In many of our interactions with the outside world (solipsists can stop reading now, if indeed they ever started) we enter into contracts with diverse entities, some up front, some lurking below the surface. The commonly construed contractual theme is a mutual agreement where each party accepts certain costs and responsibilities, and in return can rely on certain benefits and rewards. Some sort of symmetry is implied, in that the rational parties favored by the economists (when they come out of their recessionary hiding holes) will weigh the positive and negative impacts of the agreement before "signing." I will put aside the notions of Hobbes, Rousseau, Rawls, and that crowd that in merely being born we enter into some form of social contract with the combined prevailing laws of nature, nurture, and parliamentary whoredom.