I find this argument exceedingly unpersuasive. The "social contract" argument would only be valid if people agreed on its terms. As it is, a company's responsibilities end where the law ends.
The "social contract" is an abstraction to quantify certain elements in human interactions through society.
What is real, is the necessity of a human population to procreate. This need has two aspects: does culture in general support procreation and who's procreation does it support?
First, companies do not work in a vacuum of financial abstractions. Their operations are always rooted in a very fixed cultural context. This cultural context for the most part is the cultural context of the society where the operations are based. The corporate operations affect the cultural context outside and vice versa.
Now, the first part - should there be procreation? Unless the answer is yes we can stop the discussion right here.
As for the second part, who should procreate? Let's skip the eugenics part, but, the fact is this: talented kids are usually raised by talented parents.
Should the society become more talented? I'm certain this would serve everyones best interests. Well, then, if we accept without proof that talented individuals tend to work in corporations and demanding workplaces, then if those workplaces discourage the procreation of the talented individuals they discourage the population in general of benefitting from their statistically talented offspring.
This is what is on the table. Not the happy motherhood of a single mother, or the irritation of single coworkers who begrudge parents their perks, but the future of a society. From a statistical point of view. Human urges will make sure there are kids tomorrow as there are today but the way careers treat potential parents affect directly the total human potential of those kids.
>The "social contract" is an abstraction to quantify certain elements in human interactions through society.
Yes, and we have a concrete implementation of that abstraction in the law.
>What is real, is the necessity of a human population to procreate. This need has two aspects: does culture in general support procreation and who's procreation does it support?
I don't see any barriers to procreation here. All I see is people who want to have their cake and get other people to pay for it. Go ahead and have children, just like people have always done. But realize you're going to have to make some sacrifices, and that it's not reasonable to expect other people to make sacrifices on your behalf because you want to have children.
The point I tried to make that having children is not equal to having cake - from the point of view of the society in total it is necessary as is eating and sleeping. The need is for the society. To maintain a healthy corpus the society requires children as people require food and sleep. Therefore it seems rational to me society participating in child rearing in form of financial support.
It's a political view. The way I see it a functioning society is a resource and a substrate for companies. A company that does not give the minimum support for family life of their employees is effectively reducing the quality of the society where the particular center of operations is situated. To me, it's a similar logic as to why there are environmental controls for companies and other incentives against negative externalities.
