Throughout the course of a normal human life, we require a nearly unthinkable amount of support to become an independent person. Being fed, nurtured, educated, employed, loved – all of these things rely on our relationships with others, a relationship of give and take. Yet many individuals around the world live as recluses or nomads, benefitting from the ways in which societies (governments and individuals both) contribute to the well-being of the commons without giving anything in return, through their labour or through taxation. The question I seek to examine is: what debts do we take on during our existence, primarily in the context of welfare? Do we owe it to general society and the economy at large to participate in its give-and-take? To owe is to be morally compelled to do something for another. When I say I owe you five dollars for lunch, there is no legal framework, mandate, or physical force causing me to give you those five dollars. I owe it to you, as I borrowed it from you. It is my moral duty to return what I have borrowed: this is called the debt. In this article, we will examine debt in the moral sense, not the legal sense. Debt is the consequence of the moral stance that we should return what we borrow, i.e., a debt unpaid is a debt owed.
There are two senses in which someone can have a debt. The first of which I have already mentioned, is the contractual debt. I engage, in a consensual and uncoerced manner, in a sort of contract with you – I will take something from you now, and I take upon myself the moral obligation to return it. The strength of this moral compulsion is the foundation of contractual debt. The stronger the compulsion, the more reliable my repayment to you will be. The second sort of debt is what I call a societal debt. This is a debt that you have no choice but to bear the burden of. It is a moral expectation, or a duty, that you fulfil these debts. For example, one is expected to take care of one’s parents in their old age rather than abandon them, or even the moral compulsion to call the ambulance for someone who appears injured. We owe it to others to repay our societal debt, not because we have chosen to take on this debt, but because collectively, the lives of individuals in a society are better overall when we owe them certain modes of conduct. I will primarily examine contractual debts, as societal debts usually exist as dogmas. Firstly, let us consider the birth of a person. Individuals do not have any agency in whether they are born or not. They are simply born. Individuals can only take on a contractual debt for something they, consensually and 14 | P a g e
