> Aside from the Deleware Chancery, the world had everything you described long before the notion of the "social contract" was presented as a formal political t

> Aside from the Deleware Chancery, the world had everything you described long before the notion of the "social contract" was presented as a formal political theory by Hobbes Small-s "social contracts" predates Hobbes' formalization. The notion that different levels of the ruling- or socio-economic strata keep within certain unnegotiated norms seems intuitive to me and was well-known since before the feudal age: don't over-tax your citizens or risk rebellion, landlords not over-exploiting their serfs or the serfs would vote with their feet. Noblisse oblige has strains of the same thinking, and it predates Hobbes by quite a bit.