Why is fallacy of composition a problem in econ

Let there be no mistake about this: if economics is involved, someone pays! An important note here regards government expenditures.

The good economist understands that government, by its very nature, cannot give except what it first takes. Some actions seem beneficial in the short run but produce disaster in the long run: drinking excessively, driving fast, spending blindly, and printing money, to name a few. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences.

Politicians seeking to win the next election frequently support policies which generate short- run benefits at the expense of future costs.

It is a shame that they sometimes carry the endorsement of economists who should know better. The good economist does not suffer from tunnel vision or shortsightedness.

The time span he considers is long and elastic, not short and fixed. Two hundred years after Adam Smith, some economists still have not learned to apply basic principles of human nature.

Humans are social beings who progress if they cooperate with one another. Cooperation implies a climate of freedom for each individual human being to peacefully pursue his own self- interest without fear of reprisal. Put a human in a zoo or in a strait jacket and his creative ener gies dissipate. Take a look around the world today and you see the point I am driving at. One would think, with such overwhelming evidence against the record of coercion, that coercion would have few adherents.

Yet there are many economists here and abroad who cry for nationalization of industry, wage and price controls, confiscatory taxation, and even outright abolition of private property. One prominent former U. Well, there you have it—not the final answer to confusion in economics, but at least a start. I for one am convinced that good economics is more than possible.

It is imperative, and achieving it begins with the knowledge of what bad economics is all about. Lawrence W. He is author of the book, Was Jesus a Socialist? His website is www. Please, enable JavaScript and reload the page to enjoy our modern features. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4. Please do not edit the piece, ensure that you attribute the author and mention that this article was originally published on FEE.

Latest Stories. The fallacy of collective terms. Because the Fallacy of Composition is an informal fallacy, you have to look at the content rather than the structure of the argument. When you examine the content, you will find something special about the characteristics being applied.

A characteristic can be transferred from the parts to the whole when the existence of that characteristic in the parts is what will cause it to be true of the whole. In 4, the penny itself has mass because the constituent atoms have mass. In 5 the car itself is entirely white because the parts are entirely white. This is an unstated premise in the argument and depends upon our prior knowledge about the world.

We know, for example, that while car parts might be lightweight, getting a whole lot together will likely create something that weighs a lot - and weighs too much to carry easily. A car cannot be made light and easy to carry just by having parts which are, individually, themselves light and easy to carry. Similarly, a penny cannot be made invisible just because its atoms are not visible to us. When someone offers an argument like the above, and you are skeptical that it is valid, you need to look very closely at the content of both the premises and the conclusion.

Here are some examples that are a little less obvious than the first two above, but which are just as fallacious:. Because each member of this baseball team is the best in the league for their position, then the team itself must also be the best in the league. Because cars create less pollution than buses, cars must be less of a pollution problem than buses. With a laissez-faire capitalist economic system, each member of society must act in a way that will maximize his or her own economic interests.

Thus, society as a whole will achieve the maximum economic advantages. These examples help demonstrate the distinction between formal and informal fallacies. The error isn't recognizable simply by looking at the structure of the arguments being made. Instead, you have to look at the content of the claims. When you do that, you can see that the premises are insufficient to demonstrate the truth of the conclusions. Atheists debating science and religion will frequently encounter variations on this fallacy:.

Because everything in the universe is caused, then the universe itself must also be caused. Since no part of it lasts forever, then it is only reasonable that all its parts put together were not there forever either. Even famous philosophers have committed the Fallacy of Composition. Here is an example from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics :. Or as eye, hand, foot, and in general each of the parts evidently has a function, may one lay it down that man similarly has a function apart from all these?

Here it is argued that, just because the parts organs of a person have a "higher function," that, therefore, the whole a person also has some "higher function. Ziesemer, Thomas, Ziesemer, T. Trofimov, Ivan D. Blecker, Mamoon, Dawood, Michael A. Kouparitsas, Shafaeddin, S. Dhanya V, Peter Walkenhorst, Dhanya, Williamson, Robert A.

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