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ot a single day goes by without us finding a new piece of news in the media that disrupts political stability. One of the main factors that sustain and underpin the stability of a society is the social contract that governs every community; a social contract based on a simple principle, that citizens agree to limit individual freedom to obtain a series of rights in favor of a common project. Jacques Rousseau explained it in his work The Social Contract when he observed "the total alienation of each associate with all his rights to the whole community (...) each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will." The general will to which Rousseau refers is, to a certain extent, the basis of the social contract, since individuals assume it for their own benefit and that of the rest of the community. The demands of the taxi sector, with a harsh strike that has affected thousands of citizens, against the attack of VTCs on their business are a clear example that the social contract we had imposed on ourselves must be reviewed if social cohesion is not to be put at risk.
Citizens who are part of the core of resistance to these changes, such as the taxi sector and in the near future the public transport sector when self-driving cars arrive, can only now ambush themselves, waiting for reality to definitively assault their finished world.When the concept of globalization emerged in the 80s, or, in French termsof globalization, it was thought that it opened up enormous possibilities for deepening the social contract that many liberal democracies had implicitly adopted to advance politically and economically. One of the main weapons for acting in a globalized world was that liberal democracies had built mediation systems that facilitated agreements, consensus, and pacts between employers, unions, the financial sector, and the state to guarantee a common objective. Mediation allowed facing the challenge of globalization with greater guarantees compared to countries with less capacity for social articulation and authoritarian political systems.
However, what represented an advantage, having a well-structured society, with major agreements in sectors such as education, health, or public services, became a brake for a globalized world that, thanks to digitalization, could eliminate the costly economic and time efforts necessary for social consensus through decisions determined by technological evolution. Technology companies could operate in any country in the world from decision centers that always moved in the logic of avoiding, for their optimal growth, the measurement systems of the countries they impacted. The consequence of this process, which sectors such as the print press, logistics companies, the culture sector, especially the music sector, tourism, or restoration have experienced, is now extending to all layers of society, affecting the majority of citizens. Citizens who are part of the core of resistance to these changes, such as the taxi sector and in the near future the public transport sector when self-driving cars arrive, can only now ambush themselves, waiting for reality to definitively assault their finished world.
This evolution will culminate in a post-human society of which we can now only perceive a small part of the benefits and prejudices it will entail. In this context, we must place the taxi crisis. The violence, tension, and resistance to change expressed by taxi drivers are the result of the certainty that their time is running out.The citizens who are part of those who collaborate with changes and precipitate them find themselves trapped by a new world where their rights are diffuse, if not directly exploited by a reality that promises much but may give less than the old world. We are facing a new situation, in which the social consensuses that had been reached are being weakened as robotics advances as the maximum expression of change. This evolution will culminate in a post-human society of which we can now only perceive a small part of the benefits and prejudices it will entail. In this context, we must place the taxi crisis. The violence, tension, and resistance to change expressed by taxi drivers is the result of the certainty that their time is running out, just as the coal industry ended in Asturias or shipyards disappeared in the Basque Country or Galicia. The experience lived in the face of the taxi drivers' reaction to the threat of VTCs leaves us with a bittersweet feeling. This crisis shows that some of the bases of the implicit social contract that governed our society have been blown to pieces. Now it's time for thelet whoever can save themselvesThe process of change must provoke institutions, union platforms, employers' associations, and political parties to move to study how to implement a new social contract that takes into account the costs of the transition we are experiencing and ensure that new forms of economic organization assume the restoration of mediation mechanisms that allow anticipating the problem and fostering solidarity in a society increasingly divided between those who are part of the old world and those who are part of the new.