Lifestyle Collectivism

“Collectivism, by common definition: ‘The principles or system of ownership and control of the means of production and distribution by the people collectively, usually under the supervision of a government.’ The ‘means of production’ include all wealth. Wealth is anything that exchanges for a price.” -Michael S. Rozeff, “Who Decides Who Lives and Who Dies?" (http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff248.html)

Collectivism is a notion that you, a real person, owe to a metaphysical nonentity the satisfaction of reaping the benefits of your productive use of your property. That is to say: you, by existing, owe a debt to a group. You can never pay this debt. You must always live your life for the group: society, the state, the community.

Coercion is the apparently valid threat of initiated aggression to obtain compliance from you in favor of: somebody else, a group of people, or a metaphysical nonentity. “Thug”, “mob”, or “community” are examples of words used to describe the intended beneficiaries of such compliance.

A characteristic of collectivism is the should-to-shall progress of theory to action. For example, if a collectivist believes that the community should live healthily, he then determines that you shall live according to his ideas of ‘healthy’ living practices through coercion. If he believes that society should be governed for the benefit of a given race, he demands preferential treatment by you that complements his goal. He believes that the common good should be paramount, so you shall work toward that end. He criminalizes your behavior in order to bring about his fantasy of Utopia.

Different collectivists have divergent utopian fantasies that all feature “perfect living in a perfect world.” Your rights do not matter if the free exercise thereof conflicts with the collectivists’ agenda of imposing their “perfect” vision on other people and on you.

When justifying actions that they want to commit, collectivists claim to act on the behalf of such nonentities as, “the community”, or “the people”, or “society”. These robbers embrace “collective rights”.

A collective rights fallacy is that merely because several individuals have joined together as a group, that its members are entitled to special considerations, by virtue of their memberships. The only thing they have going for them, aside from your sanction, is coercion to bring about compliance with their directives.

Special considerations include efforts to protect lifestyles through coercion.

Your lifestyle is your pattern of consumption as a means of self-expression. Lifestyles are lived, or practiced. For example, if you consume scenery, land, the sights, smells, and sounds of farm animals, the scent of sagebrush, and the sounds of crickets for your own pleasure, you could be living a rural lifestyle. Or you if consume land, architectural designs, building materials, and labor for your own emotional needs, you might be living a custom home lifestyle.

Your lifestyle is your pursuit for happiness through consumption. Your happiness is subjective. It is unique to you and can only be experienced by you. Since happiness is unique to each of us, you cannot mandate a guarantee of satisfaction for anyone.

To justify support of a lifestyle through coercion, proponents argue that consumption choices by some of the residents are in fact a common good.

There is no common good derived from lifestyle choice imposed through law.

In a just society, only those actions that have material impacts on the exercise of your rights are subject to regulation. There, if there is no harm, there is no foul.

In the real world, actions that have no material impact are unjustly subject to regulation. Here, harm or not, there can be a foul. This does not have to be.