@ Mika:
All I am going to say is I really don’t agree with Long at all. Probably for the same reasons I don’t agree with his assesment of De Jassay or care much for his virtue ethics approach.
And if you are going to underpin economics with ethics, I would bet a small fortune you are going to end up here everytime:
Either way, I really have no taste for discrediting a person’s ethics, so I’m out - unless they are a supreme jackass like Stephan Molyneaux…in which case I’ll amuse myself from time to time in various ways on such a personality.
From this previous post:
no clue if this is true or not, but I found this comment about Rothbard, which I can’t defend one way or the other, but it struck a bit of an “intuitive ring” in my ears, and I found it interesting:
On the other side is Rothbard. Sqaurely a radical rationalist. He takes his inspiration from Catesian rationalists, and Hobbs, Rousseau, Bentham, and J.S. Mill. He opposes Smithian economics and moral philosophy. Those in the Rothbard camp are not rule utilitarians, but radical rational individualist utilitarians (though most deny they are utiltarians at all) who hold that moral acts are first and foremost rational acts, and can only be justified through our perfect reason. Man is first and foremost a happiness (pleasure maximizing)seeking individual, and codified traditional rules often repress the pursuit of ultimate(happiness).
To this camp of thinkers, the irrational is immoral, and therefore morality is derived like a cartesian construction. The higher self is the rational creature who has been liberated from the irrationality of the traditional social institutions which repress pleasure-seeking and intrapersonal freedoms. The market is a wonderful free for all, where everyone uses everyone else to boost his own happiness, just as long as negative liberties are enforced. Morality is often judged by the end result of the action, not the intent. The market is the ultimate arbitrator of morality, since it brings the greatest pleasure to the greatest number.