Individuals in Society скачать в хорошем качестве

Individuals in Society

To understand society’s challenges, we must first understand the nature of the individual. This may seem obvious, but we’re constantly told to think about complex problems in a way that focuses on the entire system, often at the expense of the individual people who make up society. Each of us is born with certain talents, abilities, advantages, and skills. Some may be better at learning in a different way than others. Some may run faster, and some may sing better. As we grow, we develop different skills and talents that allow us to shape the world around us in our own unique ways. It is these differences between us that have allowed for the society that we know to develop. Some of those differences we did not choose. We’re born into different families, into different nations, into different time periods, and into different circumstances. Some were born with more opportunities than others. You may be shorter or taller than a sibling. Your family may be richer or poorer than a friend. An American is born in a nation with greater material abundance than a child born in Nigeria. There are many loud voices, particularly in the West today, that view this inequality as the source of our problems. You might have been told to check your privilege and to view any advantages you have as a source of deeper systemic injustice. Of course, this is absurd. Inequality is a natural part of life. Imagine the horrors required to, for example, make everyone equally tall. In his short story, Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut depicts such an egalitarian society at its natural conclusion. A dystopian future where an authoritarian regime horrifically suppresses natural talent to achieve a repulsive egalitarian ideal. The desire for economic equality would be similarly destructive. History has shown that attempts to redistribute wealth equally have resulted in outcomes just as horrific as those described in Vonnegut’s story. Why? Because it prioritizes a larger societal goal, equality, at the expense of individual motivations and behavior. In doing so, it attempts to replace the complex network of human cooperation with the overly simplistic stated goal, equality. Any attempt to analyze economic outcomes that begins by looking at the wealth society has already created, such as debates about how to distribute that wealth equally, needs to pay attention to what created that wealth in the first place. It replaces the judgments and motivations of individuals in favor of those in power. In our next video, we’ll examine how individual action creates the complex networks necessary for a wealthier society. ______________________________________ For more animated content, check out https://Mises.org/Begin