Conflating Altruism with Generosity — and Selfishness with Collectivism — Undermines Liberty

 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

Once Again, a Business Champion Morally Neuters Her Own Case

In A Brief History of Corporate Social Responsibility—and Why It Must Stop,  Kimberlee Josephson writes:

CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) gained notoriety with Howard R. Bowen’s 1953 publication Social Responsibilities of the Businessman, and although times have since changed and CSR has taken on various forms, a constant question remains unchanged.

What is the role of business in society?

Some claim that a greater focus on corporate social performance over corporate financial performance is now warranted, while others adhere to a more classical viewpoint, siding with Theodore Levitt’s assertion that business should simply aim to achieve material gain while operating in good faith. Levitt, a German-American economist and professor at the Harvard Business School, spoke of “The Dangers of Social Responsibility” in a 1958 Harvard Business Review article. He posited that profit maximization over the long term should be the primary goal of business as this would have a spillover effect improving the wellbeing of society.

Not bad, so far. But ethics is the subject that continues to trip up the pro-Capitalists.

The propensity to exchange to benefit oneself as a means for societal advancement was most notably espoused in Adam Smith’s 1776 magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations. Milton Friedman later drove this message home in his seminal essay in the New York Times Magazine about how the “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.”

The collectivist premise that the good of society is what justifies profit-seeking corporations is a fallacy that has deep roots. And it is deeply destructive to Capitalism. To "exchange"--i.e.,trade--to "benefit oneself" is not a "propensity." It is a requirement of individual survival and flourishing. It follows that self-benefit is not a means to "Societal advancement." It is a means to the personal pursuit of happiness. “Society” benefits, for sure, but only as a consequence of the successful achievement of personal happiness and flourishing.

Yet, the prioritization of self-gain has proven to be a hard pill to swallow for a culture that seeks emotional fulfillment via altruism. As such, businesses have not only been encouraged to engage in CSR, but also to harness it and pursue a higher calling.

Unlike the stages of the CSR Pyramid, which tended to be industry oriented, firms stretching beyond their domain of competence to prove themselves as worthy contributors to society at large (rather than streamlining efforts toward core stakeholders) is disconcerting for shareholders and distracting for budding entrepreneurs.

And well it should be! The creation of value for consumers and jobs for employees is precisely the act that makes business “worthy contributors to society.” There is no “at large” beyond which business owes some benefit, other than to respect the rights of others. 

 

The spearheading of virtuous ventures and advocacy advertising show no sign of slowing down—and it won’t, until social pressure shifts back to value rather than virtue.

There's so much wrong here. CSR can't stop when even opponents of CSR keep giving altruism the banner of virtue, while separating the pursuit of value from virtue.  How can "social pressure" even begin to "shift back" to value when even the champions of business are stuck on altruism as virtue? The young champion of business Kim Josephson once again proves Why Capitalism Needs a Moral Sanction. And altruism can only be overcome by first explaining the real nature of altruism and then adopting a spirited defense of altruism’s antipode, rational selfishness.

Related Reading:

QUORA *: ‘Is Ayn Rand wrong about altruism?’

On the Purpose of a Corporation by the Business Roundtable, PART 1

On the Purpose of a Corporation by the Business Roundtable, PART 2

Why businesspeople need moral principles--Jaana Woiceshyn

In Defense of the Corporation—Robert Hessen: This book was first published in 1979 to defend “the right of the corporation to exist and function freely.” Hessen’s goal was to counter Ralph Nader’s argument that corporations are “creatures of the state.” The book is relevant today because Nader’s call for federal chartering of corporations is the precursor to Elizabeth Warren’s neo-fascist "Accountable Capitalism Act."

The Capitalist Manifesto--Andrew Bernstein

Elizabeth Warren wants to weaponize and federalize corporations for social justice activism--Mary Chastain   

Individualism vs. Collectivism and the Neglected False Moral Dichotomy

In the FEE article Is Individualism vs. Collectivism the New Left vs. Right?, Nicholas Baum gets off on the right foot, correctly pointing out the collectivist orientation of both conservatives and liberals/progressives. He then advises, again correctly, that the real alternatives are individualism versus collectivism. (Individualism versus collectivism has, in fact, been the fundamental philosophical battle at the heart of the American Revolution since America’s Founding). 

I believe that Baum’s definitions of the terms are mixed. On individualism, Baum writes:

The first side of this spectrum is known as “individualism.” As Ayn Rand writes, “Individualism regards man… as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.”

Individualism believes that every person, because they are rational and equal, are independent beings entitled to the largest possible domain of freedom. This freedom of choice and action only stops when it directly conflicts with the ability of others to do the same, mainly if it intrudes upon their life, liberty, or property.

To an individualist, the maximum role of the government is to protect our lives, liberty, and property. If the government were to perform an additional task, whether it be for “progressive” or “conservative” ends, it would be, in the words of Frédéric Bastiat, “legalized plunder.”

On collectivism, Baum falls way short. He writes:

The other side of this spectrum is “collectivism,” and it encompasses most of the beliefs we are commonly exposed to. Whether it be conservatism, progressivism, or socialism, collectivism involves the imposition of a certain belief or point of view on the rest of society.

Whereas the key tenet of individualism is the maximization of freedom in order to live by one’s own morals, a key tenet of collectivist ideologies is the willingness to use coercive means to promote a desired social or economic agenda. This may come in two forms. The government might subsidize activities they endorse, or they might restrict people’s freedom through regulations for activities they disapprove of.

Baum is spot-on with regards to individualism. But he misses the essential nature of collectivism. It’s true that collectivism leads to statism, which leads to “the imposition of a certain belief or point of view on the rest of society” and “the willingness to use coercive means to promote a desired social or economic agenda.” But that’s an effect, not a fundamental definition. He could have consulted Ayn Rand like he did on individualism. As Rand explains:

Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called “the common good.”

Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group . . . and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force—and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.

But that’s not the worst of Baum’s article. The worst comes under the heading “The Ultimate Dichotomy” and deals with morality. After defending the individual’s independent rights to life, liberty, and property, Baum writes this surprising statement:

One may be tempted to assume that individualism is a form of egoism or selfishness. But in his classic work The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek points out that this is hardly the case.

“(Individualism) merely starts from the indisputable fact that the limits of our powers of imagination make it impossible to include in our scale of values more than a sector of the needs of the whole society,” Hayek observed.

Baum drops the ball, falling back on the utilitarian argument that collectivism is not good because no individual is smart enough or knowledgeable enough to know everyone’s needs. Presumably, if someone could know, or convince enough people that he does know, then he would be justified to “use coercive [state] means to promote a desired social or economic agenda” on “the rest of society” in the name of “the common good.” 

This is a complete capitulation to collectivism by a supposed individualist. This is the consequence of the failure to defend individualism on moral grounds. I left these comments: 

Baum is correct that the common Left/Right spectrum is a false dichotomy, since these days both sides represent some variation of collectivism. But he ignores the other false dichotomy, the moral one. This is a crucial mistake.

The conventional conception of egoism or selfishness is of a predatory individual who lives by harming others. The only opposite of selfishness, on this view, is said to be altruism, which means living for others at the expense of self-harm. Given that unappetizing choice, most people would say altruism is the better choice, even though most people don’t practice much of it because common sense tells them it’s completely impractical if you want to live and achieve your own values. 

Thus, we’re given a choice; sacrifice self to others and be moral, or sacrifice others to self and be immoral. But as Ayn Rand understood, this is a false and fraudulent choice. She advocated a third alternative, rational selfishness, which means achieving your goals by neither sacrificing self to others nor others to self, getting along with others according to the non-sacrificial method she called The Trader Principle. 

It’s obvious that collectivism thrives on altruism. That being true, and if individualism is collectivism’s opposite, then the only moral foundation of individualism has to be rational selfishness. Nobody’s going to believe that individualism, which defines every individual as “an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, liberty, and property,” is altruistic. It is implicitly egoistic. So, if egoism is immoral, then so is individualism . . ., and so is the whole point of the rights to life, liberty, and property—the pursuit of your own happiness. From this view, collectivism wins on the most important ground, the ground of morality.

If man is by nature a being possessing a rational faculty, then it is right to live by one’s own judgement. If that is so, then rational selfishness is morally right, and individualism wins. Collectivism always leads to a predatory, ultimately self-destructive society because altruism is fundamentally predatory. After all, if it is moral for you to live for others, then a moral life logically means that “society”—others—must live for you. If you really think it through, altruism and conventional selfishness are really two sides of the same predatory coin. 

If we are to get rid of the false collectivist Left/Right dichotomy and embrace individualism, we’ll need to get rid of the false moral dichotomy, as well, and give individualism the moral high ground it deserves, rational egoism. If you can’t defend egoism or selfishness, then it’d be better not to mention morality at all, and simply add the pursuit of happiness to life, liberty, and property, and leave the moral defense of individualism to those who will properly frame the moral conflict underpinning individualism versus collectivism—egoism versus altruism.

Related Reading:

QUORA: Is Ayn Rand's 'Selfishness' 'the middle between altruism and selfism?'

QUORA *: ‘Is Ayn Rand wrong about altruism?’

Books to Aid in Understanding Rational Selfishness

‘Can Anyone Be Truly Selfish?’

Is Science Catching Up to the Objectivist Ethics?

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

Related Viewing:

VIDEO: Individualism vs Collectivism - Dr. Yaron Brook

This Quora Answer Shows Why Ayn Rand Was Right About Altruism

In my answer to the Quora question, “Is Ayn Rand wrong about altruism?,” I wrote:

It is important to understand that Rand’s understanding of altruism is derived from Auguste Comte, the 19th Century philosopher who coined the term. To Comte, altruism is an uncompromising, absolute duty to “live for others” in every circumstance and at all times, always putting the interests of others above one’s own, no exceptions: “[F]rom every point of view,” Comte wrote, “the ultimate systematisation of human life must consist above all in the development of altruism.” 

This absolutist concept of altruism created by altruism’s founder obviously clashes with the mushy way the term is commonly used, which mixes self-sacrifice [Comte-ism] with self-interest driven generosity—a mixture Rand referred to as a “package deal” and which she viewed as corrupt. Some people might think that the mixture is workable. But Rand saw this package deal as akin to mixing poison in with one’s food—altruism as poison for human morality. 

In another answer to the Quora question, Is Ayn Rand wrong about altruism?’‘, Greg Larsen posted:

She was absolutely wrong.

As many of the other answers here have pointed out, altruism carried to ridiculous exteme [sic] is self destructive. However, Rand believed and argued that any gesture of altruism whatsoever was already ridiculous extreme.

When you are young and strong and lucky, the attitude “I have mine, and you would too if you hadn’t made bad choices, “ seems good.

But bad stuff happens to people who don’t deserve it.

It is better for all of us if we internalize a philosophy that we need to share our good fortune, so that we can expect help when our fortunes turn.

Most of us actually know or feel that to some extent.

I don’t give so much to charity that my wife and I are endangered by it, but I do give.

This is why altruism is so corrupting. Like most people, Larsen packages together altruism with good-will generosity. Thus, opposing altruism means opposing good-will generosity, which leads to “never help anyone”—a position that Ayn Rand never advocated. Notice how quickly Larsen jumps from bait to switch; from “any gesture of altruism is bad” to never helping anyone who ran into underserved “bad stuff.” Larsen’s grave error is that he uncritically swallows the “package deal.” Rand indeed “believed and argued that any gesture of altruism whatsoever was already ridiculous extreme.” That’s because altruism, by definition, mandates the “ridiculous extreme” of self-sacrifice. 

Larsen seems to agree. Notice that Larsen himself acknowledges that he would never go to the “ridiculous extreme” that altruism demands. Notice that Larsen does not “give so much to charity that my wife and I are endangered by it.” Precisely the point. Larsen values sharing his good fortune, but only because he expects the recipients to return the favor should the tables be turned—and only if it does not entail a personal sacrifice! 

Well, why not? If a “gesture of altruism” is sometimes good, then why doesn’t he sacrifice his good fortune to the point of being “endangered by it,” and with no expectation of anything in return, ever? There is no non-sacrificial altruism. Altruism by definition demands precisely to do what Larsen himself refuses to do--give so much to charity that my wife and I are endangered by it!

Quoting again from my answer:

Whether out of deceit or ignorance, Rand has been vilified as an enemy of social harmony because of her anti-altruism. This is grossly dishonest and unjust. Rand opposed altruism precisely because it is incompatible with social harmony, which depends on universal respect for each person’s moral right to pursue the values his own life depends on. Agree with Rand or not on the merits, but fairness demands that one understand precisely what Rand was attacking when she attacked altruism. It is the undiluted, literal, pure altruism of Comte to which Rand refers, and the influence of which Rand seeks to unpackage from human morality. With this in mind, I do not believe that Ayn Rand was wrong about altruism. 

Larsen’s completely wrong-headed answer proves decisively why Rand was uncompromising in seeking to remove all influence of altruism from human morality. As she observed, altruism corrupts one’s moral view to the point of making “kindness, good will, or respect for the rights of others . . . impossible,” precisely because altruism is to morality what poison is to food. Larsen falls for the altruist trap: He equates altruism with non-sacrificial good will, and then jumps to the false assertion that by opposing altruism uncompromisingly, Rand rejects good will. Larsen is flat out wrong.

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

The Link Between "Control, Power, or Socialism" and "What's Morally Right"

"Give Back" is a Sinister Ploy to Guilt Achievers Into Giving Up What They Have Earned

I've never bought into the "Give Back" campaign. It's a sinister attempt by parasites and achievement-haters to guilt people into giving up their hard earned money and/or valuable time in "atonement" for making their lives the best they can be. There's nothing wrong with voluntarism, of course. But charitable activity is not a moral duty. It should be an act of good will toward something one believes in, not an unearned guilt-induced duty to "give back" what you haven't taken. The success you earned, no matter what the level of success, comes from providing a value to people willing to pay you for it. You've already given through the act of making money. You haven't taken anything.

In this regard, I want to single out a good article by Mark J. Perry titled How Can You "Give Back" Something that Wasn't First Taken? Published on FEE (the Foundation for Economic Education), Perry argues that "Creating and producing are not theft." This article was Reprinted from the American Enterprise Institute. It includes excerpts from other articles attacking the "Give Back" campaign.

Related Reading:

Society’s ‘Lottery Winners’ and ‘Give Back’ vs. Win-Win

Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%—Harry Binswanger

'Give Back' Is One of the World's Most Impoverishing Commands—Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

QUORA: "How is becoming a billionaire even possible, chronologically?"

How You Build That

Peter Buffet: A Real Life Ivy Starnes?

THE GUILT PLEDGE—Don Watkins and Yaron Brook

To Start With, Single Payer is Immoral

Booker's romance with Bernie Sanders. Let's hope it's just a fling | Moran

We are about to enter into the next chapter of what I have called “the mother-of-all healthcare battles—the battle between total government control of healthcare versus individual control in a free market. Medicare-for-All, or national single-payer healthcare, has been kicking around Congress for perhaps two decades now. Recently, Senator Bernie Sanders reintroduced the bill, with numerous, mostly far-Left co-signers.

But not all. One co-signer, the otherwise “moderate” Democrat New Jersey senator Cory Booker, just signed on. Booker’s decision was the subject of a NJ Star-Ledger column by Tom Moran. Moran is a single-payer supporter, but considers it politically impractical. On that basis, he wrote “Booker's bromance with Bernie Sanders. Let's hope it's just a fling” criticizing Booker's move to Sanders:

It didn't surprise me that Sen. Bernie Sanders chose this moment to press for a single-payer health system.

He's a good man, and he's dead right that a single-payer system like Canada's makes a lot of sense, delivering better care at lower cost. But he is as nutty as Ralph Nader when it comes to practical politics.

Sanders is handing Republicans a club they can use to beat Democrats over the head. Because a single-payer system would require a huge tax hike, and force wrenching change for everyone at a time when 70 percent of Americans are happy with their current arrangements.

Sanders has never been impressed by cold political calculations like that. That's why he ignored warnings that his endless personal attacks on Hillary Clinton might help Donald Trump win by depressing the Democratic vote in the general election.

Sanders, like Nader, is a romantic. Which is great, if you're a poet.

The surprise to me is that our own Sen. Cory Booker has joined this hapless parade.

Moran goes on to quote Booker:

"We have to stop thinking about political calculation," he told me on Friday morning. "And focus more on 'Morally what's the right thing to do?'"

Moran acknowledges that Booker’s move is itself a political calculation designed to curry favor with the hard Left to pave the way for a 2020 run for Democratic presidential nomination. “Booker is not an orthodox Democrat,” Moran writes,” and “the left is skeptical about [him].” Nonetheless, he’s critical of Booker’s move.

On Sanders’ new Medicare-for All bill, which I have dubbed SandersCare to distinguish it from previous bills, I’m not so sure Booker is on the wrong track, politically. At this time, he’s probably on the right side of the long-term political momentum in this country when it comes to healthcare.

I left these comments:

"We have to stop thinking about political calculation," he told me on Friday morning. "And focus more on 'Morally what's the right thing to do?'"

If Booker were really concerned with what’s morally right, he wouldn’t be joining Sanders in his crusade to put government dictators in charge of deciding who gets what healthcare, and when—and that effectively enslaves the doctors. He would be a huge champion of rolling back government involvement in medicine, and expanding individuals’ freedom to make their own choices about their own healthcare.

How is it morally justified to strip the remaining half of the American population that still has health insurance and force them into a one-size-fits-all government monopsony? In a word, altruism. Altruism holds a person has no moral right to his own life, because being moral consists of living for others. The opposite morality, rational self-interest, upholds the individual’s moral right to her own life and liberty; to spend the money she earns, her property, as she, not some government bureaucrat, sees fit; to make her own healthcare choices—all as sanctioned by the guarantee to all men of the equal unalienable right to the pursuit of personal happiness stated in America’s philosophic blueprint, the Declaration of Independence.

And the moral is the practical. Consequently, SandersCare is economically unworkable, and will lead to severe restrictions on healthcare, especially for seniors and the elderly, as costs explode when SandersCare clashes with the laws of economics. On the other hand, all of the incentives in a free market—consumers seeking the best value for their money from profit-motivated providers seeking to expand sales and grow—are aligned toward better care at lower prices supplemented by continuous innovation. The laws of economics compliment this freedom. That’s why free markets, by allowing all people to self-interestedly think and act freely, work to the benefit of all economic levels of society, not in some miraculous instantaneous fashion, but over time.

What Sanders understands that most of his opponents don’t is that the healthcare fight is fundamentally a moral fight. Morality is not pie-in-the-sky. Morality, not political or economic calculation, is where this will be decided. Politics reflects the dominant morality of the culture. And while Americans still have a decent amount of respect for a person’s right to act in his own self-interest, altruism is generally considered—wrongly, in my view—the essence of morality. Sanders, like all statists who want power over people’s lives, cashes in on altruism. If you have no moral right to your own life, then you have no moral right to oppose SandersCare. How will you oppose it? By standing for your political rights? A right to what? The very thing altruism says you have no moral right to, your life? To stop SandersCare, the final step in the half century long trek to end America’s role as the last bastion of freedom in healthcare, the individual’s moral right to her own life must be upheld.

Self-interest is not just a practical necessity. It is right—morally right—to work to make your own life better and more fulfilling, not by exploiting others, but by your own effort. Only on the basis of rational self-interest can SandersCare be stopped—and reforms begun toward a truly moral path, a fully free market where providers, medical products makers, health insurers, and consumers/patients can contract freely and voluntarily with each other, to mutual advantage—and the government protects those contracts against force and fraud.

So SandersCare is not just politically impractical. It is economically impractical. It is, most importantly, immoral. Freedom is moral and practical, because it leaves people free to pursue their own self-interest unmolested by the lakes of Bernie Sanders. Never mind the usual rationalizations about the needy who can’t afford this or that healthcare service. That’s the job of private charity to fulfil according to the value judgments of individuals. The needy are not a justification to coral the vast majority of Americans into a chain gang of government dependence financed by their own money. Totalitarian control or freedom and individual rights—not helping or not helping the needy—is the ultimate choice that lies at the end of the healthcare debate.

The current disfunction of American healthcare is the result of decades of ever-growing government involvement. Sanders offers up Medicare-for-All as a “fix” for what ails America’s heavily regulated, part-socialist, part-fascist, part-free healthcare industry. But that’s just doubling down on the cause of the problems. The government has had its chance at micro-managing our healthcare, and SandersCare is the final proof that it has failed. The moral high road belongs to defenders of individual rights and its corollary, free market healthcare. The “right thing to do” now is defend every individual’s right to act on his own judgement, for his own benefit. It’s time for more freedom and individual rights in medicine.

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For the Left, the issue of single payer is not philosophical. It is a matter of political practicality. Moran himself says at the outset that “a single-payer system like Canada's makes a lot of sense.” Moran explains:

The idea that answering moral demands should force us to set aside political calculation is insane. Without political calculation, Abraham Lincoln could not have won the Civil War and freed the slaves. Franklin Roosevelt couldn't have enacted Social Security. Nelson Mandela might have died in his cell on Robben Island.

None of them charged straight at their goals. They maneuvered towards them, step by step, over years. They calculated.

In a nutshell, this is how the socialists moved America from an almost fully free market in healthcare to the verge of total socialistic government control.

Philosophically, they believe they’ve already won. As Sanders now says openly and with few challengers, “health care is a right.” That’s an unequivocal altruist moral statement. There’s no way to counter that assertion without properly upholding individual rights, and there’s no way to properly uphold individual rights without denying altruism and upholding self-interest.

But while they’ve been content to take one small bite out of our freedom at a time, the one thing they didn’t do is compromise on the basic, altruist/collectivist convictions that underpin those steps. “Step by step,” as Moran, one of the Left’s ranking members, readily acknowledges, they road the altruist “ideal” to a steady growth in government programs like Medicaid and Medicare and SCHIP and a steady growth of strangling government regulations on the private insurance market to the point where it now “makes sense” to engineer a full government takeover of healthcare.

There’s a lesson for the Right here. We’ll not fully reinstate Americans’ individual healthcare liberty in one swoop. But we’ll never get there if we can’t go beyond the economic case and properly defend free markets morally. Moran may be right that the “Sanders virus” is politically premature. But single payer is inevitable, barring a proper moral strategy from the free market Right.

Related Reading:

Sanders’s Open Socialism Blows the Cover Off of the Left’s Stealth Socialism

HHS Secretary Nominee Tom Price Whiffs in Confrontation With Bernie Sanders Over a ‘Right’ to Healthcare

Sanders Pitches ‘Right’ to Healthcare: Cruz Checks Swing

Get Ready for the Coming Post-ObamaCare Battle

Update On the "Mother-of-All-Healthcare" Battles

Moral Health Care vs. Universal Health Care, by Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh for The Objective Standard

The Elephant ‘Suggests’ Free Market, Not Single Payer, Healthcare

Books to Aid in Understanding Rational Selfishness