Adam Smith and the Notion of the Social Contract

While reading through Adam Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence, I found it interesting when he brought up the idea that latter generations within a "civilized" society had no mechanism by which they could consent to the "social contract". This obviously poses an issue because as mentioned by Hobbes in the Leviathan, "whensoever a man transferrth his right or renounceth it... it is a voluntary act... the mutual transferring of right is that which men call contract" (Hobbes 82). In reality, however, Smith points out that although "when certain powers of government were at first entrusted to certain persons upon certain conditions ... that the obedience of these who entrusted it might be founded on a contract, their posterity have nothing to do with it" (Smith 403). What Smith seems to be suggesting here is that the social contract, whereby one would transfer some of their rights in exchange for a system of governance, is not binding to later generations because the later generations did not consent to such an exchange. Furthermore, one could go as far as arguing that this system is actually coercive, seeing as despite having no choice in their place of birth, one would more or less be bound to their homeland due to practical issues such as laws, language, family, etc. Even if one were to migrate, it is challenging to opt into a "new" set of contracts, with Smith using the English law barring migrants from taking political office as an example. 

This brings up an interesting question, which is are governments and civil society inherently coercive? If no system of governance is truly "opted into" by the later generations, is it even reasonable for that system of governance to exist from a moral standpoint? Obviously, Smith argues that for practical reasons (specifically the principles of authority and utility) people tend to obey the governments they find themselves in, but is this really justified on a moral level? 

Overall, this is an interesting thought experiment to consider. Practically speaking, it is obviously unfeasible to allow each generation to decide on what governance system it wants to opt into. However, Smith's point did prompt me to question Locke's idea of the social contract, and whether or not some level of coercion must exist for civil society to exist. I suppose that this is the driving idea behind radical ideas such as anarchism, but what if the latter generations would prefer another system instead? This, therefore, drove me to be more inclined to agree with Smith, in that the social contract may play a role but is ultimately not the true explanation behind society's obedience to the government.