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
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