It might also be wondered whether an analysis could be based on some combination of individual action and "social action." The difficulty in this approach is that some criterion would be required for distinguishing the situations where each of the two types would apply. The methodological-individualist approach already solves this problem for us. It tells us that we can regard a social grouping as a single acting entity if and only if its action is consistent with the goals of all the individuals comprising that group—a consistency exhibited only in the case of voluntary organizations (see pp. 2.4:7-8). The action of such groups, in other words, arises out of individual purposes.

Methodological collectivism, on the other hand, has already obliterated differences among individual purposes, lumping them together under the "purposes of the group." Therefore this approach cannot predict when analysis based on "social action" will break down and have to be reanalyzed by other methods. This method, in short, is a blunt instrument, inadequate to the complexities and subtleties of real human action.