Corona crisis opened up a series of seemingly new questions to humans. Let me mention a couple of them with no pretension to be exhaustive:

• All those liberals promoting the weakening of the state were wrong. We need a stronger state.
• Capitalism is dead, for it was unable to prevent this crisis.
• Compassion between humans is needed in the future; egoism causes the coronavirus crisis.

What subsumes all of them and many others is that humanity needs a new kind of ethics, one that would make us more socially responsible. Social responsibility obviously weakens with the weaker state, capitalism, and egoism.

First, for all those claiming the above statements, what kind of new ethics should be is unquestionable. 

Second, everything has changed now, so we need something new, as if no existing ethic could help us make sense of the present situation.

The capital fallacy of all such approaches is that they avoid questions, for they already know the answer.

Are they?

A strong state solved

I have already opened a question of how a liberal faces a strong state in times of COVID-19 in this post. Corona’s question brought us to solutions already conceived by some of the most significant liberal minds of the 18th Century, among them the Founding Fathers of America. They have already solved this mystery. Should we act according to their profound wisdom, we would have a weak state regarding everything that civil society can do on its own and a strong state regarding internal and external security. As a kind of supra-insurer, the state would answer the question already solved centuries ago.

I will leave the death of capitalism as an answer to an unknown question for now, while it is only an extension of the far more critical issue of egoism. It is namely claimed and generally accepted even among capitalists like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet (and many more) that if only egoism could be expelled from capitalism, we would enter into some kind of socially responsible capitalism devoid of apparent injustices and inequalities.

Corona’s case for egoism

But then the coronavirus came. And what happened, no one so far made sense of, at least as far as I know. Suddenly, it became widely accepted that we can only behave responsibly to others if we isolate ourselves as much as possible. It became clear that we act responsibly first of all if we take care of ourselves. We act socially responsible if we behave egoistically, safeguarding ourselves, our families, and our communities.

The lesson is that we do not help others by helping them. On the contrary, by helping them, we might even infect them. Staying healthy is socially responsible, and egoism is socially responsible.

Capitalism and social responsibility

Let me relate this to the core value of capitalism. In the free exchange of values (and goods), one does not help others but himself. It is an ancillary effect only that others if engaged in a really free exchange, benefit from as well.

Without this initial need to benefit me, no one else could benefit. Even more, if one enters the market with a vision to help others, that one fails both in helping others and himself. It is a mission that defines wider benefits for the community, while according to the standard branding model, the vision should always define benefits for yourself only. Benefits for the wider community evolve only if the company takes care of itself first and if it accomplishes (egoistic) exchange of values/goods.

So, apparent egoism that will help us face COVID-19 and all other viruses is not valid temporarily. It only feels like that because no one but me has dared proclaim egoism. Such an attitude was (and still is) socially unacceptable.

Fortunately, not many read my blog, so no one attacked me for this blog that made an argument for universal egoism already seven years ago.

Homonism

And I am not talking about the foundations of egoism ethics as something that would appear recently. If the Founding Fathers had conceived a state that would handle the Corona crisis much more efficiently if executed properly some 220 years ago, the ethics of egoism would have been deeply written in human nature and culture from the beginning. 

Such a conservative ideology was often criticized in history, with J.J. Rousseau in the 18th Century and social constructivism as the prevailing philosophy of the 20th Century. Yet deep down, we still know (I hope) that one can never change anyone else but himself. Changing oneself makes a better society—a pure expression of universal egoism.

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This post was first written in March 2020. When I rewrote it in October 2024, there was no need to change anything. Pitty.