Looking for input here. My society appalls me.

[The happy Objectivist]

Thats a false test. Why should I be possessed of some kind of magical omniscience such that I can calculate the precise optimum balance of individual freedom/obligation. Theres a decently wide gray area where it works, and then all or nothing zones where things go off the rails.

It doesn't take omniscience to know. I told you I know down to the penny and I'm not omniscient. Where does this gray area begin and end? Give me some objective percentage and by objective, I mean facts based.

And actually, you are very wrong. The basic premise that underlies what you say is that man has no right to live for his own sake and every society where it is tried ends in horror. You sound exactly like a Nazi or a communist. That's not hyperbole by the way. That is exactly what every totalitarian dictator says. If you doubt me, go read their speeches and see how many times the word alruism and self-sacrifice appear.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

I dont see how you can just hand-wave away millennia of the reality of bands, tribes, towns, nations. These things are real. And, like so many things, more than just the sum of their constituents.

Of course the individual is real too. My personal disposition favors the individual. But I have eyes to see, so I cannot deny the reality and necessity of the collective as well. Human flourishing withers when we deny one or the other.

And furthermore, It is not society or the collective that help people, it's individual men and women and there is a mechanism to discover exactly how much this help costs. It's called the free market. It's not a situation where you rake off whatever you can from society and then spend your life as a slave to that society.