While labels like that are vague, libertarianism is in most versions highly deontologist ideology, and cares about processes and not results as such.
The libertarian writing I’ve seen is primarily consequentialist: arguments, mostly by economists, that governments produce worse results than people directing their own efforts for their own reasons. So I see no contradiction in the survey responses.
If, in the places I don’t read, which are surely more numerous than those I do, libertarianism is mainly promoted by arguments that government is morally wrong, then I can see why the Libertarian party has never been more than a splinter movement.
People have rights to absolute personal liberty in economic matters (pure deontology).
In the fairytale case of perfectly competitive markets with no externalities, no transaction costs, no information asymmetry, no cost of entry, and so on and so on, government intervention is inefficient.
Somehow based on the fairytale case, following libertarian process is bound to produce the best possible results, without any need for serious empirical evidence that this link is true.
In cases where following the rules doesn’t seem to produce best results, we’re supposed to follow the rules anyway, as breaking them would most likely result in something even worse, even if we don’t immediately see it.
This sort of post-hoc consequentalization of essentially deontological ethics is extremely common. I don’t know that many deontologies that have balls to avoid this trick, and assert that they don’t care about consequences.
Ask a typical Christian, or other theist, and just like a libertarian, they will tell you something like that:
sinning is wrong (deontological basis)
sinning results in bad consequences (unsupported assertion)
even when sinning seems to result in right consequences, they’re bad anyway we just don’t see it (post-hoc consequentialization)
On the other hand the modern European politics (there’s not terribly much difference between “left” and “right”) mixes market-based, government-based, and other solutions, based on what is estimated to work best, not on any big ideology, which it lost long time ago, even though it clings to all kinds of labels like “social democratic” or “christian democratic” etc.
I don’t know where you’ve been finding this argument but it’s hardly representative of a good argument for libertarianism. I grew up in Europe (well, the UK, which is kind of Europe) with Labour voting parents and grandparents with fairly socialist views and considered myself a socialist into my early 20s. Weak arguments like these wouldn’t have been enough to convert me to a generally libertarian worldview.
I had a similar caricature of the views of supporters of the free market (back when I didn’t even know the term libertarian) but learning more about economics and being confronted with evidence of better outcomes in freer economies, together with learning that few serious economists (or libertarians) believe in perfectly efficient markets and learning about Public Choice Theory were key in changing my political views.
Key to the economic arguments for libertarianism is the idea that incentives matter and that the incentives facing actors in a free market tend to be far less perverse than those facing politicians or employees of state run monopolies.
The moral arguments stem largely from a view that personal freedom is a high moral value and that the evidentiary bar should be set very high for any demonstration of harm to justify restriction of individual freedoms. That tendency seems to be correlated with certain personality types according to some research and the crossover between libertarians and progressives/liberals on social issues seems to be as much a factor of personal values as of consequentialist reasoning.
And being fairly familiar with UK politics (less so with European politics in other countries) the idea that European politics pick policies based on ‘what is estimated to work best’ strikes me as pretty laughable.
Thanks, Matt. You’re providing some interesting points in a direction I hadn’t heard much about before.
Do you think most libertarians believe that regulation by a responsible, intelligent, benevolent government would improve society, but that we simply don’t have a government we can trust that much? Or do you think they believe that any government intervention is likely to have adverse effects no matter how well-planned it is?
I think most libertarians would tend to agree with Hayek’s presentation of the Economic Calculation Problem as a fairly fundamental obstacle to successful government planning. There are a couple of problems with government attempts to improve society: one is their practical ability to do so (given a clear goal, are they able to achieve it) and the other is how they decide what constitutes ‘improvement’. The fact that they generally fail at the former tends to mask the fact that they don’t really have a good way of doing the latter. Given all the relevant inputs, perfect rationality and unlimited computational capacity I concede the theoretical possibility of a central planner producing more optimal outcomes than a market. Such a planner would be so far from any government that actually exists or could exist given current technology however that I don’t consider it particularly relevant whether it is theoretically possible or not. That could perhaps change if Eliezer is successful.
The more immediate problem is that governments are not structured in a way that provides incentives to improve society. The reality of politics is all about special interests, rent seeking, regulatory capture and political maneuvering. The system as it actually exists is certainly not capable of making rational policy choices to improve society, though it remains possible that by some happy accident some policies may not be terribly harmful.
Matt, I’d be interested to know how your broader views on the nature of morality (i.e. that it’s essentially enlightened self-interest) feed in to your support for libertarianism.
More specifically, it seems as though this view would set a lower empirical bar than more altruistic views, and I guess I’m wondering to what extent you view the empirical arguments for libertarianism as sufficiently strong that you would still endorse something like it if you were a utilitarian or a prioritarian or an egalitarian instead.
My views on morality are certainly interconnected with my support for libertarianism. In the case of healthcare for example, my idea of what would constitute a good system may well differ from someone who takes a more utilitarian view of morality. For example, I think there may well be a place for some kind of government involvement in the control and treatment of infectious disease since there are externalities to consider if someone foregos treatment for cost reasons and a free at the point of delivery treatment service for infectious diseases is arguably a public good that would be undersupplied without government involvement. I don’t however think that anyone has a fundamental right to healthcare and utilitarian arguments for healthcare reform that advocate a system based on a more ‘equitable’ allocation of healthcare resources are not going to carry much weight for me.
This does mean that I will tend to judge empirical evidence according to somewhat different standards than someone who takes a different view of morality. If someone is arguing for universal healthcare based on a particular set of moral premises, I am likely to point out evidence suggesting the reforms won’t work even to achieve their stated goals rather than to try and argue with their premises. It’s entirely possible that the evidence would suggest that the proposed reforms would achieve their goals and I would still not support the reforms however since I might not share those goals. There’s an obvious risk that I will tend to view evidence selectively because of this but once you’re aware of confirmation bias and make an effort to allow for it I’m not sure how much more you can do to protect yourself.
Many of the economic arguments for libertarianism stem from the fact that people don’t act like pure altruists/utilitarians and instead act largely in their own self interest. I’d argue that if you start from utilitarian premises and try to devise policies to further those goals you are often going to find that the evidence indicates that the policies won’t work because people respond to incentives according to their own self interest. Healthcare is full of examples of such problems—once people are insulated from the costs of their own treatment they will have a tendency to over-consume healthcare resources. In order to control costs rationing must be implemented by some kind of bureaucracy rather than by individual choice and the results are seldom optimal by any reasonable measure.
I don’t know where you’ve been finding this argument but it’s hardly representative of a good argument for libertarianism. I grew up in Europe (well, the UK, which is kind of Europe) [...]
FYI, “Libertarianism” apparently means something different in the United States than it does elsewhere. This comes from a friend who is currently majoring in Political Science. He claims that “true libertarians would just laugh at American libertarians.” I do not know exactly what that means or give any more information, but it sounded relevant to the discussion.
In France at least, “Libertarians” (“Libertaires”) are traditionally left-wing anarchists, US-style Liberterians would be what we call “Liberals” (“Liberaux”), though it seems recently some started calling themselves “liberaux-libertaires”.
I hadn’t heard the term in the UK before encountering it in discussions with American libertarians online. I believe Classical Liberalism would be the closest term commonly (though not very commonly any more) used in the UK.
On the other hand the modern European politics (there’s not terribly much difference between “left” and “right”) mixes market-based, government-based, and other solutions, based on what is estimated to work best, not on any big ideology, which it lost long time ago, even though it clings to all kinds of labels like “social democratic” or “christian democratic” etc.
I’m not sure what you meant by “based on what is estimated to work best,” but I would say that modern European politics is not that different from modern American politics, or politics fifty years ago, in that politics can be described as the result of pre-existing political institutions, irrational, ignorant, and unenlightened voters, corruption and special interest groups. Well, things could be a lot worse. We could live in Myanmar or Sudan.
If European politics has gotten less ideological, is that (to a first approximation) because political institutions changed or because voters became less ideological?
As far as I can tell, European politics (as far as it’s even a valid label) is different from American politics. I didn’t do any proper research, so this might be just impressions. From what I can see, many Americans would say they “are Democrat/Republican/etc.”, Europeans would only say they “vote Labour/Conservative/etc.”, Europeans are much more likely to switch votes between elections, American political parties talk a lot about ideologies (freedom, fairness, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Christian nation, this or that is socialism, and so on and so on) what is extremely unusual in Europe.
By the way your description of what politics is like while not invalid seems extremely biased. As far as I can tell politics is mostly about day to day dealing with mundane problems of managing the state, and balancing of interests of different groups in it. Yes, the things you’re talking about are there, but if someone described modern capitalism as consisting of exploitation of third world workers, destruction of environment, corruption, union busting, focus on quarterly profits over sustainability, gender discrimination, race to the bottom, oligopolies, brainwashing consumers etc. is would also be true, but about as biased.
When speaking about politics in general, and current governments in particular, my rhetoric tends to be negative and focus on problems. This is because I hope that talking about the problems will get people to help fix or work around them.
It is my impression that the public, though perhaps not people on LW, have too much faith that a) they know what good public policy is, and b) that current policy is good. You would probably respond, and would be correct to respond, that government, and the political process, can do good. This should be recognized… I am not a libertarian extremist.
I know a fair bit about American politics, and the disciplines of political science/economics/sociology. But I know little about Europe, and I should have admitted that straight up. I hadn’t / still don’t fully understand the differences in how ideological politics is across the Atlantic. Don’t people trumpet Rights-based claims a lot? Or draw on what are considered admirable nationalistic characteristics in framing debates? Or talk about the dangers of neo-liberalism or capitalism? I’ll have to think/read about that more. Thanks for the suggestion.
By focusing on problems of government and ignoring problems of modern capitalism which has arguably far more influence (both positive and negative) on our daily lives, and upon which we have a lot less control, you’re highly biasing the debate. It’s not just you—I would say people in general are a lot more critical of government policies than of consequences of current form of capitalism (which has nothing to do with libertarian/econ101 fairytale free market).
As for European politics (I’m basing it mostly about Poland, UK, and Germany, as opposed to States, but my understanding is that the situation is very similar in most European countries):
Admirable nationalistic characteristics—never, that’s purely American thing, European politicians tend to be extremely shy about national issues, there’s no flag waving etc.
Rights-based claims—not really, you can hear often that some policies are unjust toward some group, or cause some group suffering, or some policies would be beneficial for some group, but it’s pretty very rarely about abstract “right to X” like American debates are framed.
Talking about dangers of neo-liberalism—this happens, usually in terms of specific problem (like mistreatment of employees, or job loses, or environmental issues etc.), more often in realistic “companies only care about profit, so we need to regulate things about them that we care about”, rarely in a generic “neo-liberal capitalism is bad”, but why do you include it as ideological? Should neo-liberalism be a taboo subject?
Admirable nationalistic characteristics—never, that’s purely American thing
Really? nationalism is a purely American thing?
Companies care about profits which makes them care about their consumers, their suppliers, their workers, and their congressmen (for better or for worse). But regulations are obviously necessary, and I like public goods.
Again, I think your argument about U.S. and European politics differ is interesting, I should look into that.
Right now, yeah, pretty much. In Europe the most you can find is politicians of country X talking about protecting “X jobs”, but on “we look after our interests, others look after theirs” basis, not on any sense of superiority and uniqueness that is so prevalent in American political propaganda.
Nationalism may be less potent in Europe than the U.S., but there are other countries in the world. And my impression is that, thankfully, nationalism is less potent in the U.S. than in many of them.
You have a point, I only looked at Western democracies, U.S. is an outlier in this set, but there’s plenty of countries with a lot worse nationalism than U.S. if you look outside the set.
I think that both promoting and criticizing neo-liberalism are fairly ideological projects. I wouldn’t taboo either of them, but I would like to see politicians/journalists/voters more focused on discussing the costs and benefits of specific policies which I think would lead people to be more consequentialist.
My point was that problems here are rarely framed as pro-neoliberalism vs anti-neoliberalism, the focus tends to be on specifics, which I would say is more productive.
I agree on everything but the dangers of neo-liberalism. This seems to me to be ever present, also in relatively succesful countries like Germany and France. Boo neo-liberalism. A bit like inequality.
Ideology in the American sense is pretty much relegated to fringe movements.
I live in Denmark, but follow politics in major European countries.
FWIW, these have mostly been the arguments I’ve seen for libertarianism; that, and arguments which hinge on the importance of wealth going to the “deserving” over the “undeserving”. If anyone can point me to any online writings on the subject which tackle the standard challenges to libertarian capitalism in a way that doesn’t hinge on deontological ideas or ideas of deserving, I’d be interested to read them.
If anyone can point me to any online writings on the subject which tackle the standard challenges to libertarian capitalism in a way that doesn’t hinge on deontological ideas or ideas of deserving, I’d be interested to read them.
No strong opinion on whether they’re correct, but from what I’ve seen libertarians argue from consequences rather than deontology most of the time, so I have to wonder where you’ve been looking. As for pointers, there’s a libertarian-leaning econ encyclopedia here.
I recommend J.S. Mill’s On Liberty—it’s not necessarily argued entirely from consequentialist grounds, but that’s basically where he’s coming from. Online version
You cannot be honestly consequentialist without seeking the best empirical evidence you can get, and I find the idea that there might have been much useful evidence for best organization of government in 2009 back in 1869 extremely unlikely, so I’m going to completely disregard this recommendation.
I’m not at all sympathetic to the libertarian point of view, but I have to say that this does not sound like your true rejection. I find thomblake’s Boyle’s Law analogy quite apt: if you are really interested in thermodynamics, you have to start with material at the Boyle’s Law level. Likewise, if you are truly interested in understanding libertarian thought, it behooves you to start with a basic text.
If someone wants to argue for libertarianism versus status quo on consequentialist and empirical grounds, it stands to reason they should have some idea about status quo, what a person writing in 1869 couldn’t possibly have without breaking causality.
I’m not saying Mill doesn’t make good deontologist arguments, as these can be timeless, I’m simply not interested in deontology here.
Your celebration of ignorance angers me. You asked for a recommendation and got one from probably one of the best-qualified here to answer that question.
Really, it’s a very short book. And it’s one of the basic works on classical liberalism, one of the foundations (along with Locke’s Second Treatise on Government) of all current discourse on liberalism.
Mill is arguably the fellow who invented consequentialism (with a hat tip to Bentham, and J.S. Mill’s father). It’s like if someone referred you to Boyle’s Law and you insisted someone from the 17th century couldn’t possibly have anything useful to say about physics.
EDIT: correction—as noted above, it was not taw who asked for a recommendation in the first place. Mea culpa.
It’s like if someone referred you to Boyle’s Law and you insisted someone from the 17th century couldn’t possibly have anything useful to say about physics.
By this logic, one could also argue in favor of Newton’s theories on alchemy because he essentially invented classical mechanics.
Consequentialism is a type of formalization of ideas on ethics, which are inherently arbitrary. Theories of political structure deal with empirical matters of actual results. taw asserts that someone in the 17th century would have had no empirical data relevant to modern govenment, an assertion that is, if not obviously correct, at least defensible to the extent that society has changed since then.
Fair enough, I’d like to believe that my libertarian sympathies are based on a lot more than that as well.
I’m sure you’ve read a lot of Robin Hanson, do you feel he focuses a lot on a deontological justification for libertarian ideas? I also recommend http://www.marginalrevolution.com for learning to see the world through the eyes of thoughtful libertarian economists. Both of these sources are more libertarian than I am, but I find reading them very worthwhile and often convincing. In important respects, even Paul Krugman is more libertarian than most Americans.
I think we’d probably do well to discuss individual policies, which can be done more precisely than overarching political philosophies.
I think we’d probably do well to discuss individual policies, which can be done more precisely than overarching political philosophies.
This is probably a good point, as for all the sound and fury of this thread I would be slightly surprised if there were more than a handful of actual, significant policy disagreements between participants.
The libertarian writing I’ve seen is primarily consequentialist: arguments, mostly by economists, that governments produce worse results than people directing their own efforts for their own reasons. So I see no contradiction in the survey responses.
If, in the places I don’t read, which are surely more numerous than those I do, libertarianism is mainly promoted by arguments that government is morally wrong, then I can see why the Libertarian party has never been more than a splinter movement.
The argument I’ve seen is mostly something like:
People have rights to absolute personal liberty in economic matters (pure deontology).
In the fairytale case of perfectly competitive markets with no externalities, no transaction costs, no information asymmetry, no cost of entry, and so on and so on, government intervention is inefficient.
Somehow based on the fairytale case, following libertarian process is bound to produce the best possible results, without any need for serious empirical evidence that this link is true.
In cases where following the rules doesn’t seem to produce best results, we’re supposed to follow the rules anyway, as breaking them would most likely result in something even worse, even if we don’t immediately see it.
This sort of post-hoc consequentalization of essentially deontological ethics is extremely common. I don’t know that many deontologies that have balls to avoid this trick, and assert that they don’t care about consequences.
Ask a typical Christian, or other theist, and just like a libertarian, they will tell you something like that:
sinning is wrong (deontological basis)
sinning results in bad consequences (unsupported assertion)
even when sinning seems to result in right consequences, they’re bad anyway we just don’t see it (post-hoc consequentialization)
On the other hand the modern European politics (there’s not terribly much difference between “left” and “right”) mixes market-based, government-based, and other solutions, based on what is estimated to work best, not on any big ideology, which it lost long time ago, even though it clings to all kinds of labels like “social democratic” or “christian democratic” etc.
I don’t know where you’ve been finding this argument but it’s hardly representative of a good argument for libertarianism. I grew up in Europe (well, the UK, which is kind of Europe) with Labour voting parents and grandparents with fairly socialist views and considered myself a socialist into my early 20s. Weak arguments like these wouldn’t have been enough to convert me to a generally libertarian worldview.
I had a similar caricature of the views of supporters of the free market (back when I didn’t even know the term libertarian) but learning more about economics and being confronted with evidence of better outcomes in freer economies, together with learning that few serious economists (or libertarians) believe in perfectly efficient markets and learning about Public Choice Theory were key in changing my political views.
Key to the economic arguments for libertarianism is the idea that incentives matter and that the incentives facing actors in a free market tend to be far less perverse than those facing politicians or employees of state run monopolies.
The moral arguments stem largely from a view that personal freedom is a high moral value and that the evidentiary bar should be set very high for any demonstration of harm to justify restriction of individual freedoms. That tendency seems to be correlated with certain personality types according to some research and the crossover between libertarians and progressives/liberals on social issues seems to be as much a factor of personal values as of consequentialist reasoning.
And being fairly familiar with UK politics (less so with European politics in other countries) the idea that European politics pick policies based on ‘what is estimated to work best’ strikes me as pretty laughable.
Thanks, Matt. You’re providing some interesting points in a direction I hadn’t heard much about before.
Do you think most libertarians believe that regulation by a responsible, intelligent, benevolent government would improve society, but that we simply don’t have a government we can trust that much? Or do you think they believe that any government intervention is likely to have adverse effects no matter how well-planned it is?
I think most libertarians would tend to agree with Hayek’s presentation of the Economic Calculation Problem as a fairly fundamental obstacle to successful government planning. There are a couple of problems with government attempts to improve society: one is their practical ability to do so (given a clear goal, are they able to achieve it) and the other is how they decide what constitutes ‘improvement’. The fact that they generally fail at the former tends to mask the fact that they don’t really have a good way of doing the latter. Given all the relevant inputs, perfect rationality and unlimited computational capacity I concede the theoretical possibility of a central planner producing more optimal outcomes than a market. Such a planner would be so far from any government that actually exists or could exist given current technology however that I don’t consider it particularly relevant whether it is theoretically possible or not. That could perhaps change if Eliezer is successful.
The more immediate problem is that governments are not structured in a way that provides incentives to improve society. The reality of politics is all about special interests, rent seeking, regulatory capture and political maneuvering. The system as it actually exists is certainly not capable of making rational policy choices to improve society, though it remains possible that by some happy accident some policies may not be terribly harmful.
Matt, I’d be interested to know how your broader views on the nature of morality (i.e. that it’s essentially enlightened self-interest) feed in to your support for libertarianism.
More specifically, it seems as though this view would set a lower empirical bar than more altruistic views, and I guess I’m wondering to what extent you view the empirical arguments for libertarianism as sufficiently strong that you would still endorse something like it if you were a utilitarian or a prioritarian or an egalitarian instead.
My views on morality are certainly interconnected with my support for libertarianism. In the case of healthcare for example, my idea of what would constitute a good system may well differ from someone who takes a more utilitarian view of morality. For example, I think there may well be a place for some kind of government involvement in the control and treatment of infectious disease since there are externalities to consider if someone foregos treatment for cost reasons and a free at the point of delivery treatment service for infectious diseases is arguably a public good that would be undersupplied without government involvement. I don’t however think that anyone has a fundamental right to healthcare and utilitarian arguments for healthcare reform that advocate a system based on a more ‘equitable’ allocation of healthcare resources are not going to carry much weight for me.
This does mean that I will tend to judge empirical evidence according to somewhat different standards than someone who takes a different view of morality. If someone is arguing for universal healthcare based on a particular set of moral premises, I am likely to point out evidence suggesting the reforms won’t work even to achieve their stated goals rather than to try and argue with their premises. It’s entirely possible that the evidence would suggest that the proposed reforms would achieve their goals and I would still not support the reforms however since I might not share those goals. There’s an obvious risk that I will tend to view evidence selectively because of this but once you’re aware of confirmation bias and make an effort to allow for it I’m not sure how much more you can do to protect yourself.
Many of the economic arguments for libertarianism stem from the fact that people don’t act like pure altruists/utilitarians and instead act largely in their own self interest. I’d argue that if you start from utilitarian premises and try to devise policies to further those goals you are often going to find that the evidence indicates that the policies won’t work because people respond to incentives according to their own self interest. Healthcare is full of examples of such problems—once people are insulated from the costs of their own treatment they will have a tendency to over-consume healthcare resources. In order to control costs rationing must be implemented by some kind of bureaucracy rather than by individual choice and the results are seldom optimal by any reasonable measure.
FYI, “Libertarianism” apparently means something different in the United States than it does elsewhere. This comes from a friend who is currently majoring in Political Science. He claims that “true libertarians would just laugh at American libertarians.” I do not know exactly what that means or give any more information, but it sounded relevant to the discussion.
In France at least, “Libertarians” (“Libertaires”) are traditionally left-wing anarchists, US-style Liberterians would be what we call “Liberals” (“Liberaux”), though it seems recently some started calling themselves “liberaux-libertaires”.
I hadn’t heard the term in the UK before encountering it in discussions with American libertarians online. I believe Classical Liberalism would be the closest term commonly (though not very commonly any more) used in the UK.
I’m not sure what you meant by “based on what is estimated to work best,” but I would say that modern European politics is not that different from modern American politics, or politics fifty years ago, in that politics can be described as the result of pre-existing political institutions, irrational, ignorant, and unenlightened voters, corruption and special interest groups. Well, things could be a lot worse. We could live in Myanmar or Sudan.
If European politics has gotten less ideological, is that (to a first approximation) because political institutions changed or because voters became less ideological?
As far as I can tell, European politics (as far as it’s even a valid label) is different from American politics. I didn’t do any proper research, so this might be just impressions. From what I can see, many Americans would say they “are Democrat/Republican/etc.”, Europeans would only say they “vote Labour/Conservative/etc.”, Europeans are much more likely to switch votes between elections, American political parties talk a lot about ideologies (freedom, fairness, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Christian nation, this or that is socialism, and so on and so on) what is extremely unusual in Europe.
By the way your description of what politics is like while not invalid seems extremely biased. As far as I can tell politics is mostly about day to day dealing with mundane problems of managing the state, and balancing of interests of different groups in it. Yes, the things you’re talking about are there, but if someone described modern capitalism as consisting of exploitation of third world workers, destruction of environment, corruption, union busting, focus on quarterly profits over sustainability, gender discrimination, race to the bottom, oligopolies, brainwashing consumers etc. is would also be true, but about as biased.
When speaking about politics in general, and current governments in particular, my rhetoric tends to be negative and focus on problems. This is because I hope that talking about the problems will get people to help fix or work around them.
It is my impression that the public, though perhaps not people on LW, have too much faith that a) they know what good public policy is, and b) that current policy is good. You would probably respond, and would be correct to respond, that government, and the political process, can do good. This should be recognized… I am not a libertarian extremist.
I know a fair bit about American politics, and the disciplines of political science/economics/sociology. But I know little about Europe, and I should have admitted that straight up. I hadn’t / still don’t fully understand the differences in how ideological politics is across the Atlantic. Don’t people trumpet Rights-based claims a lot? Or draw on what are considered admirable nationalistic characteristics in framing debates? Or talk about the dangers of neo-liberalism or capitalism? I’ll have to think/read about that more. Thanks for the suggestion.
By focusing on problems of government and ignoring problems of modern capitalism which has arguably far more influence (both positive and negative) on our daily lives, and upon which we have a lot less control, you’re highly biasing the debate. It’s not just you—I would say people in general are a lot more critical of government policies than of consequences of current form of capitalism (which has nothing to do with libertarian/econ101 fairytale free market).
As for European politics (I’m basing it mostly about Poland, UK, and Germany, as opposed to States, but my understanding is that the situation is very similar in most European countries):
Admirable nationalistic characteristics—never, that’s purely American thing, European politicians tend to be extremely shy about national issues, there’s no flag waving etc.
Rights-based claims—not really, you can hear often that some policies are unjust toward some group, or cause some group suffering, or some policies would be beneficial for some group, but it’s pretty very rarely about abstract “right to X” like American debates are framed.
Talking about dangers of neo-liberalism—this happens, usually in terms of specific problem (like mistreatment of employees, or job loses, or environmental issues etc.), more often in realistic “companies only care about profit, so we need to regulate things about them that we care about”, rarely in a generic “neo-liberal capitalism is bad”, but why do you include it as ideological? Should neo-liberalism be a taboo subject?
Companies care about profits which makes them care about their consumers, their suppliers, their workers, and their congressmen (for better or for worse). But regulations are obviously necessary, and I like public goods.
Again, I think your argument about U.S. and European politics differ is interesting, I should look into that.
Right now, yeah, pretty much. In Europe the most you can find is politicians of country X talking about protecting “X jobs”, but on “we look after our interests, others look after theirs” basis, not on any sense of superiority and uniqueness that is so prevalent in American political propaganda.
Nationalism may be less potent in Europe than the U.S., but there are other countries in the world. And my impression is that, thankfully, nationalism is less potent in the U.S. than in many of them.
You have a point, I only looked at Western democracies, U.S. is an outlier in this set, but there’s plenty of countries with a lot worse nationalism than U.S. if you look outside the set.
I think that both promoting and criticizing neo-liberalism are fairly ideological projects. I wouldn’t taboo either of them, but I would like to see politicians/journalists/voters more focused on discussing the costs and benefits of specific policies which I think would lead people to be more consequentialist.
My point was that problems here are rarely framed as pro-neoliberalism vs anti-neoliberalism, the focus tends to be on specifics, which I would say is more productive.
I agree on everything but the dangers of neo-liberalism. This seems to me to be ever present, also in relatively succesful countries like Germany and France. Boo neo-liberalism. A bit like inequality.
Ideology in the American sense is pretty much relegated to fringe movements.
I live in Denmark, but follow politics in major European countries.
FWIW, these have mostly been the arguments I’ve seen for libertarianism; that, and arguments which hinge on the importance of wealth going to the “deserving” over the “undeserving”. If anyone can point me to any online writings on the subject which tackle the standard challenges to libertarian capitalism in a way that doesn’t hinge on deontological ideas or ideas of deserving, I’d be interested to read them.
No strong opinion on whether they’re correct, but from what I’ve seen libertarians argue from consequences rather than deontology most of the time, so I have to wonder where you’ve been looking. As for pointers, there’s a libertarian-leaning econ encyclopedia here.
I recommend J.S. Mill’s On Liberty—it’s not necessarily argued entirely from consequentialist grounds, but that’s basically where he’s coming from. Online version
You cannot be honestly consequentialist without seeking the best empirical evidence you can get, and I find the idea that there might have been much useful evidence for best organization of government in 2009 back in 1869 extremely unlikely, so I’m going to completely disregard this recommendation.
I’m not at all sympathetic to the libertarian point of view, but I have to say that this does not sound like your true rejection. I find thomblake’s Boyle’s Law analogy quite apt: if you are really interested in thermodynamics, you have to start with material at the Boyle’s Law level. Likewise, if you are truly interested in understanding libertarian thought, it behooves you to start with a basic text.
If someone wants to argue for libertarianism versus status quo on consequentialist and empirical grounds, it stands to reason they should have some idea about status quo, what a person writing in 1869 couldn’t possibly have without breaking causality.
I’m not saying Mill doesn’t make good deontologist arguments, as these can be timeless, I’m simply not interested in deontology here.
You seem to have missed the part where thomblake claims J. S. Mills more-or-less originated consequentialism.
Seriously, asking for a reference on LW, getting one, and dismissing it without even flipping through it? Lame.
ETA: My bad—you did not ask for the reference. I am lame.
Wasn’t it ciphergoth who asked, not taw?
Your celebration of ignorance angers me. You asked for a recommendation and got one from probably one of the best-qualified here to answer that question.
Really, it’s a very short book. And it’s one of the basic works on classical liberalism, one of the foundations (along with Locke’s Second Treatise on Government) of all current discourse on liberalism.
Mill is arguably the fellow who invented consequentialism (with a hat tip to Bentham, and J.S. Mill’s father). It’s like if someone referred you to Boyle’s Law and you insisted someone from the 17th century couldn’t possibly have anything useful to say about physics.
EDIT: correction—as noted above, it was not taw who asked for a recommendation in the first place. Mea culpa.
By this logic, one could also argue in favor of Newton’s theories on alchemy because he essentially invented classical mechanics.
Consequentialism is a type of formalization of ideas on ethics, which are inherently arbitrary. Theories of political structure deal with empirical matters of actual results. taw asserts that someone in the 17th century would have had no empirical data relevant to modern govenment, an assertion that is, if not obviously correct, at least defensible to the extent that society has changed since then.
Most economists are more libertarian than most people, which means something to me.
That’s enough to interest me but obviously not nearly enough to convince.
Fair enough, I’d like to believe that my libertarian sympathies are based on a lot more than that as well.
I’m sure you’ve read a lot of Robin Hanson, do you feel he focuses a lot on a deontological justification for libertarian ideas? I also recommend http://www.marginalrevolution.com for learning to see the world through the eyes of thoughtful libertarian economists. Both of these sources are more libertarian than I am, but I find reading them very worthwhile and often convincing. In important respects, even Paul Krugman is more libertarian than most Americans.
I think we’d probably do well to discuss individual policies, which can be done more precisely than overarching political philosophies.
This is probably a good point, as for all the sound and fury of this thread I would be slightly surprised if there were more than a handful of actual, significant policy disagreements between participants.