The Pact with Power

If you are interested in understanding the structural stability of any society, one useful question to ask is this:

What is the unspoken agreement that the silent majority has with those in power?

Let's call the answer to this question "The Pact with Power". You can think of it as a pragmatic version of Rousseau's Social Contract. Rousseau was mostly interested in the philosophical construct explaining the legitimate basis of political authority and the formation of society. He was preocuppied with the origins. I am not interested in the orgins. I don't assume that the Pact with Power is what creates Power in the first place. In reality, ruling elites come to power in all sorts of (mostly violent and dishonest) ways. But the question I'm interested in is: what are the conditions under which the silent majority continues to tolerate them?

Let's look at a few examples. We will take 3 different societies, summarize the experience that the masses have had over the past 70 years (~ average lifetime) and derive the current Pact with Power from that experience.

1. China

The past 70 years of China's turbulent history can, from the point of view of the silent majority, be summed up as follows: "We've been starving a lot... and now we don't". This, in turn, forms the basis of the Pact with Power that upholds the CCP as the ruling elite:

As long as we don't starve, you are good.

Once we understand this basic pact, a lot of the things become clear. This pact explains why the the majority Chinese are tolerating the control, the corruption and all the other generally unpleasant aspects of the way CCP runs the place. This "non-starving" pact also explains why CCP has been turning the screws a lot recently: the people who remember mass starvations are dying out. The new generation will need to form a different pact with Power - more similar to the American dream one (see below). And CCP may not be quite ready for that. So they are starting to turn the screws to cling on to Power without a Pact.

2. USA

The past 70 years of the US's history can, from the point of view of the silent majority, be summed up as follows: "We are the best and everything is always getting better". Obviously, this and all the other summaries like this are a drastic and inexusable oversimplification. There have been massive struggles and injustices along the way. Not all the people have been doing great in the US, just like not all the people have been starving in China (and some people still are). But the radical zoomout and oversimplification is necessary to get the big picture. So let us continue on the basis of the understanding that on the whole the majority of Americans have felt a lot of improvement from generation to generation over the past 70 years (right until very recently, which we will get to in a second). So on the basis of this history of growth an improvement, the Americans' Pact with Power could be formulated like this:

As long as my children have it better than me and better than everyone else in the world, you are good.

The reason the American society is currently under so much strain - is because this growth-oriented pact is breaking down. For the first time in 70 years it's clear that the youth of today won't live better than their parents and won't live better than anyone else in the world. And it's not just clear to economists - it's clear to the public.

People are playing the blame game: "it's because of China", or "It's because of the immigrants" etc. But the basic fact of the matter is that the power elite in the US has not managed to keep its side of the pact, and now they are in deep trouble, scrambling to restore it. The near future will tell whether the same pact can be restored or a new one will have to be found to form the bases of the future American society.

3. The Netherlands

Western Europe in general, and The Netherlands specifically, has had a really wonderful time over the past 70 years. There has been peace (for the first time in centuries). There has been a lot of prosperity. The summary could sound something like this: "We are done with fighting, we will just live a good life". The focus on growth is not as accute as in the US, because the societies are older. They have mostly already got over their teenage domination drive and superiority complexes (through terrible crimes and empires of the previous centuries, but let's leave that for another conversation). So, with life being generally quite good and growth or superiority obsession not playing such a great role in the public consciousness, people in the Netherlands ended up with a very simple Pact with Power:

As longs as you live me alone, don't steal and let me (and everyone else) live a good life, you are good.

There is a long history of "Live and Let Live" attitude in the Netherlands. So this pact was culturally easy to adopt and uphold (similarly to how the US and China pacts we discussed above were also to a degree influenced and preconditioned by their cultures and histories over the longer period than the last 70 years).

This relaxed pact makes for a very comfortable life. But this are changing in The Netherlands (and wider Western Europe) as well. The strain on the pact is coming from multiple directions:

Externally, there is a perceived threat of others who are threatening "our way of life". Be that immigrants bringing their culture and their disruption to the economy, or be that external political powers on European borders, threatening the European good life: it's starting to get clear to the Dutch and the Europeans in general, that "simply leaving us alone and keeping things functioning" is not the only job that their power structures have. There is also a job of actively protecting the good life and this job need to be a part of the pact.
Internally, there policies of the past decade has also interfered with the pact. Lots of environmental regulations, more progressive taxation for the redistribution of wealth... etc. etc. All of these things, accumulated, start feeling like the the powers are starting to "mess with me", they are not leaving me alone. And that's clearly a violation of the pact, even if theoretically I may support the ethical reasons behind the policies.

The renegotiation of the pact is happening across Europe as we speak. The "rise of the right" is merely a symptom of the breakdown of Western Europeans' "leave me alone, don't steal and you are good" pact with their governments. The new pact will probably be much less about non-interference and much more about active protection.

[Amstelveen, 020240317]

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