If economics is value-free, then it can explain positively what will happen if you do X, or what the best way is to achieve Y, but has nothing to say about the ends themselves.
Why, then, is there so much overlap between people who call themselves “economists” and those that call themselves “ethical theorists”? Is it just because both fields attract the same kinds of people, who enjoy telling others what to do? Or is there a genuine overlap in the subject matter?
In particular, I wonder whether it’s coherent to disavow utilitarian ethics while at the same time employing economic arguments, as it seems many libertarians do.
I have a few ideas of my own about this, but I want to hear what you all think.
All ethical systems are merely means to and end depending upon valuation, ethical theories and systems are no different than any other concepts ever employed by mankind. In the case of people like Rothbard he wanted ethics to justify his economics, in the case of Rand she wanted economics to justify her ethics.
“In particular, I wonder whether it’s coherent to disavow utilitarian ethics while at the same time employing economic arguments, as it seems many libertarians do.”
It’s not. Just because I value an end, in this case general prosperity and happiness, does not mean that I would kill to get it. This being said if economics was obviously in drastic conflict with the libertarian ethic, I doubt many of the modern libertarians would stay libertarians. They’re too smart for that.
Many economists have complex and comprehensive views on ethics, but the reverse is not true, which is part of why in modern philosophy departments the general view has (it seems to me) dissolved into socialistic relativism with the major issue at hand being petty disagreements over metaphysics. I’d like to hear contrary views on this.
Also I think that economics is far closer to what I consider the “social science” because it combines all general areas of human life, rather than just one of them like history or philosophy.
@OP: I think that economics provides many of the most powerful critiques of the State order. The essence of the State order, in my view, is the imposition and maintenance of a moral and legal double-standard between agents of the State and all other individuals. So, economics often acts as a “gateway” to critical analysis of the State while ethics provides a substantial deconstruction of both the ends and means of the State.
The HHH introduction of Rothbard’s, The Ethics of Liberty:
Rothbard sought and found support for his contention regarding the possibility of a rational ethic and the reintegration of ethics and eco- nomics based on the notion of private property in the works of the late Scholasticsand,intheirfootsteps,such"modern" natural-rightstheorists as Grotius, Pufendorf, and Locke. Building upon their work, in The Efhics of Liberty Rothbard gives the following answer to the question of what I am justified doing here and now: every person owns his own physical body as well as all nature-given goods which he puts to use with the help of his body before anyone else does; this ownership implieshis right to employ these resources as one sees fit so long as one does not thereby uninvitedly change the physical integrity of another’s property or delimit another’s control over it without his consent. In particular, once a good has been first appropriated or homesteaded by “mixing one’s labor” with it (Locke’s phase), then ownership of it can only be acquired by means of a voluntary (contractual)transfer of its property title from a previous to a later owner. These rights are absolute. Any infringement on them is subject to lawful prosecution by the victim of this infringement or his agent,and is action able in accordance with the principles of strict liability and the proportionality of punishment.
The latter. They are connected through the joint concept of property. Ethical theories are about how property should be allocated. Economics demonstrates the consequences of allocating property in different ways.
I just made a similar post on this in another thread, but I think that it’s interesting that I often hear people like Andrew Napolitano say, “it’s not just an economic travesty, it’s a moral failure.” I think the two often go hand in hand.
But really, economics can deal with ethics. By whichever route of action you choose, you are telling us about something you value. If you eat a burger instead of pizza, I’ll assume that you analyzed the cost and benefits of each choice and prefered the burger. Do you have to justify why you prefer eating burgers to pizza? No. Do you have to justify why you prefer justice, kindness, individual rights, human life, prosperity, well-being, fairness, etc.? No. It’s just part of your human nature. If other humans on the fringe do not share this human nature, then we deal with them because it hurts society at-large. But 99% of us agree on the most basic of basics and we argue about how to maximize the well-being.
Statists think the State is good for society; anti-statists do not. We each have the same goal: the most human happiness. We disagree about how to go there, but there is a right or wrong answer for that as we can test whichever system leads to the most human happiness, as long as we define human happiness beforehand. I find that whenever liberal professers rant about capitalism, it is their fundamental misunderstanding of what capitalism is, not an understanding and repudiation of what capitalism could be, that influences their ranting. Conservatives have this love of country which I think has to be debugged, but both sides have, in my opinion, unnecessary assumptions about what leads to happiness that, if properly exposed to the arguments, could make them shed these misheaded ideas.
The view in these sources seems to be that economics alone cannot make any prescriptions because it lacks a notion of “legitimate property.” To determine whose preferences are legitimate targets of optimization, ethics is required.
But this still suggest that ethics and economics operate independently – you don’t need to know about one to know about the other. This is borne out by the main text of The Ethics of Liberty, where issues such as animal rights, proportionality, etc. are explored without reference to economics at all.
If there is any connection between the two fields, it seems to be just the general fact that both are “about” human action, but I don’t see how one really enlightens the other.
This is just ethics, not an economic explanation of ethics.
The idea that ethical rules must be justified by their consequences maximizing utility. For example, David Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom claims that we can use economic analysis to figure out what ethical rules are “best.” Rothbard states:
Of course, Rothbard engaged generously in economic arguments. Are we to understand that this is simply another (entirely unrelated) hat that he chooses to wear?
If you are LTV, Keynesian, etc you essentially set up an arbitrary ethical or some other immaterial specter framework to conduct the study of material production and distribution of wealth. If you are Austrian, you are analyzing what is and what happens with production and the distribution of wealth, the study of material in a material environment.
I suppose the “ethics” could come in on the fact that leftism or whatever other junk mythological fashionable system you want to bring up fails miserably by almost any standard of measurement you want to use.
I doubt it. Friedman doesn’t talk about ethics in that book (nor anywhere else AFAIK). He argues that anarchy will tend to generate laws, dispute resolutions, punishments, etc that are most economically efficient, i.e. those that best satisfy consumers. He doesn’t say whether he thinks any particular laws are ethical or unethical, and doesn’t believe economic analysis can be used to identify what is ethical and what is unethical.
When he was using economic arguments, he was making an implicit assumption that his readers / listeners favor prosperity to poverty.
With all this talk of Rothbard I would just like to comment upon how fortunate it is that Rothbard’s non-consequentialist based objective ethics happened to fit perfectly with his economic theories… It’s just so fortunate that he didn’t have to sacrifice one in favor the other
