On balance, Collectivism is preferable to Individualism

Thanks for the debate, Lannan. I am thoroughly perplexed by Con's organization of his rebuttal round, as he has completely changed up the structure of my argument, with random points being placed under the wrong contentions, all of the headers' names being different, and parts of his counter-rebuttals being mixed in with his rebuttals. I will attempt to sift through it all and address the relevant points he brings up. .. 1. Collectivism and Slavery This is simply based in a misunderstanding of collectivism's utilitarian ethical justification. Utilitarian calculations aren't based on just the *number* of people benefited by an action; they also take into account the societal effects of considering the action generally permissible (i. e. most people would not want to live in a society in which they can legally be enslaved), as well as the disparity in the amounts of utility gained/lost by the involved persons (i. e. the slaves gain more happiness from being allowed to be free than the 'masters' do from the economic benefits of slavery). Thus, Con's claim that collectivism justifies slavery is patently false. 2. "Motivation" This point wholly relies on conflating collectivism with communism. Communism is a failed attempt at implementing one person's (false) view of what is best for the collective. In reality, collectivism does allow for a productive capitalistic society-- it simply obligates individuals to ensure that they make minimal sacrifices for the sake of the collective's well-being when necessary. Thus, all of Con's attempts to dismiss collectivism on the basis that communist societies have failed are irrelevant and should be dismissed. And besides that, Con ignores the fact that a hypothetical system which actually allows for all of people's needs to be fulfilled without hard work wouldn't necessarily bad; rather, it would be considered a basis for utopia. 3. Humans need Communities Firstly, none of my arguments rely on the premise that human beings need communities; both of my practical arguments were focused on showing that collectivism benefits individuals more than individualism does. And even if my argument *was* based on such a premise, it wouldn't really be unwarranted because humans *are* social animals-- they have evolved to be live in collectivist communities (i. e. families, clans, tribes, etc), thriving on such lifestyles for eons before individualism took root in human societies. ". .. humans are not just biological creatures. We are also social creatures, the most social on earth. The ways we deal with each other, from personal to international relationships, can have as much an influence on our behavior as our instinctive reactions. "(. http://public.wsu.edu...) 4. Individualism benefits Society Con consistently states that the goal of individualism is to "better society" through the success of individuals. However, this misconstrues the definition of individualism, and is quite contradictory to the rest of his case. The definition of individualism clearly states that the *interests of the individuals* are ethically paramount; there is no mention anywhere of 'bettering society'-- that addendum is simply a post-hoc rationalization of individualistic beliefs to make them more consistent with our ethical intuitions. Moreover, it goes against Con's own argument from psychological egoism-- if all humans are selfish, then their only motivation for achieving success is self-interest, rather than some hidden desire to "better society". 5. Psychological Egoism Interestingly enough, in attempting to defend his theory that all humans are selfish, Con inadvertently concedes that collectivism would lead to a more prosperous society, stating that "IF there was a true collectivist society then it would be a grassroots deomocracy". That aside, his defense is inadequate. The reason why truly collectivist societies don't seem to exist in the modern world is not because humans are innately selfish, but rather because of how deeply individualism has already taken root with its corruption of leaders and empowerment of the wealthy. I showed in my opening argument why the default state of human kind is collectivist; given that and the counter-examples I presented last round, it is implausible that humans are innately selfish. As for Con's Freudian argument abut how all altruistic human acts could be motivated by a desire to pass on genes, I already addressed it last round-- all such hypotheses are speculative at best, and laughable at worst. Asserting that something *could* be true does not demonstrate that it *is* true. CONCLUSION I have offered three cases in favor of the resolution: 1) Collectivism increases the chances of individualistic success, so even if one favors individualism, they are automatically favoring collectivism as being the more rational position. 2) Individualism usually produces negative societal conditions which only serve to harm individual interests in the long run, thus rendering it to be a self-contradictory and inherently irrational philosophy. 3) Collectivism has a far superior ethical justification to Individualism, with the latter only being supported by is/ought fallacies and the subjectivity of human perception. Any one of these cases is capable of affirming the resolution on its own, yet Con has not given a compelling rebuttal to even *one* of them, instead completely missing the mark with every one of his points due to misunderstandings of what exactly collectivism entails. Collectivism has been thoroughly demonstrated to be a preferable philosophy to Individualism; the resolution is fully affirmed.