In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, influenced by the turbulent economics and politics of the Great Depression, the World Controllers have perfected the art of breeding Alpha-Plus mandarins to deal with complex jobs and Epsilon-Minus Semi-Morons to perform menial tasks. Everybody is created to be content with their lot in life. As bottled embryos, some are heat conditioned so they can emigrate to the tropics to be steel workers. Some are constantly rotated in order to be comfortable repairing rockets in mid air.

“That is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny,” a group of students is told. For those of us lucky enough to live in free societies, destiny is not inescapable. People make choices, and in making those there are inevitable disputes and negotiations, which are settled though contracts, implicit or explicit.