Abstract
Capitalism is a system of selfish individualism. That is why it is so successful. Individualism is the idea that individuals should decide for themselves what they will do, including what they will produce and consume. Because an individual’s preferences both cause their actions and measure the value of their outcomes, individualism naturally promotes personal welfare. Understood as a tendency to give more weight to our own welfare than to others’, selfishness is an unavoidable—and welcome—feature of human life. Individualism protects each of us against the selfishness of our fellow citizens, including the authorities.
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Notes
- 1.
Speech in Halifax, 25 May 2017, quoted in the Financial Times (25 May 2018).
- 2.
When I say, ‘it is founded on …’, I do not mean that everyone who believes the principle has derived it from the more fundamental individualist theses I am about to explain. In other words, I do not mean that belief in it is founded on these theses. I mean to explain why the principle is correct, not why people believe it.
- 3.
Matthew d’Ancona. ‘The best leaving present Theresa May can give us is a route to stability’. Evening Standard, 9 June 2017.
- 4.
See Whyte (2013, ch. 4) where I develop this argument.
- 5.
Philosophers associate preference utilitarianism with the Australian philosopher Peter Singer (see, for example, his 1993 study). This is peculiar, even though Singer is indeed a preference utilitarian. It is peculiar because preference utilitarianism is a foundational assumption of welfare economics. Singer’s allegedly controversial position would strike most welfare economists as little more than obvious.
- 6.
Freedom of action in this sense has no connection with the doctrine of ‘free will’, the idea that humans are not mere automata and may properly be held responsible for their actions. In this ‘free will’ sense, I act freely when I hand over $100 to a man who is holding a gun to my head. I could, after all, choose to instead be shot in the head. People with free will can still be coerced. And, even if free will is an illusion, as some argue, because all our actions have causes that ultimately lie outside of us, we can still distinguish between coercive and non-coercive influences of other people—the former involving threats of costs and the latter promises of benefits.
- 7.
This is the standard ‘public good’ argument for tax funding the supply of law and order. The idea that law and order is non-excludable and wouldn’t be adequately supplied unless tax-funded is disputed by anarcho-capitalists, such as David Friedman (1973). I have some sympathy with Friedman’s arguments but cannot explore them here.
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Whyte, J. (2019). In Praise of Selfish Individualism. In: Kennedy, A., Panton, J. (eds) From Self to Selfie. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19194-8_3
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