong to them. The more they grab power, the less I trust them.
Their power grabs degrade my autonomy to make my own choices. They break the social contract.
Social Contracts, Power, Trust, Betrayal
Some of our social contract is in the law. But we have unwritten social contracts, too, the niceties of daily life. Here are some examples:
- Saying, “Please” and “Thank you.”
- Holding doors for the person behind you.
- Not skipping the line when we have to wait. (Lines and queues are very culture-dependent!)
There’s no law about these things—we trust each other to do the right kinds of things most of the time. And yes, sometimes, I’m a bozo when I drive. If you drive, I bet you are, too. We might yell inside the car, but most of us manage to contain our road rage to swearing and maybe some gestures. (When people resort to physical violence when driving, that’s an example of breaking the social contract.)
However, when a person with greater power, such as a huge company, exerts—or tries to—its power over us, the individuals, they betray the social contract.
We expect companies to not just work for themselves, but also to not harm the greater good. Even when we have hundreds, if not thousands, of years of experience that people do not do this. Frankly, that’s why we have so many laws about the environment, insider trading, and more. Because companies do harm the greater good.
Every time they do that, it’s an act of betrayal. The companies betray their missions and lose customers. The drivers run the risk of losing their personal freedom.
Social contracts mean as much—if not more—than legal contracts. And when companies break their legal contracts in an effort to grab power, we all suffer.
Clarify Your Social Contracts
Just as we clarify our social contracts in our daily lives, we all need clarify our social contracts with various companies. (See When Do You Change Your Mind? for an example of how I clarify some social contracts.) Too often, these companies have outsize power compared to the rest of us. That’s why they think they can steal from us—they think we are too little to fight back.
Remember what Shakespeare said:
“Though she be but little, she is fierce”
Let’s go be fierce and hold people accountable for the social contracts, not just the legal contracts. As a part of that, let’s create more trust and less betrayal.
That’s the question this week: How Can we clarify the social contract, trust, and betrayal?