You are in a group of 300 people on a plane. During the flight you start talking to your fellow-passengers, and discover that you are all passionate football supporters travelling to watch the same match in a distant country. This leads to further conversation, so that by the time your plane has to make a forced landing on an island you are all on friendly terms.

Miraculously, no-one is injured in the landing. But you have no idea where you are and nobody can communicate with the outside world. After a while everyone sets off to search the island. Food is fairly plentiful, but there is no sign of other inhabitants. Gradually people begin to accept that they might be marooned indefinitely, and you join a few dozen of your friends in establishing a home of sorts. There is enough land to support a reasonable standard of life for everyone. But some areas are more fertile than others, and, by taking an early decision to find a place to live, you and your adventurous friends have managed to establish yourself in the best places. This means that you will have enough to live on without needing to work very hard.

After a few months everyone realizes that they will never be rescued; and this isn't hard to take because life is pretty pleasant. However, some of the settlers on the less fertile land become addicted to agriculture, and notice that you and your friends are not making full use of your land. They argue that everyone will be better off if the land is redistributed, with the hardest workers taking possession of the fertile plots. By this time you have got used to a fairly leisurely life, and argue that everyone is quite well off already. But the agricultural obsessives are not impressed by this, and tempers become frayed.

The next day, you receive a message from one of the complainants, politely inviting you to a meeting which will resolve the dispute. They say that they want everyone to live in peace, but this seems impossible unless some form of government is established to settle the occasional arguments which are bound to crop up. All the inhabitants are invited, and (having been a lawyer before the ill-fated sporting trip) you feel that you should make a speech. You accept that things can't go on as before; but what type of government will you recommend?

Helpful hints: Before tackling this question you might consult pages 37, 83-5, and 105-10, which deal with 'social contract' theory in relation to the works of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Rawls.

Key points to bear in mind include 1) You know all the inhabitants and got on well with them before the accident; 2) There don't seem to be any external threats; and 3) There is no serious problem of scarcity.