The Group Trap
by Harry Browne
chapter 6: The Group Trap
excerpts from _How_I_Found_Freedom_in_an_Unfree_World_
copyright 1973 by the author, Harry Browne
published by Avon Books
The Group Trap is the belief that you can accomplish more by
sharing responsibilities, efforts, and rewards with others than you
can by acting on your own.
It's an easy trap to fall into. It's a common expression that "in
union there is strength." Just the opposite is true, however. You
achieve more for yourself when your rewards are dependant upon your
own efforts than upon the efforts of other people.
When you join a group effort to achieve freedom, you waste
precious resources on an endeavor that has very little chance of
success. In the same way, group efforts are common in businesses,
marriages, and even friendships, and there too the Group Trap can
cause subtle problems.
Groups are not living entities. They don't think or act; _only_
_individuals_do_. And yet, any group effort is based upon the
assumption of a _group_purpose_ that overrides the individual
differences of its members. It's expected that the group will act
as a single unit with a unified purpose.
Only individuals think -- and each one thinks differently. Their
interests and desires may overlap, but each person will continue to
define his own objectives and have his own opinion concerning the
best way to achieve those objectives.
Perhaps each person entering a group unconsciously assumes that it
will act in unison for _his_ objectives and by _his_ methods. But
every other participant probably has a similar assumption about _his_
ideas.
What they get instead will inevitably be a compromise. The
individual's goals and his concept of the best methods will be
automatically compromised _before_ anything happens to further his
objectives.
It also means a certain amount of time and effort will have to
be spent to _arrange_ the compromise -- again, before anything
concrete is done to further his objectives.
On the other hand, the individual who acts alone doesn't have to
alter his objectives. He can employ the means he considers best
suited to the objective, and he doesn't have to waste time and effort
trying to arrange a compromise with partners.
INCENTIVE
Another problem is encountered in group endeavors. When the
efforts and rewards are shared, it becomes apparent that the individ-
ual's own efforts will have a less significant effect upon his
ultimate reward than if he were acting alone.
Suppose that the group consists of two people -- a business
partnership, for instance. If the two partners have agreed to work
equally hard and share the rewards 50-50, the significance of each
person's efforts has been cut by 50 percent. Whatever value the
individual provides to the group, he'll only receive half of its
reward.
Of course, he expects to get half the value added by the other
person, too; but he doesn't control the other person's effort. He
controls only his own effort. So what _he_ controls will produce only
a half reward.
The situation is worse if the group is larger. If one hundred
people are engaged in a crusade to bring about a social change of some
kind, each individual's effort adds only one percent to the whole.
It's doubtful that any such endeavor is won or lost by an additional
one percent of effort. Consequently, the individual's participation
becomes _irrelevant_ to the outcome (contrary to "get out and vote"
campaigns).
Whether he goes out to work hard or stays home in bed, the outcome
will be the same. In such a situation, there's a strong incentive to
stay in bed. The popular answer to such reasoning is "Yes, but what
if everyone thought that way?" But he isn't everyone; he's only _him_.
He isn't deciding for everyone, he's merely evaluating the signifi-
cance of his own actions -- and when he works in a group, his actions
don't contribute much.
Sometimes this realization will cause an individual to drop out of
a group entirely. More often it will simply cause him to work _less_
-- to make small decisions here and there in favor of relaxing as
opposed to overdoing it.
If the arrangement were such that everything he did had a direct
bearing on his own rewards, he would have a continual incentive to
extend his efforts. He'd be encouraged to work harder than he would
have worked under the group arrangement.
The more directly individual rewards are tied to individual
achievements, the greater incentive there is to increase one's
individual effort.
JOINT EFFORTS
Joint efforts are possible. In fact, they're necessary to
increase standards of living. You can't produce your own automobile
from scratch -- nor can you really produce much of anything without
relying upon the efforts of others. You need tools, materials, and
information; and you can't produce all those things yourself.
This problem is solved by what is called the specialization of
labor. When some individuals spend all their working time
producing a single product, while others specialize in producing other
products, the result is greater production of all products. The
specialization of labor has made it possible for many more things to be
available to everyone. {Note from Rick: available to everyone who
can afford them. The specialization of labor is also one factor that
makes jobs boring and dehumanizing.}
It's necessary to exchange with others to acquire whatever you
need along the way, but you don't have to enter into sharing agree-
ments of the kind described earlier. It's more efficient to _separate_
responsibilities and rewards, not share them.
The Group Trap is the assumption that greater strength can be
achieved by sharing. Just the opposite happens: Individual objectives
are watered down, time and effort are wasted in arranging compromises,
and individual incentive is reduced. The individual becomes much less
flexible and mobile, because he must deal with others before getting
on with the task at hand. As Thoreau said, "The man who goes alone
can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that
other is ready."
VARIATIONS
There are numerous variations of the Group Trap.
A typical example is the concept of _democracy_. If the majority
vote of the group is binding upon all, the individual forfeits his
ability to make decisions for himself.
Politicians love to declare that the "people have chosen for
themselves at the polls." But the "people" don't have a mind; only
individuals do. Those who have voted against the winner are now under
the jurisdiction of someone who doesn't represent them.
Even the concept of the "majority" is often misleading. In any
election, many people vote against the winner, many others abstain
from voting because they realize their individual votes are irrelevant
to the outcome, and others aren't even allowed to vote (but are bound
by the outcome). Those who voted for the winner are usually a minority
-- and even they may have voted only for the least unpleasant
alternative.
Another variation of the Group Trap is the assumption that you're
responsible for people who are starving in other parts of the world.
You could work for the rest of your life to change that -- but your
effort would never make a noticeable dent in the problem.
You're in the Group Trap, too, any time you assume that someone
can speak on behalf of anyone but himself. When someone tells you
that you owe something to your country, to what is he referring? Your
"country" consists of more than 200 million individuals with different
attitudes, desires, activities, and principles. Do you owe it to
every one of them to do as each of them wants you to do? What you "owe
to your country" is really what someone wants you to do to please
_him_, but for which he's unwilling to make it worth your while.
In the same way, no one can speak on behalf of all Americans,
Negroes, Mexicans, women, or students. The attempt to do so is an
attempt to create pressure in favor of what the _speaker_ wants.
Another comment on using organization(s) to achieve
libertarian ends (Alfredo Bonanno in _From_Riot_to_Insurrection_):
Anarchists have also had illusions... Even in recent times there
has been much enthusiasm for the CNT's* rise from the ashes, partic-
ularly from those who seem to be the most radical entrepeneurs of the
new roads of reformist anarchism today.
...For a long time the anarchist movement has acted like an
organization of synthesis, that is, like a political party. Not the
whole of the anarchist movement, but certainly its organized forms.
Let us take the Italian FAI** for example. To this day it is an
organization of sythesis. It is based on a platform, its periodic
conventions are the central focus for its activity, and it looks to
reality outside from the point of view of a "connecting" center,
i.e. it sees itself as the synthesis between the reality outside the
movement and that within the specific anarchist movement.
...Well, this mentality has faded. Not only among younger com-
rades who want an open and informal relationship with the movement,
but, more important, it has faded in social reality itself. If
industrial conditions of production made the syndicalist struggle
reasonable, as it did the marxist methods and those of the libertarian
organizations of synthesis, today, in a post-industrial perspective,
in a reality that has changed profoundly, the only possible strategy
for anarchists is an informal one.
...The party of Marxism is dead. That of the anarchists too. What
is dead is the static anarchism of the traditional organizations,
based on demanding better conditions, and having quantitative goals.
* CNT = Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo(Spanish anarcho-syndicalist political party)
** FAI = Federazione Anarchica Italiana
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