Social Contract

1. The government is only able to provide its public benefits such as security,
infrastructure, and welfare, through the cooperation of each individual.
Dagger
As it applies to punishment, the principle of fair play [it] begins with a conception of society as a
cooperative endeavor secured by coercion. To think of society in this way is to recognize that the
individuals who compose a society enjoy a number of benefits available only because of the
cooperation of their fellows. The social order enables us to work together for common purposes and
to pursue in peace our private interests. But we can do these things only when others, through their
cooperation, help to maintain this order. This has two important im- plications. The first is that rules or
conventions of some sort become necessary, for we need to know what the required acts of
cooperation their own cooperation to the other members of society. Because the cooperation of
others makes these benefits available to me, fairness demands that I help provide these benefits for
them by cooperating in turn. When other things are equal, then, I owe it to the others to obey the rules;
if I fail to do so, I take unfair advantage of them.

The reason for motivation to obey the govt cannot be external, because an externally
imposed rule implies the preexistence of an authority to impose the motivation.
Hence, the motivation has to be internal. If we recognize humans as capable of setting
their own ends, then the reason for them willingly bearing a burden is an expected
benefit to maximize their ends. The motivation for people to bear the burdens
associated with government is the expectation that a reciprocal benefit will be had
from their peers.
Rachels
First, acknowledging deserts is a way of granting people the power to determine their own fortunes.
Because we live together in mutually cooperative societies, how each of us fares depends on only on
what we do but on what others do as well. If we are to flourish, we need to obtain their good
treatment. A system of understandings in which desert is acknowledged gives us a way of doing that.
Thus if you want to be promoted, you may earn it by working hard at your job and if you want others to
treat you decently, you can treat them decently. Absent this, what are we to do? WE might imagine a
system in which the only way for a person to ensure good treatment by others is somehow to coerce
that treatment from them. Worker might try threatening his employer. Or we might imagine that good
treatment always comes as charity. Worker might simply hope tht employer will be nice to him. But the
practice of acknowledging deserts is different. The practice of acknowledging deserts gives people
control over whether others will treat them well or badly, by saying to them, if you behave well, you
will be entitled to good treatment from others because you will have earned it. without this control,
people would be in an important sence impotent, less able to affect how others will threat them and
dependent on coercion or charity for any good treatment they might receive.
This shows that the expectation for reciprocity is what holds a society together under
a government and allows individuals to live together peacefully. As the US
Government draws its authority from the cooperative restrictions of its citizens,
citizens will logically expect a reciprocal benefit for their troubles.
2. Only a contractarian system that derives principles of mutual restraint from
individuals’ self-interest accounts for this fact.
Gauthier 1
Moral principles are introduced as the objects of full voluntary ex ante agreement among rational
persons. Such agreement is hypothetical, in supposing a pre-moral context for the adoption of moral rules and practices. But the parties to
agreement are real, determinate individuals, distinguished by their capacities, situations, and concerns. In so far as [Since] they would
agree to constraints on their choices, restraining their pursuit of their own interests, they
acknowledge a distinction between what they may and may not do. As rational persons
understanding the structure of their interaction, they recognize a place for mutual constraint, and so
for a moral dimension in their affairs.

And, only this contractarianism system provides a non-circular origin for morality.
Gauthier 2
A contractarian theory of morals, developed as part of the theory of rational choice, has evident strengths. It enables us to
demonstrate[s] the rationality of impartial constraints on the pursuit of individual interest to persons who
may take no interest in others' interests. Morality is thus given a sure grounding in a weak and widely accepted conception
of practical rationality. No alternative account of morality accomplishes this. Those who claim that moral
principles are objects of rational choice in special circumstances fail to establish the rationality of actual
compliance with these principles. Those who claim to establish the rationality of such compliance appeal[s]
to a strong and controversial conception of reason that seems to incorporate[s] prior moral suppositions. No
alternative account generates morals, as a rational constraint on choice and action, from a non-moral, or morally neutral, base.

Thus, the value criterion is upholding contractarianism.