Jane Elliot’s Trick Collectivist Question, and My Individualist Response

Jane Elliot, Anti-Racism activist, diversity educator, crusader against “discrimination,” posed a question to an audience at one of her lectures. Here is a transcription: 

Jane Elliott: (00:01)

I want every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as this society in general treats our citizens, our black citizens, if you, as a white person, would be happy to receive the same treatment that our black citizens do in this society, please stand.

Audience: (00:17)

(silence)

Jane Elliott: (00:18)

You didn’t understand the directions. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand.

Audience: (00:29)

(silence)

Jane Elliott: (00:29)

Nobody’s standing here. That says very plainly that you know what’s happening, you know you don’t want it for you. I want to know why you’re so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen for others.

Count me as standing. 

Society is made up of individuals. I, a “white” person, can only speak for the part of society I control, myself. I believe in the Golden Rule. I treat all of my fellow citizens, regardless of skin color, with respect for their individuality, integrity, and rights. I judge people based on their character, not skin color. I would have no problem being treated the same. I would be happy to receive the same treatment that our Black citizens receive from me. 

And neither am I “willing to accept or to allow” others to be subjected to racist treatment. And, I will presume, neither would most of Elliot’s audience, despite their not responding to her challenge. Does this mean they are willing to accept bigotry from others?

Apparently, Elliot’s audience didn’t know how to respond when the trap was sprung. And then she makes a truly despicable, evidence-free accusation: 

Nobody’s standing here. That says very plainly that you know what’s happening, you know you don’t want it for you. I want to know why you’re so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen for others.

Elliot uses her audience’s confusion to accuse them of knowingly being “willing to accept” bigotry, injustice, and racism, which she attributes to “society,” not her audience members personally or individually. This is a cheap shot. I wonder what response she would have gotten if her challenge was, “I want every white person in this room, as an independent member of society, who would be happy to be treated as he/she general treats our citizens, our black citizens, if you, as a white person, would be happy to receive the same treatment that our black citizens do from you, please stand.” 

It’s true that black Americans have been treated horribly by wide swaths of our society. This treatment was most egregious when racists were in control of the legal apparatus of the state, as under slavery and, later, under Jim Crow. And, yes, there were people who were not themselves racist but who shamefully looked the other way—who knew what’s happening, and were, through personal inaction, sanctioned the injustice that happened to others. 

But there was also a powerful counter-attack on the slavers and racists in this country. Fueled by the promise of equality and individual rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence, these genuine American heroes seized political power from the racists, which is why we no longer have slavery or Jim Crow. I wonder how these heroes against bigotry would have responded to Elliot’s trick question. Likely, they would have been stunned into silence, and then accused by Elliot of doing nothing about the treatment of black Americans! On Elliot’s collectivist premise, the white 19th Century Abolitionists probably would not have stood. Are they to be accused of “willing to accept or to allow slavery to happen for others?” On Elliot's collectivist premises, the white 20th Century Civil Rights supporters and activists who stood with Martin Luther King probably would not have stood. Are they to be accused of “willing to accept or to allow Jim Crow and racist exclusion to happen for others?”

I will not be trapped by collectivist premises. Nor will I be blamed for allowing whatever lingering racism still exists in America. Neither should anyone else. Elliot is part of the movement to tar America with the racist label for all posterity. But she and her ilk can be disarmed by understanding that the fundamental battle in America is individualism versus collectivism; that racism is a manifestation of collectivism; that individualism is the only antidote to racism; and that those who embrace collectivism have no claim to the anti-racism label. That noble label belongs to the individualists. 

What any one individual can do is limited. “Society in general” is a lot of people. But we can do something—embrace individualism in our personal lives and in any activism within our limited resources. Advocate individualism. Judge people by the content of their character, beliefs, and actions, not by the color of their skin. And then expose the absurdity and unfairness of the race-baiters. That is true anti-racism.

Related Reading:

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle  

The Founding Fathers, Not ‘Diversity,’ is the Solution to ‘Our Racialized Society’

Fighting Racism With Collectivism is No Way to Exterminate Racism

Racism -- Ayn Rand

How to Overcome Bigotry in a Free Society

Jamaican, gay and Ayn Rand made it OK: My amazing "Atlas Shrugged" love story: “I was young, atheist and gay in a very homophobic country. I had no intellectual armor, until I discovered Ayn Rand” --Jason Hill, professor of philosophy at De Paul University in Chicago, author of We Have Overcome: An Immigrant's Letter to the American People, and a scholar with 1776unites.

Jason Hill Vindicates the American Dream against Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Delusional Race Rhetoric by Timothy Sandefur for The Objective Standard

Related Viewing:

 John McWhorter: America Has Never Been Less Racist -- Reason interview

How Does Civility Relate to 'Agree to Disagree'?

The following meme was shared on my Facebook feed:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Civility is defined as “formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech.” 

My Facebook comments, .

Civility is possible as long as freedom of speech is unfettered. But make no mistake. The [political and legal] differences are profound, and civility can't paper it over. Either we retain (and restore) a constitution that protects individual rights and a government limited to that purpose, or we don't. If we don't, then there is no right to disagree and no respect. Respecting each other's viewpoint only works when each leaves those who disagree to go on about her life unmolested. Respect disappears when factions get to use the governmental apparatus to impose their viewpoints (and values) on everyone else by law, whether they consent or not. The [latter] is the politics we increasingly have now. That's why elections have become life-and-death battlegrounds. It's still tolerable because we still have the freedom to fight back with better ideas, free elections, and objective courts. All of that is increasingly at risk.

Apparently in response to my comment, another correspondent posted:

Agree to disagree and work toward finding solutions Thank you for your legacies ,JusticesGinsberg and Scalia. [sic]

I did not reply online. This correspondent is subtly altering the point of the meme. “Agree to disagree” has a nice ring to it. But it is never defined. I’ve addressed this line before (See "related reading" below). I’ll do so again here.

What, exactly, does it mean to “agree to disagree”? How do you “work toward finding solutions” when one party won’t allow the other to pursue their own course? If a parent wants an alternative to the public school for her child, but is still forced to pay for the public school through her taxes, where is the “agree to disagree”? The only solution is to free the parent to choose an alternative to the public school and allow the school taxes to follow her child to the parent’s choice of education. But try advocating school choice to any defender of public schools. She will say, “fine, switch your child to private schooling. But you don’t get to redirect your tax money for that purpose.” In effect, the public school defender is not “agreeing to disagree” with the dissenting parent, because she still insists on taking the parent’s money, without her consent, to support schools the parent doesn’t believe is good for her child. When one party gets to force their solution on the other party through government legal coercion, then the “winner” is not allowing disagreement. 

Agree to disagree presupposes the right to disagree. The right to disagree means the right not to support that which one doesn’t agree with. No solution to any issue is possible until all parties resolve to renounce force, and respect the rights of others to act on their own judgement. This doesn’t have to mean 100% satisfaction for either party. A solution may involve compromises that leaves each side partially satisfied but also accepting some things they don’t like. But as long as the agreement is voluntary, it’s morally acceptable. Voluntarism must reign, including in our politics. Then and only then can agree to disagree have any meaning, especially in the political and legal context (which is the context that the meme addresses). 

So how does civility relate to “agree to disagree”? Obviously, agree to disagree is the fundamentally important concept, morally and practically. Disrespectful people, even scoundrels, can be civil. In fact, a civil scoundrel is the most dangerous kind of person. But the commitment to allow and leave others free to disagree, including in the realm of politics and law, is the sign of a genuinely virtuous person. 

Related Reading:

What does it Mean to Say: "We'll Have to Agree to Disagree?"

For ‘Agree to Disagree’ to have Meaning, We Must Respect Each Others’ Rights

The ‘RIGHT’ to Disagree Must Also Mean the Right Not to be Forced

Is “Agree to Disagree” Really Possible?—Dr. Michael Hurd

Hurd approaches this issue from a personal, rather than political or legal, context. Here is an excerpt:

"Many disagreements won’t take away from your friendship. “Bill and I don’t like the same kind of movies, but we do connect on key things, and I like that about him. I’ll spend time with him doing non-movie things.” There are also political, religious or philosophical disagreements among friends. The reader asks at what point she should no longer be friends. There’s no preordained formula, other than the standard I’m offering here. There are a lot of bad philosophical ideas with which we are brainwashed from childhood. Some people internalize these ideas more than others. You can’t necessarily hold that against someone if they otherwise bring value to your life."

QUORA: 'How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game -- Answers and Replies [Part 2, Political Philosophy]

Recently, I posted an answer to the Quora* question, How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game?, which is also available on my 1/14/21 blog post. I followed that up by posting a reply to Pascal Morimacil’s answer, available on my blog post of 2/3/21. I then had a conversation with Morimacil. Before I get to that, Morimacil’s answer is reposted here in full:

The basic idea is that if you consider every transaction individually, without looking at anything else, then it kinda seems like both people are better off, since they agree to the trade.

So for example, you pay rent for the right to exist somewhere, and then someone else lets you exist without evicting you. It’s said to be win-win. So, a creation of wealth.

---

You could analyze a mugging that way, and declare it to be a win-win wealth creating situation.

The victim is paying for the right to exist, and the mugger lets them exist without shooting them. Win-win. If the victim thinks the price is too high, they can just decide not to pay.

---

You kind of have to ignore the gun, or the threat of eviction

And if you also ignore a lot of other things, like pollution and so on, and rising wealth inequality, well, at some point you are just deciding that money changing hands means things are getting better for everyone.

You can read my reply here, also posted to my blog on 2/3/21. A back-and-forth ensued with Morimacil, which I will post in stages by subject. The subjects are economic, epistemological, and political philosophy. We started with the economic aspect, specifically Morimacil’s landlord/mugger analogy. My economic exchange (Part 1) is posted on 3/8/21. On political philosophy, specifically Capitalism, Morimacil answered:

And if you also ignore a lot of other things, like pollution and so on, and rising wealth inequality, well, at some point you are just deciding that money changing hands means things are getting better for everyone.

My reply:

As to the last two points touched upon, wealth inequality is a natural consequence of the varying productive abilities and personal circumstances of human beings, when left equally free to flourish by the justice, political equality, liberty rights, and constitutionalism of capitalism. Productive work and trade, to the extent it is free of aggressive force as it is under capitalism, expands the amount of wealth, as happens with the renter and the landlord. Trade doesn’t merely divide up a fixed quantity of wealth, like what happens between the mugger and his victim.  Under capitalism, wealth inequality is not a proof of zero-sum economics, but a progressive consequence of the win-win nature of capitalism--that an individual’s economic success is tied not to theft but on the diversity of productive ability to create value for others. Those who create the most value for the most people tend to be more wealthy than those who produce less value for fewer people. As long as every transaction is consensual and freely judged by each to be a net gain, it is win-win, not zero-sum. Pollution is a side effect of industry and is resolvable through technological innovation and proper law. History has shown that capitalist economies are much better at alleviating pollution than centrally planned (socialist) economies because technological innovation and proper (rights-protecting) law are features of free markets, not dictatorships. The same freedom of capitalism that facilitates economic progress facilitates solutions to pollution. Today we live in the cleanest ever environment for humans, especially in the U.S., not in spite of but because of the prosperity.

Morimacil came back with:

And then you talk about how wealth inequality is because of productive ability, but a passive income is not production.

Rent seeking enables people to get income and then more wealth, based on how much wealth they own, not on how productive they are.

Then you try to say "creating value" instead, but again, not evicting people isn't "creating value".

---

And then you are trying to say that laws about environmental protection are not planned, and that them being enacted at the country level isn't centralization?

Also kind of sweeping aside all the pollution and environmental issues that popped up in the last couple of centuries, and pretending that capitalism is great, because it can create problems, and then commodify people's needs?

Morimacil obviously doesn’t know the difference between government central planning and objective law. I posted this rebuttal:

Capitalism, to distill it down to its essentials, is individual political, economic, and intellectual freedom, secured by objective law. Objective law—law that is clearly defined and clearly implemented—can include rational environmental law. That is not central planning, but its opposite--the protector of the rights-respecting citizen’s freedom to plan and govern his own life without coercive interference. It is why human life has gotten so dramatically better, longer, safer, and cleaner over the past 250 years--and continues on its upward trajectory to this day (despite temporary setbacks like the Covid-19 pandemic). Central planning, in fact, is not law at all. It is the absence of law--and of individual rights. It is arbitrary rule of men over men which leaves no room for people to plan and govern their own lives.

This is Morimacil’s attempt at defining Capitalism philosophically:

Capitalism is the arbitrary rule of owners over others. With a government that is coercive, and working for the owners.

People do all sorts of things within any system, but that’s what capitalism is fundamentally about.

Here is my reply:

You’re almost right. Ownership, or private property, doesn’t give you control of others. But it is your means of controlling your own destiny. And it protects you from those who would control you. A government in a capitalist system definitely protects owners, by coercive means if necessary, from criminals who would take others’ property. And it’s not arbitrary rule, but rule of objective law. A government for securing property rights is certainly one thing that “capitalism is fundamentally about,” though it is not the most fundamental aspect of capitalism, which is more broadly to protect individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness equally and at all times. Ownership, or proper, rights is in large part what makes Capitalism the only moral social system.

The right to acquire, keep, and use private property is vital to human life and flourishing. It is not only materially valuable. It is spiritually vital. Your property reflects your thought, convictions, and values. It is part of your identity and self-esteem and self-ownership. Property ownership is not only a means of pursuing your happiness. It fosters mutual respect and peaceful coexistence among people by establishing boundaries. Private property fosters shared prosperity through trade. Without rights to the product of your efforts, no other rights are practicable. If you don’t have absolute ownership and control of what you earn, then someone else does. Then your life is at others’ mercy. All rights, including rights to free speech, matters of conscience, protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, et al, are meaningless.

The enemies of private property are enemies of humanity. Marx, the arch enemy of private property, ignited a trail of human devastation that even religion can’t match. Marxist regimes impoverished a billion people and killed 100 million innocents in their attempts to build propertyless societies. A government that does not “work for the owners” by protecting ownership rights is not a legitimate government. It is a criminal enterprise working for thieves and looters, including rent deadbeats.

Related Reading:

Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st Century America by Timothy Sandefur  

The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein  

QUORA: ‘Why has modern capitalism risen in the West?’

QUORA: ‘How do capitalists justify the inequality/high disparity part of a capitalistic society that a socialistic system tends to stop?’

QUORA: 'Can certain forms of capitalism be made to work for the people instead of just the elite?'

QUORA*: ‘Is it fair to claim that capitalism does not create better lives, but simply shifts the suffering somewhere else?’

QUORA: 'Why do people think capitalism is ethical?'

QUORA: ‘Is it fair to say capitalism has killed more people than communism?’

QUORA *: 'How is capitalism good despite the fact that it creates higher and lower classes?'

QUORA: '[W]hy do we ignore all the examples of capitalism failing, like the major divide between the wealthy and the poor in the US?'

QUORA: ‘Given that I live in a capitalist society, how can I avoid having my labor exploited?’

QUORA: "Is having an 'Anarcho-capitalist' society possible?"

On ‘Capitalist Government’ and Corporate Bailouts

QUORA: ‘Is capitalism voluntary?’

 

QUORA: ‘Is fascism a capitalist ideology?‘

 

QUORA: ‘Can democracy survive capitalism?’

New Jersey Civic Information Consortium’s Immoral Taxpayer Grab

In a 3/3/21 op-ed, Interested in local N.J news? Here’s a way one group is investing in its future, New Jersey Star-Ledger Guest Columnist Christopher Daggett writes that the changing market for news media has left some local news outlets in the dust. How to “fix” the market?: Raid the taxpayers:

Despite the good work of New Jersey’s press corps, many communities across the state are being left in the dark. A two-decades long local news crisis has led to rapid media consolidation, thousands of journalist layoffs, and dozens of newsroom closings. Studies have shown when local news suffers, so does civic participation. And in its place, misinformation runs rampant. 

My emphasis. Yet another “crisis”. Two, in fact. Later, Daggett calls this a “crisis in democracy”.

Local news is facing a real structural problem. It’s being weakened. It’s disappearing. We need to start acting like this is the crisis in democracy that it is.

In this Year of the Crisis, the list of crises since Biden’s inauguration continues to burgeon. 

.

Every facet of our lives requires access to factual, quality, and responsive news and information. The events of the past year, especially the pandemic and its effects on our communities, have underscored the need for rebuilding and reimagining what local media looks like in our state.

Now is our chance to do just that. The New Jersey Civic Information Consortium [NJCIC], created by the state to strengthen local news coverage and boost civic engagement, is excited to announce its inaugural call for proposals from the public. The Consortium, a nonprofit collaborative between The College of New Jersey, Montclair State University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rowan University and Rutgers University, will provide funding to support local journalism, promising media startups and other efforts to better inform people.

You have to wait until later in the article to find out that this funding includes “innovative public investment,” a euphemism for seizing money by force of taxation, from unwilling citizens. Why unwilling? Because if private citizens were willing to support these media projects with their own dollars, through subscriptions or newsstand purchases, we wouldn’t have a “local news crisis” or a need for a New Jersey Civic Information Consortium.

I don’t care what others do with their own money. If a higher education group wants to pool their own money and dish it out to selected aspiring media entrepreneurs who can’t succeed in the market otherwise, more power to them. Private individuals and groups have always been free to risk their own money to start a news organization, thanks to freedom of the press and the First Amendment. But what right do they have to use the taxing power of the state to get that money? None whatsoever. It is immoral and unjust to do so.

Much of the article is filled with rationalizations for this scheme. 

Without bold action and creative solutions, we’ll see more fake news and political polarization. We won’t be able to find basic information about what’s happening in the places we live, work, and learn. It’ll be harder to know if our water is clean, our air is clear, or our taxpayer dollars are being spent to benefit taxpayers. 

You mean, like “climate crisis” or “clean energy” or “systemic racism”? Why would we trust the tax-funded NJCIC new media project to not engage in fake news of its own? Fake news is all over mainstream media and political discourse. I do my own work sorting out fake from genuine news, and I see no reason why I should more readily trust the NJCIC-funded outlets any more or less than any other outlet. In fact, government-funded “news” is undoubtedly less trustworthy, given the fake news demagoguery regularly spewed by politicians.

No one should ever be forced to fund any media source against their will. All funding should be private and voluntary. The NJCIC project is immoral, if not unconstitutional, if it includes a single taxpayer dollar, including indirectly such as through state universities like Rutgers. If the NJCIC really believes its vision that “access to accurate, useful, and engaging local news and information, allowing them to better participate in civic life and create thriving, healthy communities . . . is the lifeblood of democracy,” it would realize that a fully free press is vital. And a free press means no government involvement in the press, period. A collaboration between the press and the state is the hallmark of dictatorships.

Related Reading:

NJ Government Takes First Step to Becoming ‘the Sole Arbiter of Truth’

Think your enemy is the press? So does every tyrant and corrupt politician

N.J. just became the first state to help revive local news By Susan K. Livio -- NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Keep the press free from the academics and the politicians by Paul Mulshine

QUORA: 'How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game -- Answers and Replies [Part 3, Epistemology]

Recently, I posted an answer to the Quora* question, How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game?, which is also available on my 1/14/21 blog post. I followed that up by posting a reply to Pascal Morimacil’s answer, available on my blog post of 2/3/21. I then had a conversation with Morimacil. Before I get to that, Morimacil’s answer is reposted here in full:

The basic idea is that if you consider every transaction individually, without looking at anything else, then it kinda seems like both people are better off, since they agree to the trade.

So for example, you pay rent for the right to exist somewhere, and then someone else lets you exist without evicting you. It’s said to be win-win. So, a creation of wealth.

---

You could analyze a mugging that way, and declare it to be a win-win wealth creating situation.

The victim is paying for the right to exist, and the mugger lets them exist without shooting them. Win-win. If the victim thinks the price is too high, they can just decide not to pay.

---

You kind of have to ignore the gun, or the threat of eviction

And if you also ignore a lot of other things, like pollution and so on, and rising wealth inequality, well, at some point you are just deciding that money changing hands means things are getting better for everyone.

You can read my reply here, also posted to my blog on 2/3/21. A back-and-forth ensued with Morimacil, which I will post in stages by subject. The subjects are economic, epistemological, and political philosophy. We started with the economic aspect, specifically Morimacil’s landlord/mugger analogy. My economic exchange (Part 1) is posted on 3/8/21. Part 2 is my exchange on political philosophy, specifically Capitalism, posted on 3/11/21. The most important part of my exchange is on epistemology. It’s most important because it informs and influences a person’s beliefs on economic and political philosophy and other areas. This is true of Pascal Morimacil, as we can see in this exchange. On epistemology, Morimacil answered:

The basic idea is that if you consider every transaction individually, without looking at anything else, then it kinda seems like both people are better off, since they agree to the trade.

So for example, you pay rent for the right to exist somewhere, and then someone else lets you exist without evicting you. It’s said to be win-win. So, a creation of wealth.

There is no “if you consider every transaction individually, without looking at anything else”: The only way to analyze economics (or any aspect of human affairs) is to begin with the individual, since the individual is the only human entity that exists. The “economy” is an abstraction, subsuming all relevant individual transactions. All other considerations are derivative from individualism. 

The mugging victim is not “paying” for the “right to exist”; i.e., the right to life. The right to life means only the right of self-ownership and self-governance; i.e., to think and act on one’s own judgement, in pursuit of one’s values, by peaceful respectful means: The right to life does not mean the “right” to force others to provide the means of living (“existing” in your terminology). The right to life, like the right to one’s property, is an inalienable right, held equally by everyone--and that includes the right not to be anyone’s slave. The renter is not paying for his “right to exist.” He is paying for the right to a particular housing unit, derived from the mutually agreed obligation to pay rent to use the landlord’s property. The renter’s non-payment forfeits his right to the housing unit. Being evicted does not forfeit his right to exist, or to his life. 

Morimacil replied:

So first, the idea that the individual is the only thing that exists is entirely wrong, very clearly, human exist as a species, not a single individual. [sic]

I responded:

“Species” is not an existent. It is a concept. Concepts are mental abstractions denoting existents in reality that share certain characteristics. What exists in reality are individual human beings. No matter how hard you try, you will not find the entity “species” in reality. You will only see individual human beings, even though intellectually we know that each of us fits the definition of the abstract concept, the species “man”. Concepts are vital mental tools that aid humans in accumulating knowledge and understanding the world. But they are not real concretes.

You need to know the difference between what’s real and what’s in your head. Then you would be able to see that the value a landlord offers is a real housing unit. That’s why the landlord’s alleged “victim” wants it; he values it. Housing doesn’t magically pop up, causelessly, in nature. The landlord’s so-called “passive” income consists of building and/or maintaining the housing unit. You would be able to see that the “victim” in your story is just a moocher who wants something for nothing. Marx’s mean economic fantasies and psychological machinations notwithstanding, the world doesn’t owe anyone an effortless existence at others’ expense. If you want someone to provide you with good housing (or any value), you should pay for it, as any honorable person understands.

Morimacil replied:

If you want to go that way, we could declare that individual human beings are an abstraction, and actually there are just a bunch of cells.

Still, multiple humans exist, and communities exist, and sexual reproduction exists, and so on.

My unposted response:

You could “declare” anything. But reality doesn’t bend to whim. Facts matter. I’m stating observable facts of reality that others can validate independently. Individual cells are observable through a microscope. You can take your eye off of the microscope and look in the mirror and observe a full human being. But that’s it. There is nothing beyond the individual. You can observe a large group of individuals and call it a “community”. You can observe similarities among individuals and call it a “species”. But you cannot direct your attention away from the individual and directly observe, through the senses, the community or the species like you can when you shift attention from cells to the individual because “community” and “species” have no direct referent in reality. 

Individual human beings are the only human entity that exists. Why is this so important that I am focussed on it? Because the idea that individuals are mere cells that make up a higher organism is substituting an abstraction for reality. That devastating inversion is responsible for massive injustice, suffering, and death. Just as defective human cells—an infected appendix or gallbladder, or a cancerous tumor—can be cut out for the good of the whole organism, so the application of the idea that human lives are “just a bunch of cells” makes them expendable for the sake of the higher organism which they compose. Tyrants have seized on this inverted epistemology to as if human lives are mere cells, so any number of them can be enslaved, liquidated, and killed for the good of the organism—“society,” the “race,” the “proletariat,” or the “community.” Collectivist regimes operate on this premise, and offer vivid evidence for the consequences of this mental inversion. They can conveniently take their attention off of the individual, in order to justify the sacrificing of countless real live human beings for the “greater good” of imaginary, unobservable “entities”—in Fascist Italy, National Socialist (NAZI) Germany, Communist Russia and Communist China, and with less severity in modern welfare states. Society, the race, the community, the economic group, the species are all abstractions that represent associations of individuals, not entities. But actual human beings paid the price, in their loss of liberty, property, and lives, for elevating these abstractions above people. You’ve validated my point: You need to know the difference between what’s real and what’s in your head. The terrible consequences of evading the difference can be seen all around us, in small and large ways.

Morimacil’s believe in collectivism--that “human[s] exist as a species, not a single individual”--leads to his utter disregard for individual rights, trade, and ignoring of the facts of the landlord/renter relationship. The “right to exist” means the right to exist at others’ nonconsensual expense. Why not? We’re all one species. We’re not individuals. We’re cells in the higher organism. I agree with Craig Biddle and Yaron Brook: The basic battle for a free capitalist society is individualism versus collectivism.  

Related Reading:

QUORA: ‘How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game?’

QUORA: 'How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game?' -- The Mugger vs the Landlord

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

QUORA: 'How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game -- Answers and Replies [Part 2, Political Philosophy]

QUORA: 'How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game -- Answers and Replies [Part 1, Economics]

Related Viewing:

Individualism vs Collectivism - Dr. Yaron Brook