Another thing that I realized was related to this post was my idea of “tragic libertarianism.”
Libertarians believe (and I think they’re right) that there are a significant number of social problems that the government shouldn’t be trying to fix. There’s no cost-effective way to fix them, or intervention is likely to make things worse rather than better, or there’s no way to intervene without trampling all over people’s rights.
It’s a common rhetorical device to then ALSO insist that these problems are harmless, and stretch the evidence to make it look like there’s nothing at all to complain about. And I don’t like that. It’s an example of motivated cognition; it’s jumping to a conclusion you have no reason to believe.
Maybe it’s not worth spending resources to fix Problem A. Often, that’s true. And yes, that means you don’t have to lose sleep fretting about A, because at the moment there’s nothing to be done. But please don’t write a newspaper editorial telling me that A has been overhyped.
Sometimes, just because we can’t rush in and fix a problem, doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. People who suffer from it deserve our sympathy and whatever small, individual forms of help we can offer.
I agree with this, but libertarians have much larger cognitive biases :). For example, they almost completely ignore the question of why things aren’t the way they want—why government is big. Without a theory of why they don’t have what they want, their methods of activism are hopeless and misguided.
For example, “We want to limit government! Bring back the Constitution!” (You mean the political system which quite demonstrably failed to limit government? Uh...shouldn’t we try something else this time?). There’s actually one school of libertarian-inspired economics, public choice theory, which is about how government is, not how it should be, but almost all libertarians ignore it—including libertarian public choice professors! Now that’s cognitive dissonance.
I am friends with public choice theory. I am friends with Gabriel Kolko. “Libertarianism isn’t stable” is another sad fact of life. And it’s pretty well known, even among non-academic, torches-and-pitchforks types. Sometimes people’s reaction is “well, we must be eternally vigilant against government.” That doesn’t seem right either—it’s the same kind of reasoning as “well, we must be eternally vigilant against people pursuing economic self-interest.” There are a lot of unknowns and challenges here… but my point is that libertarians aren’t completely clueless about their existence.
(I feel like I’ve veered dangerously close to breaking the “no politics” rule and I don’t want us to go off the deep end.)
Another thing that I realized was related to this post was my idea of “tragic libertarianism.”
Libertarians believe (and I think they’re right) that there are a significant number of social problems that the government shouldn’t be trying to fix. There’s no cost-effective way to fix them, or intervention is likely to make things worse rather than better, or there’s no way to intervene without trampling all over people’s rights.
It’s a common rhetorical device to then ALSO insist that these problems are harmless, and stretch the evidence to make it look like there’s nothing at all to complain about. And I don’t like that. It’s an example of motivated cognition; it’s jumping to a conclusion you have no reason to believe.
Maybe it’s not worth spending resources to fix Problem A. Often, that’s true. And yes, that means you don’t have to lose sleep fretting about A, because at the moment there’s nothing to be done. But please don’t write a newspaper editorial telling me that A has been overhyped.
Sometimes, just because we can’t rush in and fix a problem, doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. People who suffer from it deserve our sympathy and whatever small, individual forms of help we can offer.
Here’s a Less Wrong post on the subject.
I agree with this, but libertarians have much larger cognitive biases :). For example, they almost completely ignore the question of why things aren’t the way they want—why government is big. Without a theory of why they don’t have what they want, their methods of activism are hopeless and misguided.
For example, “We want to limit government! Bring back the Constitution!” (You mean the political system which quite demonstrably failed to limit government? Uh...shouldn’t we try something else this time?). There’s actually one school of libertarian-inspired economics, public choice theory, which is about how government is, not how it should be, but almost all libertarians ignore it—including libertarian public choice professors! Now that’s cognitive dissonance.
um...really?
I am friends with public choice theory. I am friends with Gabriel Kolko. “Libertarianism isn’t stable” is another sad fact of life. And it’s pretty well known, even among non-academic, torches-and-pitchforks types. Sometimes people’s reaction is “well, we must be eternally vigilant against government.” That doesn’t seem right either—it’s the same kind of reasoning as “well, we must be eternally vigilant against people pursuing economic self-interest.” There are a lot of unknowns and challenges here… but my point is that libertarians aren’t completely clueless about their existence.
(I feel like I’ve veered dangerously close to breaking the “no politics” rule and I don’t want us to go off the deep end.)