I’d love to hear how to respond to such absurd claims, people can be so ignorant. However, I still feel my arguing skills are not strong enough, I’m used to presenting my ideas, not arguing them:
" which makes more sense: The more successful individuals are, the more succesful society will be, OR the more successful society is, the more successful each individual will be. The seem the same, but form the basis for two completely different ideologies.
I am drawn more to the second one, as I believe that being social creatures, we are indebted to society on a natural level. As such, we succeed and fail as individuals only when society allows it to happen. Rich will only get rich when societal norms state that it is okay to acquire and accumulate wealth. And poverty is allowed only because society has deemed that it is acceptable for there to be poorer members. However, it could reasonably assured that if society decided that poverty was undesirable, it would be changed."
“However, it could reasonably assured that if society decided that poverty was undesirable, it would be changed.”
How ? By killing the bourgeois and each person who doesn’t agree with the regime ?
Explain to him why a state can’t plane the economy, and that the price system and the free market is the best way to eliminate poverty. Look at “western” societies, does he see many poor people in the US or in Europe ? No ? Well that’s thanks to capitalism.
He seems to think that “society” could fix the problem. He’s one of these libertarian who’s somewhat socialist bent. I don’t think he would want to kill anyone.
How do I show him that “society” isn’t the answer?
Society is the sum of individuals, but I doubt he’ll understand that, marxists hate to hear that
“Society”, ie. individuals, if there is a free market, won’t produce poverty. That’s what made me a “capitalist” : to realize that capitalism isn’t the problem, all the capitalist societies have no more poverty as we could see it in the middle-age, and everybody has a better standard of living than what they’d have had during the industrial revolution.
Everybody is richer thanks to capitalism. Societies that suffer the most are the one where capitalism is the least established.
By asking this question, you’re kind of admitting that “successful society” means something quite different from “successful individuals”. This should be denied, because society means a certain group of individuals and the interrelations between them. It doesn’t make sense to think of the two things as seperate.
This is probably true in some sense, but not in the way he means.
Who is society? Who “allows” what to happen, exactly? How is success and failure defined? How do we know when someone is being successful or failing?
Can poverty be ended by “disallowing” it? The government just has to make a law, and there’s no more poverty?! Like magic?! What is poverty anyway, and how is “poor” defined? Who gets to decide on these things, exactly?
Does “society” not already believe poverty is undesirable? How can we tell what “society” “thinks”? How can poverty be changed? Just by wishing it away? How does a poor individual become a not-poor individual? How does a society of poor individuals become a society of not-poor individuals?
Society is made up of all individuals. That’s why rights are focused on the individual up. People become rich because the free market (impure as it is) has allowed people to. This is very different from lets say feudalism. The opportunity and quality of life have improved from those times because of free market, because of voluntary exchange between individuals.
Societies with the most suffering have a more controlled market, those with a less restrained market have less. It doesn’t mean the U.S has a totally free market, but it is much freer then let’s say the soviet union.
The free market controls and maintains itself. It is made up millions of individuals, thinking for themselves and concerned for themselves. But in order to better their lives, they need the consent, labor and products of other. They calculate their own needs, and control their little part of the market, ALL voluntarily and freely. Not with a controlled market. The Soviet Union failed because government can’t maintain all these millions of exchanges, they can’t work in everyone’s interest, even if they wanted to. And they don’t. You know that power corrupts, and denies basic rights to one’s actions, to one’s bodies. Same occurs with the market.
With every regulation, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity are taken off, for example minimum wage. Employees don’t mind paying more then minimum wage allows, they already do it. Just look at anything from bank tellers to ceos. But minimum wage creates unemployment, by eliminating jobs seen needing less skills or specific experiences. Employers don’t have the money or incentive with minimum wage. So the working poor are left to fight between the jobs that can be found, use welfare or become idle. They can’t even work for near free for the experience, to further climb that ladder, because the rungs have been removed.
Society can eliminate poverty, if these constraints on liberty in the market were eliminated.
Do you really believe the same government that can’t keep your basic right to life safe can ‘magically’ fix poverty like that? Doesn’t ‘society’ already believe that poverty is something that it doesn’t want? More importantly:
Do you really think the government acts in the interest of society, or the sum of individuals, or in it’s own?"
Society doesn’t have goals. Society consists of people with goals. Since society doesn’t have goals, it cannot be guaged as being “more” or “less” successful, except from the viewpoint of any given individual.
Which is a subjective preference. That isn’t “society’s” preference, since it doesn’t have one.
Sometimes individual failure happens despite the efforts of others to prevent it. So what? Should people never fail at things? Should I have things expropriated from me because someone did something stupid and wants to get a break even at someone’s expense?
Explain why and how, or else this is just a statement without any backing.
Ok, so since society has deemed that it is acceptable for their to be poorer members, has society “achieved its goal”? Isn’t society then, successful because it achieved its goal?
Society doesn’t decide. People decide. The social settings and social aspect of being a human affects people, no doubt, but that doesn’t mean society is acting. Society doesn’t think. People think. Society doesn’t have goals. People have goals. Society doesn’t act. People act.
I’d have to disagree with her. I see society, and it definately exists as an idea in my head. I can group people into societies. To say that society doesn’t exist would be saying “classification X does not exist”
I think it would be more correct to say that society exists, and it is made up of people. It’s the public that’s a sham.
Very true. So society means “a certain set of individuals.” This exists in your head, as an abstraction. A society cannot think, because a set has no brain. It cannot be succesful or unsucessful, just as a set of red apples is neither red nor an apple. The only statement you can really make about a set is a statement about the individuals in a set, such as "They are all male, or “They are not all male”, or whatever.
A society is not “made up” of people, they way a wall is made up of bricks. People are real concrete things; society is an abstract concept. A camera can see people, but it cannot see a society.
You know when that good samaritan homeless man was dying in New York the other day, and people were passing him on the street not helping him, you know what each of them was thinking?
“I don’t have to help him, society will help him”
Of course, since all the individuals passing by him thought that, he wasn’t helped, and he died.
Whenever there is a real-world test, society doesn’t exist. It’s an abstract concept, and it will do nothing for you.
Everyone wants to believe in a higher, mightier collective force that ease the burden off the individual.
^^^What do ya think of my response to him? He hasn’t responded to it yet. I need some more arguing experience.
Or perhaps more education on Austrian Economics, I’m planning on reading Human Action this summer, any advice on where I should go from there? I’ve only read Defending the Undefendable, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, and the For a New Liberty. I’ve also read Walden by Thoreau several times since my teenage years.
If you haven’t yet read “Economics in One Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt, or the Bastiat collection as well as “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen” by Bastiat those should be high on your list. Relatively easy to grasp and yet containing powerful points.
I began writing this shortly after you posted it, but had to attend to other duties. You’ve already responded to your friend, but I’ve already written this, so I’m gonna post it anyway.
The latter makes no sense at all. How does ‘society’ achieve success? How do you measure the ‘success’ of ‘society,’ without measuring the success of the individuals within that society (assuming it is possible to measure satisfaction at all).
He defines societal success as he pleases; from what I can tell, a society is successful if there is a narrow distribution of wealth, presumably regardless of the actual level of wealth. Is a community that has the bare necessities (food and shelter and not much else) and a narrow range of wealth distribution “more successful” than a community comparable to our own? Your friend has to define his terms.
I would cry that this is a non-sequitur, but the conclusion that he believes follows from the premise doesn’t make sense anyway. What does it mean to be indebted to society? This demands a definition for society. Further, how can one be indebted ‘on a natural level’? What entity determines the indebtedness and compels payment?
This is not horrible, as it’s certainly true that a person cannot flourish without the flourishing of others. No matter how skilled I might be, I rely on the specialization and hard work of others. A capitalist can only make a profit by providing others with goods or services that they desire; that is, only by helping others succeed in the pursuit of their individual aims. Likewise, the capitalist himself depends on others to provide him with the goods and services he desires. A capitalist is only as good as the capitalists around him.
But again, society is not an actor in itself; only individuals act. To further criticize his statement, I would need to know what he now means by success and failure. Has a rich man succeeded whereas a poor man has failed? Does this hold even if the rich man is severely depressed and the poor man more than satisfied with his life? Has the profitable businessman succeeded and the unprofitable businessman failed? If this is what he means, why should we dislike it when those who fail to serve others are compelled to serve their fellow man in different ways? Certainly, I succeed as an individual when “society” (other individuals) allow me to succeed; but I can only succeed by inducing others to give me what I desire. Most often, this means offering others something they desire in trade.
I guess that’s not… no, it’s pretty wrong. Certainly, a person can only accumulate wealth if others do not forcibly confiscate his growing wealth. But if it is widely understood that, when a man accumulates a certain level of wealth, he will be plundered by the rest of society, what purpose is there in accumulating such wealth in the first place? In order to maintain a level of equality, ‘society’ (really, the state) must lower the amount of real wealth in that society. It would incentivize the brilliant and hard working to take more leisure time than they otherwise would work to serve others.
If it is understood that a man with material wealth X will have his goods confiscated until he is at material wealth Y (with X>Y), he will stop producing (fulfilling the desires of others) once he reaches Y. The state, still having relative poor to satisfy, will then have to resort to redistributing his goods at his new material wealth Y, bringing him down to Z (with Y>Z). So he only produces until he has Z, and so on and so forth, until the real wealth of all is equally low! Equality!
And this is where I get the sense that your friend has no idea as to how wealth is created in the first place. He seems to believe that food, houses, TVs and gold toilets just exist, and ‘society’ allows the rich to grab more of the stuff than the poor. The rich get rich by producing goods and services for others. The poor get poor by producing goods of low value or nothing at all. This might be due to very unfortunate circumstances, and I personally believe we ought to help those who have been dealt a crummy hand. It is, after all, in my interest to increase the productivity of others. However, merely giving consumer goods to ‘the poor’ is not an effective, long-term remedy. We need to invest in their betterment, and a decentralized effort of voluntary investment will vastly outperform a centralized effort of coercive redistribution.
It could be reasonably assured that, if the state did not take it upon itself to alleviate the condition of the poor through redistribution, there would be a greater effort by individuals and voluntary associations to help the poor, and the poor themselves would be less complacent.
And, of course, without intervention, economic activity would greatly increase, making all of society vastly more wealthy.
Finally, I would ask your friend why he thinks redistribution/egalitarianism is good. At a purely egotistical level, how does it make his life better? Is it because it makes him happier knowing that wealth is distributed equally (or at least more narrow than it is now)? If that is so, he should give up his own wealth until he is satisfied with what he has vs what he wants others to have. If he believes that the great majority of people have a similar desire, even if they do not know it yet (they will be surprised to find that they desired egalitarianism all along), the only legitimate option he has is to persuade others. If he resorts to coercive redistribution of wealth, he is merely substituting his own valuation for those of every other individual in society. Does he feel that, just because he wants something, he is justified in forcing the rest of society to satisfy him?
I don’t have any major comments concerning your response, but I’ve only just read it and am quite sleepy. I can offer my own personal recommendations for reading, however. Bastiat is always a great starter, as the man had a brilliant gift for exploding fallacies. His work might give you a sharper eye, reminding you to question every statement your opponent makes (and thus pinpointing their own fallacies). I’d also suggest looking into Anthony de Jasay, as your last comment (“Do you really think the government acts in the interest of society, or the sum of individuals, or in it’s own?”) is superbly presented in his book The State. That book, along with all of Bastiat’s work, can be found online at econlib.org and mises.org.
I got a new response, but someone else towards my previous response, I’ll call this person, person A:
“The empirical studies on minimum wage show quite the opposite effect as the one you describe. Empirical studies and history also prove false your point that if we let the market be totally free, everyone would be better off. This extreme neocon growth/efficiency fetish is at the root of a lot of our social and economic problems today. Efficiency and growth are not the bottom line. They are measurements of the target (higher quality of life for ALL), not the target itself.”
Another third party also responded, who seems to be fiscally conservative, I’ll call this person, person B:
"A few more questions for the sake of disambiguation:
By saying that efficiency and growth is the measurement of a higher quality of life and not itself a higher quality of life, do you merely mean that they are not the same thing, or do you mean that more efficiency and growth is not a sufficient condition for a higher quality of life?
What social and economic problems are you referring to, and how are they linked to the free market?"
I responded:
“^Present such “empirical studies”. Also, I’m not a neocon whatsoever, nor am I a conservative. Supporting a free market is a liberal position, or at least it used to be,”
