Rousseau

Latest Posts in Rousseau

The Fair Society: It’s Time to Re-write the Social Contract

Many Americans were outraged when the Wall Street banks paid out an estimated $18.4 billion in executive and staff bonuses in 2009, even while the economy was being cratered by the financial meltdown and the Great Recession.1  It seemed very unfair; the perpetrators were being rewarded while the victims were paying a terrible price.  


The Fairness Instinct and the Social Contract

 One of the important findings of the emerging, multi-disciplinary science of human nature is that humans do, indeed, have an innate sense of fairness.  We regularly display a concern for others’ interests as well as our own, and we even show a willingness to punish perceived acts of unfairness.