Terms Of Service Society
26th January 2022
ZMan is delightfully dyspeptic today.
What the philosopher John Locke bequeathed to the world was the notion that we could not only figure out the rules of nature, we could discover the rules of society that best comported with man’s nature. If we can figure out those rules and implement them, we will have a society that allows for the full blossoming of man. The debate since the 18th century has been about the nature of man. Communism, fascism, capitalism, libertarianism and so on are all based on this assumption.
Fast forward to this age and we appear to be in another one of those great transitions in how we look at the rules of society. You can see it in the language. Hardly anyone in power speaks of rights anymore. The term civil rights has morphed into a dog whistle by the race hustlers, stripped of any connection to natural rights. Of course, the systemic assaults on basic rights like assembly and speech are so common now, the repression of these rights and the people exercising them is now normal.
The reason for this is we are transitioning from a society based on rights codified in the law to a society based on privileges based on a terms of service. You get to do things promised in the terms of services, as long as you are compliant with the terms of service, which can change at any time. What we used to think of as rights are now privileges, no different from access to Twitter. You get to do things based on your level of compliance to the current set of rules.