the "political implications of the Hobbesian model [are essentially that] the best we can hope for are more sophisticated internal and external controls on our supposedly innate drive towards accumulation and self-aggrandizement"
"Rousseau's story [...] seems more optimistic [...] but nowadays it's mostly deployed to convince us that while the system we live under might be unjust, the most we can realistically aim for is a bit of modest tinkering" (6)