Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

Only on paper and in video games. In real life we are all important.

So you are saying the individual is the most important @RedDeerGuy1 ?

@rojo No. All are important equally. I belive you can’t just cross people off the list for help to save money. Even if they are a minority. Goes for emergencies too. You can’t choose who lives and who dies in a food shortage. Everyone eats even if their isn’t enough to go around.

I think it does.

Unless you are in with the ultra rich,then your needs outweigh the many because the wealthy are so hard done by.

Only in theory. Otherwise we bump once again into the billionaire/morality wall.

I don’t think it’s that simple.

Just to start… what needs are we talking about here? Not all needs are necessarily equal. And is there really not any more options than “this need vs. this other need,” or are we not being creative enough in our solutions? (And then there is more to consider from there.)

I think it depends on what the conflict is. If there is a situation where a few people can die to save hundreds or thousands, it would hold true. Even if I were one of the few. But not all “need” is the same.

It depends. Like everything else in life, it always depends on context.

In a lifeboat situation – which the planet Earth is not, despite attempts to portray it as such – then, yes: everyone gets relatively equal rations (some can get more if they’re actually rowing the boat, standing watches, fishing, etc. – and that gets back closer to “normal life”, too).

But in the world that most of us inhabit every day where we aren’t actually starving, dying of thirst or about to be eaten by hungry tigers, etc., then “you get what you exchange for”. The world is a bottomless pit of need, and if that were the only criterion for “getting what you get – because you ‘need it’ ”, then who would ever work? Why should they? Even if they do work, why should they distinguish themselves? Why should they innovate, take risk, employ others in “regular wages” work, etc? If it’s all going to be earned to satisfy someone else’s need, then there’s no point to working any harder than anyone else, and we would soon achieve a common – but shared equally! – poverty.

No, thank you.

If needs of many are such that they can wait I’ll give importance to needs of those few which are to be fulfilled right away. If that’s not the case then what you’re saying will hold true.

That saying is the part I find most annoying about Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan… wait, is it? Hmm… yeah, I think it is.

It’s the kind of truism that it is foolish to decide is true without a lot more context than it contains, because it’s really meaningless without context. And everyone in the cast of that film ought to be smart enough to figure that out rather than repeating it with a tone of wonder and pausing.

Yes, generally speaking. Would you forsake all for the benefit of a few? It isn’t logical.

Depends entirely on the context

Yes, I believe so. Ride or Die. Sometimes you can’t cheat fate, you have to do what is needed to be done. Now personally, I can’t…I refuse to save my own ass while throwing others under the bus.

NO, and the idea that they do has underlined many governments that murdered millions of their own people. Stalin used to send workers to his concentration camps (gulags) on the charge that—- unbelilevable but true !!- they were criticizing the Workers Paradise !!

Consider what the great Catholic anti-Nazi wrote:

Von Hildebrand recounts many stories of academic conferences with Franciscan priests and philosophy professors who “overemphasized the notion of community at the expense of the individual.” Because they were “infected by this collectivistic tendency,” they advocated ideas that deny the fundamental dignity of the human person. These ideas paved the philosophic path for collectivism and, in turn, a justification of anti-Semitism. The small concessions became large compromises. The philosophical rhetoric became physical reality. Eventually, the actions that flowed from the collectivism espoused at these conferences justified sending truckloads of Jews to the gas chambers. It all began with an idea, for which many lived and millions died.

It’s rather obvious that the concept of equality is of course a myth in fact. The needs of the many are not all that must succumb to the needs of the few. More often than not, it turns out those needs of the many must per force be sacrificed to the mere desires of the few. Who “needs” 2 Ferraris? The great question regarding government is in its duty to resist the imbalance.