Re: Working Collectively and Being Selfish
Madam, you'll find a common theme in life that most arguments aren't about which side is correct, but about where the
optimal middle is located. To defend one end of the spectrum or the other is dichotomous thinking, and most times false.
You can get something of an answer if you study failed experiments in Libertarianism and Communism. Libertarian societies that try to make do without any government require that it's citizens act correctly to make the infrastructure of trade possible. Each person is responsible to act morally, and to trade honestly. No government intervention is used. Unfortunately for Libertarians, every time such a society has been tried, it has failed. There is a good deal of interesting reading as to why it fails, and the failures are of great interest to Game Theory economics.
On the other end of the spectrum is Communism. Entirely collectivist. Communism has recieved much worse criticism, not because of the degree of failure, but because of the size of the societies that failed. Socialism is a lesser form of Communism, if you will. A bit toward the middle of the spectrum, but still towards that end.
We've found that the only sustainable way to build a society(that we yet know of) is in the middle between the two extremes. Unfortunately, we have national level politicians who are prone to dichotomous thinking and push things too far. There are some areas of the US, for example, that would be better served becoming more Libertarian, and some areas that would be better served becoming more Socialist. In both cases, too large of a shift would be detrimental, that's why it's important not to suffer from dichotomous thinking and instead weigh everything as a whole.
In a nutshell, the only way working collectively would be sustainable with the way humans behave is for society to be fragmented and only trade within communities of a hundred people or so. As soon as we trade with unfamiliar faces, our morals are less likely to apply.
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