We started Distilled in 2012 as an international quarterly magazine. We published four issues consisting of articles written by students and young professionals about politics, economics, and culture. In our initial run, we built a steady readership and a stable of writers, publishing a blog, interviews, and even political cartoons.

What we realized is that our most important asset was the community of writers and readers we brought together. We originally chose a quarterly magazine as our model because we wanted to organize our articles by a theme or a question, and to foster a diverse, wide-ranging discussion amongst our contributors around a particular topic. We cultivated our writing, provoked heated debates about politics, economics, and culture, and even engaged in dialogue with other publications and communities.

Alas, we were unable to keep a community spanning oceans and time zones engaged through just a quarterly magazine. Since our student days, our ability to publish several articles four times a year became strained as we developed our respective careers and crafts, built relationships with our local communities, and started our own eclectic families.

In many ways, this was exactly what we wanted. Distilled, from the very beginning, hoped that its writers and readers would become active and engaged members of various professional and personal communities, and in the process develop unique and diverse ways of relating to the world.

Nevertheless, the world remains troubled. Since 2012, the global crisis of confidence has unleashed a flood of violence, xenophobia, and greed that had previously been tethered loosely by propriety. Every day we see people’s fear manifest in the support of extremist, violent policies; in the rampant predatory behavior of corporate and financial entities; in government crackdowns of free speech and movement; and in the relentless hollowing-out of civic, liberal, humanizing institutions. Dogmatic followers of charismatic leaders promise the end of suffering and redemption, not realizing that out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing has ever been made.

The fragile harmony of our world is under attack from the dogmatic and frightened. The best still lack conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

We believe that the only way forward is through cultivating and nurturing a global community. This global community must have the courage to stand boldly against fear, and to share what we learn as we go along. We also realized that the only way to salvage courage from fear is to be aware, present, and fully engaged with the world we live in and the people we are around. Courage erupts from living in truth. The principle of courage was the driving impetus of Distilled in 2012, and remain the reason why we must have Distilled today.

So, how do we live in truth and courage?

We must seek full engagement with the world we live in, forming a community in which we actively share our ideas, wisdom, skills, and ways of living. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, and consequently more unstable, we must forge a community that too is international and diverse but united by a common belief in the value of civil discussion. Only in such a community can people seek refuge from dogma and extremism.

We must together consider the story of where we have been, who we are, and where we are going. And when the time comes, our community must have the courage to stand our ground and defend it, wisely. For if we succumb, we will be irrevocably devoured by fear.

Distilled is relaunching as a print and digital pamphlet series. Articles and essays submitted to Distilled will be mailed to our community mailing list as a printed pamphlet, and distributed digitally as a secure e-pamphlet.

Why pamphlets?

Pamphlets are intimate, like letters from dear friends. Anyone in the community can respond directly to a pamphlet through either a letter to the editor or another pamphlet. Pamphlets are easy to produce, and the techniques for producing and distributing pamphlets in both print and digital forms can be easily shared with the entire community. They can also be easily distributed in local coffee shops, bookstores, pubs and amongst friends, and digitally via e-mail, flash drive, phone, computer-to-computer connection, and social media. Pamphlets can be smuggled into restrictive countries and workplaces, and distributed in a way that is difficult to trace.

Digital pamphlets can be further securitized and distributed on local devices free from the monitoring and tracking of the internet, facilitating a digital samizdat. Finally, pamphlets have a long and august history of communicating subversive ideas across communities. These pamphlets will create a forum of letters amongst the Distilled community, which is held together by the principles of courage, engagement, and living in truth.

Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. What we are building together is mercifully not a utopia or a paradise. Instead, we are cultivating an intellectual avant-garde in which engaged and meaningful ideas and relationships have the time and patience to germinate and grow.

Our community won’t last forever, but it is indeed a refuge for our own inestimable humanity.

We humbly invite you to join us,

Five years ago we started Distilled as a response to what we called "The Global Crisis in Confidence". At the time countries the world over were running into severe institutional problems. These problems weren't limited to one specific field, but ran across the spectrum, from the political to the financial, from the social to the cultural. We thought these issues were serious, but probably not yet existential, as there was still time to fix them. That is why we followed up our first magazine with three more issues analysing these problems in a thoughtful, orderly manner.

Now half a decade further a lot has changed, but nothing has really been fixed. And in a lot of places time has run out. This was the case first of all in the Islamic world, where the open wounds caused by the Iraq war of 2003 quickly infected a whole region destabilised by the Arab Spring of 2011. This might also be the case in the United States and Great Britain, where two electoral Rubicons were crossed last year, undoubtedly leading to a more chaotic future. France and Germany may follow their lead in 2017.

On the geopolitical field nothing has been solved either, and new problems are created every month. North Korea is still North Korea. The Middle-East is suffering from even more foreign interventionism. Both Russia and China are reacting ever more assertively to continued Western containment — Russia more so than China under the Obama administration, under Trump possibly the other way around.

We're experiencing a phantom economic recovery at best, and none of the root causes of the 2008 financial crisis have been addressed. And then there's the small matter of climate change, where the modest progress made before Trump will not survive the next few months. Although we should never give up the hope to fix things, we no longer have the luxury to do so in an orderly, thoughtful manner. We have to figure out a way to do it in times of chaos.

People all over the world have already been trying many different approaches over the past few years. Yet all their efforts can be divided into two general responses. The first is the "business as usual" response. It could be seen for example in Paris after the November 2015 terror attacks, where people made a point of quickly returning to their cafés and concerts to prove that they weren't going to change their values and lifestyle. The other response is "extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures", which probably went through people's minds when they voted for Trump or Brexit.

There's a strong intrinsic logic to both of these approaches and on the surface it's hard to tell which one is better. We want to go slightly deeper though, and try to actually answer the question: should we keep acting as normal, or do we have to take extraordinary measures to defend the values of freedom, equality, and democracy? To a large extent the difference between these two responses boils down to the distinction between structure and agency.

Those who advocate that "business as usual" provides the best response to political and economic chaos believe in the strength of moral and societal structures that have been created in the past. In some cases those structures, such as local and federal governments, financial institutions and marketplaces, the institution of marriage, and the church extend back a few decades. In others they might reach back centuries or even millenia. The fact that these structures have survived for all of this time, regardless of the occasional bump in the road, means that society will always return to the moral and social institutions that now seem in disarray. Sooner or later the world will rectify itself, and in the mean time the best course of action is to maintain stability in one's personal actions. By doing so, the world is not further disrupted and the path to recovery remains open for those who are willing to walk it.

Conversely, those who profess that we should take extraordinary measures believe that the existing structures have already failed. In their view it is up to individual people to re-open the roads that the current chaos seems to have closed. Everyone has to use his or her own agency — for example through strikes, protests, or boycotts — to oppose negative developments and to restore order. This idea often ends in support for decisive action. As history has often demonstrated, organisations and systems do not necessarily have sufficient powers to rectify themselves, therefore relying on the above-mentioned structures can be an issue.

Both views pose problems when applied to the current situation. The reliance on structure is too passive and constrained given the extent to which earlier certainties are being eroded, whereas decisive action is difficult for anyone who has vested interests such as a job or family that demands most attention. As a consequence everyone is confronted with the same dilemma: how do we reconcile the need to act with the practical limitations of family, work, and public pressure?

Therefore, the course of action that is most desirable is both active and workable, a middle position between structure and agency. We suggest that the best strategy to deal with chaos is to do the same in most circumstances but pick a few areas where you try to act differently. Think of it as a "picking your battles" approach, instead of "business as usual" or "extraordinary measures". Although to some, such limited actions might seem too little, we believe that this is the most realistic way forward.

How do we, therefore, determine when and under which circumstances to act differently? That depends on your current place in society.

Shortly after the election of Donald Trump, historian Timothy Snyder offered a set of practical guidelines by which to live in an age of creeping authoritarianism. Among bits of advice such as practicing measured disobedience and maintaining calm in the face of crisis, Snyder recommends the nourishment of one's sense of professional ethics. If great institutions and professional bodies are subverted into instruments of oppression, professional ethics are a set of tools and heuristics that allow workers to determine how they may have the greatest impact.

Professional ethics may range from swearing an oath to do no harm to heuristics regarding transparency, accountability, and honesty. Ethical practice may even encompass the realm of privileged non-compliance, the art of knowing when not to perform a professional action as a means of resistance.

For example, the fields of medicine, technology, law, finance, etc. try to practice professional ethics by convening institutional review boards and other conscious study groups. While these groups may not be able to determine the ideal course of action under every conceivable situation, they may be able to recommend sets of ethical heuristics to their member practitioners. In rare cases they can even set punitively binding "red lines" that must never be crossed. Both the medical and legal professions, of course, have maintained these institutions for many years. Despite their occasional lapse into corruption, these institutions may serve as practical models for professionals in other fields with ever-increasing societal influence.

We recommend that people who are already part of "the system" take ownership of these ethical bodies and discussions within their profession. It might seem more heroic to quit your job in finance, lobbying, or security, and become a professional revolutionary instead, but the truth is that you're probably more likely to make a meaningful difference through a qualified form of resistance within your sector.

As another suggestion to those who are struggling in their professional life, we say stop feeling ashamed, stop apologising. Don't just take any job because you feel pressured to do so. Most jobs that are available to you are probably harmful anyway, either to society or to your own future. You can keep your head up high and be proud to refuse them. People might see your behaviour as lazy or immature, but there are many ways to prove them wrong.

These actions can put you into conflict with your peers and members of your community. By carefully questioning the areas in which we can exercise agency in our lives, we must inevitably resist external pressure. Yet, at the same time, we diminish our resistance to our inner sense of conscience. The late Czech dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel described this approach to action as "living in truth". To live in truth not only means seeking truth but living according to the sense of truth guided by one's conscience.

This individual choice will have a collective impact when exercised in concert with others who have made a similar vow to live in truth. With time and patience, these actions coalesce into movements and provide a sense of renewed energy and focus in reforming existing structures. Havel's Charter 77 movement emerged out of a desire to adhere to the standards and principles declared by the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia and culminated into a movement incorporating existing institutions as well as creating new ones such as the Civic Forum and the slate of post-communist parties.

In times of chaos the truth is rarely orderly and simple. In mathematics, chaos is simply high variability of outcomes given low variability in initial conditions over a finite period of time. A chaotic system would be one in which a single vote one way or the other leads to drastically different political climates. In systems that exhibit high levels of chaos, the elements of predictability and stability that underpin consensus are weakened. Hence the truth as a compass must lie within ourselves as individuals first and from there spread amongst our immediate community. We can never fully understand how our actions will roil global systems, but we can seek to understand the part of the world in which we live and the communities we are part of.

While we must seek to restore a balance between chaos and order, it is also important to remember that the uncertainty generated by chaos is fertile ground for creativity. We can cultivate within ourselves a resilient inner freedom by accepting and even embracing the chaos of the world we live in. We have created systems that have replaced the gods as highly potent forces for unpredictable change. Rather than fear these forces, we can better understand their power and harness their ability to help us.

Let's embrace the opportunity to make unexpected connections and to generate new rituals and ethical practices in the wake of what chaos leaves behind. While what we create will at first lack the refinement of the culture and institutions we had inherited and lost, our creations may nevertheless be a more genuine and appropriate response to the open-ended questions we currently face. A time of chaos can indeed be a time of opportunity, but only if you pick your battles.

A Proposal to Add Juries to Constitutional Courts

These are difficult times for representative democracies. Within the OECD the numbers show that elected governments are least trusted of all public services, with an average approval rating of only 43.4%. In the U.S. Gallup polls report a strong decline in confidence in Congress from 40% in 1975 to a paltry 12% right now. The Presidency has dropped from 52% to 32% over the same period. Despite these poll numbers, both the OECD and the Gallup data suggest a greater confidence in the largely unelected court systems. The U.S. Supreme Court polls at 40% approval, and courts throughout the OECD are trusted on average by 53.5% of the population. In this context it's not surprising to see our judiciaries being hailed as the bedrock of our democracies.

Recently though, the courts themselves are becoming increasingly politicised. More and more we see judicial decisions being challenged on ideological terms. These attacks on "elitist judges" by large sections of the commentariat are readily dismissed as dangerous populism. A closer look at the foundations of our modern legal systems however suggests that problems might lie deeper. It is indeed hard to maintain the image of our highest courts as protectors of democracy, when in reality they form the branch of government that is least accountable to the wider public.

Consider then the case of the recent immigration order banning citizens of certain Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States. The matter led to a vigorous public debate, including politicians, activists, migrant communities, academics, and several other civil actors. Eventually it also included the judiciary, all the way up to the Supreme Court. It was up to its justices to determine the constitutionality of the proposed measure, meaning that it could decide for the entire American society who is granted access to U.S. territory — historically speaking one of the basic concerns of almost every polity.

Such a major public issue that involves a judgement from a constitutional court can be called a societal legal case, distinct from traditional civil and criminal cases. These cases involve the most contentious issues in society, reflecting the broader identity of the political community and touching upon the primary conditions of political life. In other words, these are situations whereby the judiciary is supposed to reflect who we, the people, are and how we want to govern ourselves. Fundamentally, these are cases in which the entire population of a jurisdiction has standing.

This makes these cases at least as important as the most serious criminal cases. In countries like France, Belgium, and Italy the decision over life and death in these trials is left to the decision of a jury, as such a judgement not only needs to be fair but needs to reflect the values of society as a whole. The jury system has successfully downplayed the controversies over high-profile murder cases, maintaining the trust of the wider public. Although such cases still attract a lot of media coverage and sometimes widespread social debate, the verdicts themselves seldom lead to a public uproar. Because people "like us" make the final call over guilt or innocence, no one can claim that the decision was made by an aloof elite or involved technical rules that only a specialist can understand. Instead it gives credence to the idea of common sense and true representation: twelve disinterested persons "like me" judged on the basis of pure evidence presented to them.

This is interesting because it shines a light on the importance of juries even in those countries that mostly rely on professional judges. If you look in detail at the procedure for criminal cases in these countries, you will see that it's possible for professional judges to acquit suspects at several points during the proceedings. It is mostly impossible though for a suspect to be found guilty of the most serious crimes without approval of a jury. So basically the professional representatives of the state can unilaterally decide not to punish someone, but if they do want to sentence a suspect they need a jury verdict to do so.

In essence, juries function as the ultimate check on the coercive powers of the government. In most Anglo-Saxon countries that applies to all cases that make it to court. From the enforcement of private contracts all the way to the conviction of murderers, the state will need a guilty verdict from a jury to enforce any judgement. In the French tradition the role of jury trials is much more limited, but the bigger picture remains the same. The more coercive power is required by the state to enforce a decision, the bigger the need for a citizen jury to justify that decision.

All this will sound very familiar to constitutional scholars, because the role of constitutions is exactly the same. Constitutions also serve to limit the coercive powers available to the state. Yet because of historical reasons we've come to accept over the past two centuries that the judgement of constitutional cases lies exclusively in the hands of professional judges. And since judgements by constitutional courts almost always have societal consequences beyond the specific case they're judging on, we consider this a major loophole that exists in all modern judicial systems. To fix this we have a simple proposal for all courts that deal with societal cases. Let's introduce a jury.

Some examples of courts that generally deal with societal cases are the Supreme Court and the Circuit Courts in the U.S., the several national constitutional courts in the European Union as well as the European Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and the myriad arbitration organizations created by international trade treaties. (Readers are welcome to complete this list with the highest courts in their own jurisdictions.) For the following reasons, we think these courts would gain significantly from the introduction of a jury.

First of all, a jury can serve as a useful tool for reconciliation. They can establish a level of trust in the populace that a wholly unelected set of judges cannot. Juries allow people to feel as if they have a stake in their future by differentiating and reconciling their beliefs with others as they see fit. Juries are not just a tool for determining a verdict, they are also a means of lending popular voice and ownership over the legal system.

Another reason for considering a jury system is because it allows for bringing the constitution up to date without changing it. Traditionally, the belief is that any change to the core documents — and thus governing principles — of society needs the (contractual) consent of the people. This in itself often becomes a highly technical affair: most often it requires a supermajority composed of the previously elected legislators, rendering the constitution a plaything in the hands of political parties. In cases such as Turkey, this has allowed semi-authoritarian parties to change the constitution in favour of their own leader. One does not even need an authoritarian government to promote incessant change: constitutional reform is part of every political election in Belgium because of communitarian tensions. In other cases, such as the U.S., an almost religious belief in the perfection of the Founding Fathers combined with the fear of partisanship has completely blocked all formal constitutional evolution. Adding a jury could thus make the process of constitutional reform more organic than political.

We may also consider the original moral purposes of a societal legal framework beyond its immediate practical application. The means by which a democratic society constructs, reviews, and adjudicates laws ought to be grounded in the idea that every citizen has a right to equal access to legal systems. An expression of this belief is evident in the due process clause in the American constitution. On a more fundamental level, the American spiritual founding document, the Declaration of Independence, expresses the primacy of natural law in its exhortation of universal and inalienable rights under the aegis of a Creator.

Participation in legal systems has become more difficult in recent years, whether it takes the form of becoming an attorney or getting one's day in court. An expensive legal education or legal fees prevent many from participating in the legal system. Furthermore, many legal systems suffer from overloaded dockets (the courts of America and Italy being notable examples). These barriers to entry ensure that the dispensation of justice is hindered and increasingly reserved for the wealthy and the powerful. While this is a serious issue for civil and criminal cases, these problems are paramount for societal cases. Therefore, if we are entitled as citizens to access our systems of law and justice, we are owed a moral obligation to popular representation on the part of even the highest constitutional courts.

We also believe that juries improve the independence and neutrality essential to a healthy court system. After all, in almost all democracies judges are appointed either directly or indirectly by the elected branches of government. This easily creates situations in which they're selected on the basis of partisan loyalty, which is detrimental to the courts' neutrality. Furthermore, if we consider this on a case-by-case level, it's clear that a jury is more likely to retain its independence than a small panel of professional judges. The simple fact that there are more people involved in the final decision makes it harder to pressure — or get away with pressuring — a dozen randomly selected citizens than a couple of career judges. Finally, it is often more difficult to dispense with an unethical judge than an unethical juror.

We do not want to send home our judges, nor do we want to overhaul entire judicial systems. Rather we propose to augment our constitutional courts with juries to make them more robust. After all, is not the soul of a constitutional system its endless capacity for reinvention?

In 1762 the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote his famous pamphlet The Social Contract. In this text he built upon the experiences of his native Geneva to try and create a political philosophy that encourages spreading power more equally around society for sovereign peoples around the world. For communities the size of a Swiss canton his idea of a single social contract might have worked very well indeed. But over the course of the last two-and-a-half centuries, we've learned that's not necessarily the case for nation states, let alone our current global superpowers and multinational corporations. We believe the social contract should first of all be implemented at the level of companies.

What is a company? What can it be? And what should it be? Nowadays these kinds of questions seem to be the exclusive domain of tax consultants and accountants. It wasn't always like this though. The word "company" itself suggests more high-minded motives like companionship and togetherness, the idea that it's better to take risks together than on your own.

Some echoes of these higher virtuous ideals can still be found in companies around the world. In East Asia for example, struggling business owners will often decide to suck up losses, rather than "lose face" by sacking loyal workers. In Europe, several local family businesses have managed to survive and thrive in their respective fields. In the United States, politicians for decades have extolled the virtues of the mom-and-pop shop on main street, traditionally seen as the anchor of American towns and the backbone of the economy.

Contrast this with the current state of the global food industry. Research by Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer shows how the global supply of food commodities is increasingly dominated by only four major companies: adm, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus. More than 70% of grain traded worldwide passes through their warehouses. On top of this, they're also heavily involved in the supply of coffee, sugar, rice, cotton, soy, meat, etc. But most importantly, they dominate the financial markets around these commodities.

Likewise, increasing consolidation in the tech industry has led to several recent scandals about data, privacy, and manipulation. Alas, every time it's discovered that the likes of Facebook and Google have trespassed on our privacy and civil liberties without our knowing consent, most of us throw our hands up in the air and say "well, what are you going to do?"

This level of centralization would fit a Soviet-style planned economy, not a self-proclaimed free market. No surprise then that some of the most compelling critics of this system are libertarian thinkers . And it must be said, their Perfect Libertarian Utopia does sound like an appealing alternative. In this realm, all social and economic problems are dealt with through contracts encoding mutual consent between free citizens. Government will only interfere when asked to mediate contractual disputes, or to protect basic freedoms like speech and assembly. Oh, and property. Because in Perfect Libertarian Utopia, protection of property is a basic right on the same level as freedom of speech.

We believe that on the whole this libertarian utopia is a worthy cause. But if all social relations could be turned into contracts, we see no reason to stop at property. Indeed, we believe that our current system of property relations can also be replaced by contracts between free citizens. And if the goal is to prevent a Soviet-style concentration of power, it is absolutely necessary to do so. Because there's already thousands of years of proof that our current system favours concentration of property, and concentrated property favours concentrated power.

However, there's also centuries of proof that suggests our concept of property is very hard to reform. But unlike earlier attempts at reform, our proposal for a new kind of ownership is focused specifically on shares in a company's ownership. The precedent for such a contractual approach to dealing with companies may be found in the law concerning securities. Securities are contracts based on an underlying asset, such as a stock or bond, that are traded on a market. Options are an example of a security where the owner of an options contract has the right to buy or sell an underlying asset for some fixed price at some time.

When an owner of a security believes that a company has violated the fairly narrow terms of the securities contract, they are entitled to sue. For example, investors recently sued Theranos for securities fraud on the basis that the company misled them about the its product and financials. This violated options contracts these shareholders had made with the company. But it shouldn't just be options holders who can enforce accountability by treating property like contracts. All shareholders should get this privilege of encoding their rights and obligations into the terms of ownership.

Replacing property titles with contracts leads to several practical benefits for every actor in the economy. Existing corporations would be able to protect themselves against activist shareholders and position their company away from a quarterly reporting cycle towards something longer term. Corporate directors would be able to buy themselves a bit of time and relief by writing these humane provisions into their corporation's ownership structure. Likewise, entrepreneurs would be better protected against hostile takeovers and unfair competition, allowing startups the time and space to grow to their full potential.

A key example of how a more contractual approach may be better for all companies, even big companies, may be found in the realm of private equity. Take Toys R' Us, a major international chain of toy stores. Several years ago, a consortium of private equity buyers bought a majority stake in the company, appointed their directors to the board, saddled the company with debt, and forced Toys R' Us to pay them a hefty fee for "consulting" services. The result was that despite Toys R' Us's still thriving business, the company was recently forced to declare bankruptcy. Several towns and villages have lost an anchor of their local economy, thousands of employees have lost their jobs, and the private equity owners have made a substantial profit. Had the owners of Toys R' Us had a contractual share agreement rather than property titles, one that had written in obligations to the communities, employees, and customers, none of this would have happened. A similar set of circumstances − even involving some of the same private equity firms − happened to the world-famous guitar maker Gibson, driving it towards its own bankruptcy.

Shares with incompatible terms would not be easily exchanged for each other. Increased friction in the buying and selling of shares due to these incompatibilities would put a natural break on our current situation of unfettered mergers and acquisitions. Absent the creation of specialized markets with fixed terms, the process by which financial capital is instantly and seamlessly transferred from one party to another would slow down significantly, creating a transaction cost that encourages reflection and compliance in the market.

Companies would be forced to explicitly express their values in a legally binding manner. This makes it transparent to consumers what they are actually buying from a company when they buy their products. Consumers would be able to evaluate how a company's actual values compare with those they espouse through manipulative advertisements and branding.

But it's not just consumers that would benefit. Companies would be able to draw up contracts that distribute risk between themselves and other stakeholders more fairly. Companies would then be encouraged to simplify existing complex mechanisms of ownerships. And by reducing the burden of complexity that hinders retail investors from participating in shareholder governance, more ordinary people would be able to claim ownership over the corporate actors in their society.

Finally, this proposal makes it more manageable to hold corporations and financial institutions accountable to the law. Increased friction and reduced liquidity make it easier to inspect transactions because they would be occurring at a slower rate. And with an especially punitive regulatory burden, shareholders may seek to write these provisions directly into the share contracts themselves. Doing so would give companies the ability to self-regulate in a meaningful way, as opposed to what they promise before government councilors and committees.

Using shareholding contracts instead of our antiquated system of property titles, every company would have to clearly define their own terms of ownership. When every company makes this exercise for themselves − small business or megacorporation, non-profit or cooperative − it will lead to a true Cambrian explosion of social contracts. Only in such a climate of diversity and experimentation might we discover the solutions that truly achieve Rousseau's stated goals: "What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting. What he gains is civil liberty and the ownership of all he possesses."