If Everybody X then Nobody X

     There’s a bad argument out there, and it needs to be stopped. And I’m the guy who has to stop it. We’ll call this argument the “if everybody gets an A, then nobody gets an A” argument. For short, I guess we can call it the "if everybody then nobody" argument. 

     You see the "if everybody then nobody" argument in many different places. You'll see it in economics:

     “Giving everybody a millions dollars is a really bad idea. It will just cause inflation and make a million dollars worth less than what a millions dollars is worth now. In the end, if everybody is a millionaire, nobody is a millionaire.”

     This seems pretty plausible at first, doesn’t it? You also find this being used in school settings as an argument against grade inflation. “I can’t give everybody in this class an A. If everybody gets an A, then an A isn’t worth anything. In the end, if everybody gets an A, then nobody gets an A.”

     Recently, I heard the "if everybody then nobody" argument come up in a conversation about racism. “Some people claim that everyone is racist, but that’s ridiculous. If everybody is racist, then nobody is racist.” I'm going to let this one alone for a bit.

     And most recently of all, I saw a clip from the October 3rd debate between Lindsey Graham and Jaime Harrison. In that debate, Graham seemed to me to be making an "if everybody then nobody" argument at one point. I'll give an extended quote for context:

"I want to solve problems. I want to save social security. When it’s talking about working with the other side, it’s not just talk with me, and I’ve got the political scars to prove it, but I want you to understand that your grandparent’s Democratic Party is no longer around. The people running the Democratic Party today are nuts. They want to give illegal immigrants free healthcare and have open borders. That’s not solving our immigration problem. They want socialized medicine. Medicare for all means Medicare for nobody. They want to take your healthcare away at the work site. They want to do it electoral college. They want to expand the Supreme Court beyond nine justices to pack it with liberals. There’s a lot at stake here." 

(The transcript for the debate can be found here. Comments begin at 51:35. The italics are mine for emphasis.)

     At first blush, you might agree with the "if everybody then nobody" argument. It seems to make intuitive sense. Can’t give everyone an A. Can’t give everyone a million dollars. It also functions a lot like other moral maxims you may have heard such as “Those who try to please everybody end up pleasing nobody.” It seems to ring true. It has an air of wisdom. 

     But just a few counter examples show how incredibly invalid this argument is. 

• If everybody has a refrigerator, then nobody has a refrigerator.
• If everybody is a human being, then nobody is a human being. (Existentialists might actually agree with this, but most of us would not.)
• If everybody has problems then nobody has problems.
• If everybody has a brain then nobody has a brain.
• If everybody thinks for themselves then nobody thinks for themselves.  

     Clearly, there’s something wrong here. On a moral level, we would certainly hope that everybody having the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness doesn’t mean that nobody has the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. On a metaphysical level, we don't want to say that everybody having a human nature means nobody has a human nature. Something is clearly amiss.

     I think the reality is, this argument is used for its rhetorical force and not for its substance. Intuitively, we think economically. In the world of economics, as the quantity of a product increases, its price decreases. The more people have it, the cheaper it is.

• The more A's get handed out in class, the less an A makes you stand out.
• The more you print money to give everyone their millions, the less those millions are worth.
• The more a label, like racist, applies to everybody, the less the label itself can help us make distinctions. 
• The more people get Medicare, the less quality healthcare Medicare will be able to provide.

     This is, perhaps, what people have in mind. But here, you tread on dangerous grounds. It is not the case that the more people have microwaves the less the microwaves heat. Nor is it the case that the more people have food the less they'll be able to eat. In other words, when it comes to these products, the price might fall, but their value does not. Consider the following;

• A class might be an advanced placement class with talented, hard working students. Suppose everybody gets an A because they deserved it. The A will stand out less, true. It will be devalued in that regard; but the quality of the education remains high, because the quality the A signifies, namely the level of understanding the material, remains high.
• Some labels, like "matter" or "energy", remain helpful on a conceptual level, even if they are universal. Labels like "sinner" have been applied universally, without diminution of the concept of sinners. It is not the case that a label becomes meaningless when it is universally applied. That would render attempts at describing universal human experiences meaningless.

     My point here is that, while the "if everybody then nobody" argument might point to an intuition, it is not an intuition you can trust at face value. There are plenty of concepts that can be universally applied, and there are plenty of products that can be universally brought and sold, like flour or shoes. As concepts go, it may be the case that not everybody is racist, but it is not because "if everybody is racist then nobody is racist." And it may be the case that Medicare for all is a bad idea, but it will not be because "Medicare for all means Medicare for nobody."

     Is it even conceptually correct to say if everybody is a millionaire than nobody is a millionaire? Would we say that if everybody is a one-dollar-aire then nobody is a one-dollar-aire? There may be quantitative differences between these two, but not conceptual differences. 

     My personal take: eliminate this argument from your arsenal. If you want to say "if everybody x then nobody x" you'll need to make that your conclusion, not your premise.