I think the ideal is somewhere in the middle between individual self-interest and collective betterment.

It's a noble ideal you have about an individual suffering for the collective good but I ask you: Isn't that a matter of personal principles? For example, say I find that with some sacrifice I can donate $200 a month to a local battered women shelter. Does that make it right for me to strive for legislation that forces everyone to do the same? That's like making women fitting a certain actuarial table to either have an abortion while others must carry to full term.

But.back to my main point. Let me make a further analogy: Suppose the Feds take up the crusade for abused women. They advocate a new abused women tax of $200 a month. A new Fed agency will be setup - the Abused Women Adminstration. It will be funded from general revenues as most programs must be but it'll only cost $190 of the tax. The actual victims will receive about $10 a month of care. But, the Blue Party, who is sponsoring this, refuses to acknowledge the expense and claims that the women will get $200. Since the Blue Party is in the majority they ram it through and now I cannot give $200 to a cause I believe in because the government is taking that mney and screwing it up.

Make sense?

You used the word "suffer". Shouldn't sacrifices be voluntary? If not,isn't it tyranny?


>>At the core, I hold the sanctity of the individual as an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others. This means that men deal with each by free, voluntary exchange for mutual benefit. The greatest and most important thing individuals can (and ought to) do is pursue their own rational self-interest and their own happiness. Each individual's life is an absolute.
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>>Now, everyone might say (with a level of sincerity) that they agree with these ideas
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>Or we might say that we disagree with those ideas. The greatest and most important thing individuals can (and ought to) do is strive to make the world a better place for all, even if their own self-interest suffers for it.
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>Tamar