George Will on Elizabeth Warren's Collectivism

George Will below responds to Elizabeth Warren's recent claims that (modified slightly):

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. If Steve Jobs or Bill Gates created a new company like Apple or Microsoft out there — good for you guys.

But I want to be clear. You moved your iPods, iPhones, and Windows software products to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers for Apple and Microsoft that the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your offices because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. ... You built a computer business and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God bless, keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

Here's George Will:

"Elizabeth Warren is a pyromaniac in a field of straw men: She refutes propositions no one asserts. Everyone knows that all striving occurs in a social context, so all attainments are conditioned by their context. This does not, however, entail a collectivist political agenda.

Such an agenda's premise is that individualism is a chimera, that any individual's achievements (like Steve Jobs) should be considered entirely derivative from society, so the achievements need not be treated as belonging to the individual. Society is entitled to socialize — i.e., conscript — whatever portion it considers its share. It may, as an optional act of political grace, allow the individual (like Steve Jobs) the remainder of what is misleadingly called the individual's possession.

The collectivist agenda is antithetical to America's premise, which is: Government — including such public goods as roads, schools and police — is instituted to facilitate individual striving, aka the pursuit of happiness.

Society — hundreds of millions of people making billions of decisions daily — is a marvel of spontaneous order among individuals in voluntary cooperation. Government facilitates this cooperation with roads, schools, police, etc. — and by getting out of its way. This is a sensible, dynamic, prosperous society's "underlying social contract."