do you feel that goals are best accomplished individually or in a group individualism and collectivism aren't ideologies themselves but more categories of principles that modern ideologies are structured around let's dive in when we talk about individualism we typically refer to principles and values that place the freedom of the individual ahead of that of the group collectivism on the flip side looks at taking care of the whole community over the needs of any one individual member of that community so when we look at individualism we look at principles that value and protect the freedom of the individual typically individualist principles will look at limited government involvement more closely aligned to the views of philosopher john locke within individualism we see principles such as for example economic freedom the idea that if you make money you should be able to do whatever you want with it and the goal is to make a profit one of the basic tenets of the capitalist economic system tied to that another important characteristic of individualism is competition where it's the idea that individuals are going to compete for business and that might drive prices down make the quality of goods better not because somebody's saying they should but because these individuals want to make a profit competing with others and theoretically at the end of the day everybody wins because through competition it means goods will be cheaper goods will be better and business owners make a profit also important to individualism is the idea of private property where the belief is that if you own your own property your own stuff you can do whatever you want with it if your private property refers to land well you can run whatever business you might want on that land private property also means the ownership of other things like for example the motivation to want to own a nice fancy car right that is one of the things that drives an individualist world also important therefore is self-interest the idea that in an individualist society people do things that are going to better themselves but in order to better yourselves you need to have positive interactions with others and so again it's this idea that through self-interest everybody actually ends up winning and to do this in an individualistic society what's important is the protection of rights and freedoms the freedom to do whatever you want in your self-interest and to practice whatever religion you want say whatever you want through freedom of speech and so on but then what's most important is the idea of the rule of law this idea that the law is what governs society that no matter who the leader is no matter who has more money than anybody else there has to be that potential to get to the top and a society can only achieve that to individualist is through this rule of law that the law applies to everybody equally right so at the end of the day individualists believe that people are generally good and therefore if are allowed the utmost freedom that's how society is going to be best off and that's how society is going to prosper collectivism on the other hand has values that are meant to protect the security of the collective or of society as a whole it's this belief that individualism doesn't quite have all of the answers that are necessary to make society a peaceful happy and prosperous place to live generally what this means is that government needs to get involved a little bit more to ensure the common good the first important value of collectivism is economic equality this idea that maybe there shouldn't be a massive gap between the wealthy and poor in society and that things should be a little bit more equal at the extreme level this might mean everybody having more or less the same amount of wealth in society but more commonly we see this through policies such as progressive taxation this idea that the wealthy in society pay a slightly higher percentage in taxes than the poor in order to maybe balance things out in society and be able to pay for the things that need to be paid for by the government what are these things that the government pays for in a collectivist society well one example is public property so things like libraries things like schools that are meant to be equally accessible by all are taken care of by the government and well that costs money right and so this money comes from those slightly higher taxes but it's this idea that everybody in society should have access to these things regardless of their means because overall in terms of schools for example a more educated society in general is a happier more prosperous society another important value of collectivism is cooperation right in contrast to the competition we saw in individualism cooperation is valued by collectivists because collectivists often believe that unchecked competition leads to greed leads to jealousy and these are maybe some of the downfalls of a society and so instead of competing by cooperating by working together that's how the best end goals can be achieved another value of collectivism is this idea of the adherence to collective norms what this means is that people in a society are going to go along with what society deems necessary or important in order to be a functioning member of that society one recent example and i'm filming this in the middle of the covet 19 pandemic is the wearing of masks in a lot of places masks have become mandatory by government law and others they haven't but a lot of people still choose to do that in order to take care of the group take care of the collective interest and not pass on the virus right and that leads to the next characteristic of collectivism and that's collective interest collectivists believe in the importance of doing things that maybe aren't super important for yourself but are important for the benefit of society as a whole and we can look at wearing masks here again this idea that we wear masks not necessarily to protect ourselves from catching the virus but the idea that we might be able to pass it on to others and so we do it as a preventative measure to take care of our fellow members of society looking at things in an even bigger picture we can look at the idea of public education for example where we've deemed it pretty important for people to be as educated as possible and basically every country around the world and so it's in the collective interest to provide that public education to our young people finally a value of collectivism is this idea of collective responsibility which means that often the entire group is targeted to change the behavior of even some parts of that group so for example underage drinking might be an example where it's not just the kids who are committing the underage drinking that are being targeted by uh underage drinking campaign but a government might decide to engage all of society in trying to curb underage drinking what's important to remember here is that in practice the world isn't black and white there's no such thing as a fully individualist ideology or a fully collectivist ideology what we see in most of our ideologies that govern the world today is that they draw from both individualism and collectivism but in different amounts right and even the most individualistic countries in the world will draw some elements of collectivism to ensure a smoothly running society so for example even the united states which we see as being one of the more individualistic societies they still have public education they still have things like old age security and so on because the people of the united states have deemed those to be important and in a lot of ways these collectivist principles actually aim to strengthen the individualism of different countries where for example even a very collectivist principle like universal healthcare actually aims to strengthen the capitalist system because if people are able to have strong access to health care well that means they can get healthier quicker which means they can get back to working quicker right same goes for something like employment insurance we pay a little bit more in taxes in order to have employment insurance but when we lose our job it means we have the ability and the time because we get some help from the government through employment insurance we have some time to be able to look for a job that best fits our skill set and we're able to more productively contribute to society that way right so even though capitalism is definitely more aligned with individualist principles these collectivist elements actually aim to strengthen it in a lot of ways scandinavian countries for example are typically associated with the more collectivist side of things but at the end of the day the economic system that still governs them is capitalism which is more on the individualistic side but they maybe draw more from collectivism than other places countries like the united states again for example might lean a little bit more individualistic but still definitely draw on collectivist principles as well and so just about every country around the world that we see is going to have some balance of both what do you think where does the best balance of individualism and collectivism lie lots of different answers out there and we maybe haven't quite found the perfect one just yet and so this debate will definitely continue on as we go thank you again for watching don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss anything and we will see you again next time