Page 74 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

to protect against the multitude of risks that a complex society
faces, and to fund the advances in science and higher-quality

education, on which our future prosperity depends. These are
areas in which productive jobs – researchers, teachers, and
those who help run the institutions that support them – can be
created quickly. Even as we emerge from this crisis, we

should be aware that some other crisis surely lurks around
the corner. We can’t predict what the next one will look like –
other than it will look different from the last. [69]

Nowhere will this intrusion of governments, whose form may

be benign or malign depending on the country and the culture in
which it is taking place, manifest itself with greater vigour than in
the redefinition of the social contract.

1.3.4. The social contract

It is almost inevitable that the pandemic will prompt many
societies around the world to reconsider and redefine the terms of
their social contract. We have already alluded to the fact that
COVID-19 has acted as an amplifier of pre-existing conditions,

bringing to the fore long-standing issues that resulted from deep
structural frailties that had never been properly addressed. This
dissonance and an emergent questioning of the status quo is
finding expression in a loudening call to revise the social contracts

by which we are all more or less bound.

Broadly defined, the “social contract” refers to the (often
implicit) set of arrangements and expectations that govern the
relations between individuals and institutions. Put simply, it is the

“glue” that binds societies together; without it, the social fabric
unravels. For decades, it has slowly and almost imperceptibly
evolved in a direction that forced individuals to assume greater
responsibility for their individual lives and economic outcomes,
leading large parts of the population (most evidently in the low-

income brackets) to conclude that the social contract was at best
being eroded, if not in some cases breaking down entirely. The
apparent illusion of low or no inflation is a practical and illustrative

example of how this erosion plays out in real-life terms. For many

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