Self-interest will compel human beings to create a government. Each person can best look out for his best interests by having a government to protect his basic rights. It is the only cure for the untethered self-interest that most men live with.

Hobbes states in Leviathan that when men leave a state of nature and agree to create a government, it is as if individuals sign an agreement, a social contract which says:

I authorize and give up my right of governing myself, to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in like manner.

From his own experience of political chaos, Hobbes concluded that the worst tyrant is better than no government at all, or a weak, ineffective government. Hence, his sovereign has absolute power. Men are grasping by nature, which makes everyone in society vulnerable. If this is a proper diagnosis of our natural human illness, then it must be said that Hobbes proposed a cure: a strong ruler.

An authoritarian sovereign is not a choice but a requirement, a necessary counter-weight to what Hobbes called “the natural condition of mankind,” which turns all of society into a selfish playground. The ruler reigns above the law. He needn't obey the law, for unlike other citizens he is not subject to the social contract but simply sees to it that his subjects live up to the contract which they have agreed to obey. His duty is to punish those who transgress the laws.