Students for Liberty article advises libertarians to adopt consequentialist approach

Economics Political Theory
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Just read this article. In it, basically, the author argues that —

The only logical answer would be that the government has no role since its existence would necessarily require the initiation of force through taxation. While this conclusion may please anarcho-capitalists, the reality is that most people are not so quick to “smash the state,” rather having a deep-seated belief in a role for government.

Indeed, most people would find the conclusions of the non-aggression calculus to be outright absurd. To them, taxation is not categorically theft, but rather can be appropriate to provide for some necessary functions of government like the criminal justice system. To them, war is not categorically murder, but rather can be appropriate to defend against existential enemies. Certainly the government’s monopoly of force can be scary at times, such non-libertarians may think, but abandoning this monopoly for the state of nature is even scarier. Any attempt to force anarchism down such their throats will only cause them to vomit it right out. Thus, it would be futile to try to convert non-libertarians with the non-aggression principle, since it will only give them an anarchist answer that they are fundamentally uncomfortable with. […]

So, I suggest to you libertarian evangelizers out there to avoid the nebulous non-aggression principle for the graspable facts of government inefficiency. Economics and public choice theory are much more powerful persuaders than some imperceptible axiom that contains a fundamental contradiction. Oh, and leave the bow ties in your grandfather’s closet.

Was wondering what people here think about this. I don’t agree with his suggestion to abandon following our principles just because their conclusions are difficult for people to accept. But I have found in practice that a more principled argument is more difficult to make than a consequentialist one. Mostly because the vast majority of people themselves are consequentialists. As I wrote somewhere else, of all the people I’ve talked to about libertarianism, only one person was impressed by the principled approach: my wife.

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If they really are consequentialists, then if the government told them that killing their children would usher in Heaven on Earth, they would gladly and eagerly do so.

3

lykos makes a perfect point.

And I don’t find this “it’s too difficult for them to accept, so don’t bother” philosophy to be very convincing or very healthy. It is here that I agree with Hoppe, that you need to be uncompromising in theory and ultimate goal. If you expect to get any closer to your goal you can’t be “compromising” on your endgame…essentially giving up and saying “ah that’s a pipedream. That’ll never happen. We might as well just focus on minarchism (or sticking to the Constitution, or whatever other form of statism you think is ‘practical’).”

And while understanding and being able to explain government inefficiency is important and necessary if the message is to be widely accepted, abandoning NAP on the grounds that it leads people to a place they aren’t ready to handle right away is just asinine. People need to be hearing these ideas…if for nothing else than to shock them out of their matrix sleep. People don’t have to be “impressed” by your adherence to principle. They just have to be piqued, or triggered, or otherwise engaged by the principle itself.

I can’t get over how terrible this guy’s logic is. “People won’t see the light right away, so you might as well not tell them the truth and just stick to safe stuff.” What a useless (supposedly) smart guy.

And I hear what you’re saying, Axe, about the difficulty of a principled argument…but there are ways to present it, and there are best methods to go about engaging people. See “Argumentation & spreading the word” here.

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I think they would disagree with the government. But, basically, whenever I hear a consequentialist speak, I ask him: “So, your problem with Hitler is that he grossly mismanaged human resources, not that he was a murderer.”

5

What?

In what world is that “contradictory”? It is a non sequitur. No one advocates that.

Seriously, I’ve read this many times and each time it seems like the question doesn’t follow from the claim of contradiction.

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I am consequentialist austro-ancap. Consequentialist arguments are all about simple facts and simple logic (as simple as austrian economics anyway). I see no need and no value in deontologist arguments over consequentialist arguments mostly because they are a lot harder to follow with lots of what seems to me like logic holes, jumps and arbitrary definitions/limits. Consequentialist ethics is principled stance to me - the guiding principle is that of egoism (do whatever makes you happy). It makes perfect sense considering what austrian economics teaches us about subjectivity of value. Arguing consequentialism is mostly about using and teaching other people logic of human action so that they can better understand how to realize their dreams and passions .

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All definitions are arbitrary, Boniek.

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@FlyingAxe

The principled approach will work with a lot of people, just not everyone. Part of the problem is that you need to take it slowly with most people. They are not able to see what a stateless society could be like. They only see chaos. Take it slowly with people.

Some people are impervious to the principled approach, and the reason is that they have different principles. Some people do truly believe that its morally okay to aggress against others. Some people are just afraid of the boogeyman. With these types, you probably shouldn’t waste your time with a principled approach.

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With the smarter liberals I’ve argued with, we always get to a point where we just disagree on the morality of government. They will plain admit with no reservations that it is okay to rob me for social-security or what-have-you. Like the taste of food or music these matters of morality cannot be usefully debated IMO, but practicality can, like can the government even achieve the ends aimed at? My favorite is talking against price controls (minimum wage, rent control,) the answer with a bit of reasoning is emphatically no. Haven’t read anything on public choice theory but some videos from Ben Powell are pretty convincing. Telling people that the government is evil has gotten me nowhere, economics actually has. The ends can’t be argued, but the means certainly can - concequentialism as I understand it FTW.

I wonder what’s the beef with bow ties I hope they’re due for a comeback! I’m sure the writers tone will garner tons of hate here but it seems he’s just saying focus less on the moralizing and more on the economics. I agree.

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The prohibition of torts is ultimately based on its consequences; it is so ingrained in human custom because it is the surest way to long-term peace and prosperity for all. Since, therefore, the traditional conception of justice - upon which we base the NAP - is founded on utility, the deontological and consequentialist arguments are inherently bound together.

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Well, interestingly enough, although they are bound together, in discussion of every given policy, the two approaches seemingly have nothing to do with each other.

For instance: why are minimum wages bad?

Ethical argument: because they violate people’s right to freedom of contract.
Economic argument: because they increase unemployment.

The two arguments are seemingly disctinct. The same with socialism: disrespect of private property vs. economic calculation problem.

It’s interesting whether there is any explanation why something unethical is also always economically bad.

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I think I know what you mean, but you should be careful how you phrase what you said. Remember, Austrian economics does not make value judgements. It only states if p, then q. We might happen to believe that the people put out of work because of minimum wage is a bad thing, but not everybody shares our beliefs.

However, to answer your question, I would think that voluntary exchange, which is cooperative by nature, should produce results that benefit more people than aggressive exchange. When you think about it, a society built upon cooperation should be more prosperous than one built upon aggression. The cooperation is to everyone’s benefit, whereas the aggression is only to some people’s benefit.

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Well, if you define “good” as “increasing social prosperity” and “maximizing utility” (the way consequentialists are doing it), then respect for natural rights turns out to be “good”.

But there is no direct connection between property rights and calculation problem. No cause-and-effect link. One could imagine a society run by prophets where property rights would be violated and the economy would work out perfectly. But, since we don’t have prophets running our society, we have the calculation problem. I.e., the ethical argument and the economic argument have seemingly nothing to do with each other, yet it seems they are (almost) perfectly correlated.

The only example I can think of when violation of natural rights might have led to greater overall economic prosperity is slavery. But even there I am not sure that a given society would not be better off by hiring workers as opposed to enslaving people.

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I think that one needs to know their audience before thinking about what sort of argument to present.

Me for instance I can’t stand moralizing. I don’t have a bunch of moral principles so appealing to me on that level will probably be ineffective. I’d rather someone just tell me what’s in it for me. But first they need to know what I want. That’s salesmanship.

Tailor your message to match your audience. Consider the impact of the venue on the message itself. Giving a speech in front of a room full of people is different from trying to convince someone one on one. Typing out an essay is different from speaking to someone face to face. Consider these things.

Study ideologies that you might disagree with. Know your enemy.

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This.

I would add that this is the only view that excludes scapegoating - the “making examples of” people in order to “deter” misdeeds of others. If I steal something from you, surely, I need to repay you whatever amount will settle the dispute unless I want war between you and me. But who made you God that you demand not only that I make payment to settle the matter but that more be exacted in order to give the rest of society an object lesson in social order? Since when is it my duty - by virtue of having wronged you only - to render a payment in blood, flesh and tears to the rest of society?

Deterrence is caveman morality. It is one of the last vestiges of the primitive, brutal moral system of our pre-human ancestors and it is clinging on for dear life.

The illumination comes when you realize that deterrence is built into the very structure of the social order from top to bottom. Even your capacity for involuntary blushing is a form of deterrence. The deterrence is built into human nature. A sense of property, a sense of retribution, a desire to get recompense for wrongs committed, and so on. You can rest assured that if you steal money from someone’s bank account through fraud that that individual - not the government, not “society”, maybe not even the bank itself - will initiate the process of trying to solve the crime and recover the stolen funds.

Holding consequentialism as the sole legal value, however, permits the multiplication of punishments on every crank theory of what will produce “better outcomes”. If only we fined speeders another $100, why, fewer people would die on the highways. If only we sentenced pot users to another 5 years in prison, why, that would solve the drug problem and gang violence. If you want to actually ban something, this recreational tyranny won’t do - you have to go full Saudi Arabia. Start chopping off a hand each time someone is caught smoking pot, then you’ll put an end to it. If you can’t stomach that then you can kiss your dreams of a pot-free society good-bye. The rest of your cockamamie schemes are just ruining lives while you play at being a benevolent dictator.

Clayton -

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I’m not sure if I agree that the NAP is based on utility. I take a different approach - I consider consequentialist arguments to be deontological arguments. Here’s why: any consequentialist argument must rely on premises, just like deontological arguments do. The premises may differ, but that’s beside the point.

Another problem I have with consequentialism is that it’s impossible to determine the consequences of something until after the fact. Beforehand, all that one may know about, aside from the action itself, are the intended consequences of the action. So it seems that consequentialists care more about intentions than they do about actions themselves.

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Well I meant that the NAP is based on customary ideas of justice, which in turn (and deep in the past) are based on utility - not that the NAP is directly based on utility.

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I think in many of these questions, the issue is time scale: short-term vs. long-term. The consequentialist approach is that which worries about the immediate consequence of an action. A principled approach is the one that worries about the long-term principle, which can exist on ethical grounds or on long-term consequence-oriented goals. (I am a religious person myself, but I am also an ex-atheist. From what I understand/remember, the long-term utilitarian goals and “ethical principles” are one and the same for an atheist.)

Roderick Long gives an example in one of his talks of how utilitarianism is praxeologically unstable. Imagine I want to benefit applied science as much as possible. But then I discover that to do that, I need to focus on fundamental science (he gives the example of inventing electric watch: if that is your goal in the 18th century, you need to focus on the study of lighning, not study of watches). So, in order to be the best applied scientist (or, rather, satisfy the goals of applied science maximally), you need to be the best fundamental scientist. But the latter is driven by curiosity, not immediate application.

So, praxeologically, it is impossible to be consciously the best applied scientist if that is what your goal is. You almost have to decide to become the best applied scientist, then hyptnotize yourself to forget about that and decide to become the best fundamental scientist.

In the same sense, utilitarianism and consequentialism do not work praxeologically. If we discover that the best long-term strategy for our goal (prosperity in society) is to forget about our short-term goal but focus on the principles, then it is impossible to be a consequentialist.

That is the critique of the so-called “judicial activism” that people make from the large-scale consequentialist perspective. Justice Ginzburg may be inclined to rule in a particular case following her political agenda of what she wants to happen in a given case. But such willy-nilly approach to law destroys the legal/constitutional fabric of judicial process, and that has adverse long-term effect on the society that even she might agree is a bad thing.

Basically, it all comes down to having low or high time preference. People with high time preference will tend to be less principled and more immediate consequence–oriented, and that will have effects both on their economic policies (favoring short-term “boom” over long-term prosperity and stability) and their political policies (looking at the immediate presumed benefit for the society at the expense of the long-term erosion of societal ethical values and resulting consequences).

Maybe that is the link between the ethics and economics.

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This:

How old are you?

Someone really hates the mises bowtie :smiley:

If you notice, there’s a number of guys donning the look as a sort of “tribute”[?] to notable figures in the austro-libertarian canon (most notably Rothbard). It’s kind of like the kid who wears the Superman cape.

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God was trying to make things easy for us.