Ronald Bailey has an article in Reason titled More Individualism Means More Altruism . He cites studies “proving” that "There may be no inherent conflict between doing well and doing good".
If “doing well” means the self-interested pursuit of one’s own happiness, and “doing good” means engaging in occasional philanthropic goals that fit one’s values, then this is certainly true. But following in a long line of pro-capitalist liberty champions, Bailey refuses to embrace Ayn Rand’s moral incites, and inadvertently accepts that there actually is an inherent conflict between doing well and altruism. Let’s examine:
The countries with more individualistic values are also the countries with higher levels of altruism, according to an upcoming study in the journal Psychological Science. A team of psychologists from Georgetown and Harvard reached this conclusion after parsing data from around the world on subjective well-being, individualist versus collectivist cultural values, and various measures of altruism, ranging from charitable giving to helping strangers to living organ donations to the humane treatment of animals.
The researchers include the latest data (from 2019) in the Charities Aid Foundation's annual World Giving Index, which surveys people across the globe asking them if in the past month they had helped a stranger, donated money to a charity, or volunteered time to an organization. "The United States of America is the world's most generous country over the last 10 years," the 2019 report notes. Others in the top 10 include are Myanmar, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
China ranks as the world's least generous country. Others in the bottom 10 include Greece, Yemen, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Russia. [My emphasis]
Note that self-sacrifice is not mentioned, only generosity. But self-sacrifice, not generosity, is the essence of altruism. Any of those “do-good” efforts can easily be motivated by generosity. If "doing well" means achieving one's own self-interested values, then "doing good" can be among those values. (I’m a self-interested regular blood donor to my local medical center.) Altruism, in fact, is incompatible with "doing well" because altruism demands the sacrifice--the giving up, the renunciation--of the very values that doing well demands. Individualism begins with self-value. Individualism doesn't generate altruism. It clashes with altruism.
Altruism must be properly defined, which here it is not. Altruism means self-sacrificial service to others as the standard of moral good. The dirty little secret of altruism is that altruism leads to predation. If morality demands living for others, then it logically means demanding that others live for me. Collectivism is the genuinely altruistic society, with everyone living for the group, thus expecting to live off of the group. Individualism is the self-interested society--that is, capitalism, the system of individual rights. When people are secure in their lives, liberties, and property, generosity logically follows. When they are not, as in collectivist societies, generosity is stupid and in fact impossible. Why care about others when everyone else already has a greedy claim on one's life, liberty, and property? If one considers this type of living as selfish, then collectivism certainly promotes selfishness. But this type of “selfishness,” as we can see, is really just the flip side of the altruist coin.
It's true that individualistic societies generate generosity. But that's because individualism is not altruistic, properly defined. The point of this article is correct only insofar as altruism is misinterpreted as generosity.
Not surprisingly, Bailey also fails to properly conceptualize selfishness. Both he and the study he cites assume only negative connotations, failing to distinguish between bad "selfishness"--narcissism, self-centeredness--and rational selfishness, the respectful pursuit of one's own self-interest. The article notes "the common conflation of individualism with selfishness," and tries to debunk it. But no one is ever going to believe that individualism does not promote selfishness, and no one ever has, which is why it is so important to get the definitions and concepts right.
It’s true that people don’t understand altruism as self-sacrificial. Or they do, but think of self-sacrifice as simply the giving up of short-term satisfaction or indulgence for the sake of a long-term and/or other goal that you value more. But if anyone suggested that you donate your food to a soup kitchen at the expense of the hunger of your own child, people would rightly see that suggestion as monstrous. Yet, people equate the mere giving of food as altruistic. People have mixed premises about altruism, and that’s a problem. But the same problem of mixed premises afflicts selfishness, such as lumping together the pursuit of “pure” self-interest through predatory practices with rational self-interest through mutual respect and mutually beneficial trade, such as making money, or giving money to a cause for self-interested reasons, into the same package deal. If liberty advocates insist on avoiding dealing with the true nature of altruism by equating it with generosity, they can at least start using the term rational self-interest to give the term “doing well” the moral backing it needs to save individualism from the onslaught of the collectivists. Put another way, it is good -- morally good -- to do well for yourself.
Related Reading:
Altruism—the Ayn Rand Lexicon
The Virtue of Selfishness—Ayn Rand
QUORA: Is Ayn Rand's 'Selfishness' 'the middle between altruism and selfism?'
Books to Aid in Understanding Ayn Rand's Rational Selfishness
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