Autofyrsto links to an old post of mine on libertarian social engineering, where I make the argument that libertarians are the biggest viable social engineers in America today (I'm assuming - safely, I think - that state socialism is off the table). Strict libertarianism takes a blueprint for the organization of society that it has derived rationally from a few essential principles and seeks to impose that blueprint on society. They don't see it as an imposition, of course, because they see it as a reaction to other impositions. But their perception is largely irrelevant. The strict sort of libertarians (rather than "libertarians on the margin", like Greg Mankiw) pursue radical change on the basis of very little experimentation or experience. That's not inherently good or bad, but it's something to be cautious about.
Autofyrsto primarily takes issue with what he perceives to be my assault on reason and rationalism. He starts by making an issue out of the point in the David Brooks article I link where Brooks notes that Edmund Burke was "horrified" that "individuals would use abstract reason to sweep away arrangements that had stood the test of time". Atuofyrsto goes on to protest when in the blog post I link to Greg Mankiw admits that he "recoil[s] at more radical libertarian positions". Autofrysto writes that "If steam comes out of the libertarians’ ears, it is only at the frustration of arguing with people who openly and proudly muzzle the voice of reason so that they may continue to believe, at our expense, whatever makes them comfortable." Muzzle the voice of reason? This is an odd interpretation of what Brooks, Mankiw, and I were doing. We aren't unreasonable or unrational people, after all. It would be strange for us "openly and proudly muzzle the voice of reason". All we're suggesting is that human society is complex and a single person or a group of people can't map out a blueprint for it. Reason is a tool of the mind to be used, not abused. Autofyrsto seems to be arguing that the admonition not to abuse reason is an attempt to muzzle it. I disagree.
Autofrysto then goes on to cite a favorite of this blog, Thomas Paine:
"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture. Enjoy, sir, your insensibility of feeling and reflecting. It is the prerogative of animals. And no man will envy you these honors, in which a savage only can be your rival and a bear your master."
Again, no one here is renouncing the use and authority of reason. Quite the contrary. I am renouncing the unreasonable application of reason. I am renouncing the fetishism of reason. I am upholding the idea that man's reason is a great asset but renouncing the idea that it is capable of forseeing and planning all things. I'm advocating common sense, in other words, which makes the rebuke with Paine a little laughable. Autofrysto ends with this point, which I can agree with him whole-heartedly on:
"We should carefully scrutinize the so-called “wisdom of the ages” in light of reason, and abandon it when it fails that scrutiny. I don’t even know how to explain why. It seems so self-evident."
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
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Extreme rationalism was probably a tool for absolute power.
ReplyDeleteUsing mathematical, deductive logic on creatures as complicated as humans, those philosophes managed to make a linear series of reasoning that would justify arbitrary control and forced change of society.
von Mises once remarked that "etatism" exists as a word, because the French were the ones who pioneered it. In their quest to create a rational, scientific, secular society run by pure logic, they created a brutal kind of paternalism.
I don't have any kind of sweeping, all encompassing world view, but I am opposed to such thought in all its forms.
As Michael Oakeshott said, "Rationalism is thoroughly unreasonable."
ReplyDeleteOh, and Paine is about as egregious an example of rationalism as one might find!
ReplyDeleteYou have written:
ReplyDelete"All we're suggesting is that human society is complex and a single person or a group of people can't map out a blueprint for it. Reason is a tool of the mind to be used, not abused."
Our disagreement is on what, exactly, constitutes "abuse" of reason. Brooks wrote:
"Burke was horrified at the thought that individuals would use abstract reason to sweep away arrangements that had stood the test of time. He believed in continual reform, but reform is not novelty. You don’t try to change the fundamental substance of an institution. You try to modify from within, keeping the good parts and adjusting the parts that aren’t working. ..."
Notice the imperatives: "You don't... . You try... .". If reason suggests otherwise, then reason must be ignored. Brooks continued:
"Yet there is the stubborn fact of human nature. The Scots [i.e. Burke] were right, and the French [i.e. Paine] were wrong."
I gleaned from these passages that Brooks believes that the fundamentals of long-standing institutions are, as a rule, beyond reasonable scrutiny. In other words, Brooks seems to argue that those with the audacity to scrutinize the fundamentals of long-standing institutions are abusing reason.
This seems to me to directly contradict the final statement, with which you purport to agree:
"We should carefully scrutinize the so-called “wisdom of the ages” in light of reason, and abandon it when it fails that scrutiny."
My question is: Is this idea compatible with Brook's apparent conclusion? I don't see how they are. Have I misunderstood Brooks?
autofrysto -
ReplyDeleteYou are focusing on the words "abstract reason" when you should be focusing on "sweep away". Empiricism is not irrationalism, after all. You can think of it as the conclusion that it is rational to assume that what we perceive as rational conclusions are often not rational after all, so radically altering arrangements in a short period of time in response to what we perceive to be a rational alternative is a bad idea. It's not rationalism that is being abandoned here - it's a faith in our ability to conceive of changes that radical with enough confidence to implement them in an extensive or uncautious way.
re: "I gleaned from these passages that Brooks believes that the fundamentals of long-standing institutions are, as a rule, beyond reasonable scrutiny."
Really? If that's what he said that went right over my head. If this is what he said I definitely disagree with him as well.
re: "Brooks seems to argue that those with the audacity to scrutinize the fundamentals of long-standing institutions"
You're starting to get incoherent here. You really think Brooks is rejecting scrutiny? That strikes me as absurd. What he rejects is radical breaks in practice based on abstractions we've dreamed up. He certainly doesn't seem to me to be calling scrutiny audacious or even action on that scrutiny - only action that dismisses what Vernon Smith called the "ecological rationality" of emergent order.
re: "Have I misunderstood Brooks?"
To say you have misunderstood Brooks is a little much... I would say you wildly caricature him. And he in all likelihood caricatured the French. I embrace Brooks here as making an important point, not necessarily as providing an entirely defensible intellectual history.
"...and seeks to impose that blueprint on society."
ReplyDeleteVia that society's consent of course.
Friedman always stated that the only appropriate way to do such a thing was democratically.
"The strict sort of libertarians (rather than "libertarians on the margin", like Greg Mankiw) pursue radical change on the basis of very little experimentation or experience."
This statement is beyond silly and is rather disappointing coming from you. In American society we have a social scene littered with failed and disastrous policies that continue on like zombies which we are unable to kill under the current mindset.
You of course completely mis-characterize a whole subset of strict libertarians who base their viewpoint largely upon tradition. It would sort of do you some good to read some of the history of libertarian thought; "Radicals for Capitalism" is a good start. What you do is create a strawman here.
re: "You're starting to get incoherent here. You really think Brooks is rejecting scrutiny? That strikes me as absurd. What he rejects is radical breaks in practice based on abstractions we've dreamed up. He certainly doesn't seem to me to be calling scrutiny audacious or even action on that scrutiny - only action that dismisses what Vernon Smith called the 'ecological rationality' of emergent order."
ReplyDeleteThat we've read the passages differently does not necessarily make me the incoherent one. Sure, that point of view struck me as absurd, but I regularly read things that I find to be quite absurd. When you read a point of view that sounds absurd, don't rule out possibility that it is, in fact, absurd.
I see Brooks's absurdity reflected in your re-worded interpretation. The moral of Brooks's story is now that you may scrutinize the ecological rationality of emergent order if you like, but if your scrutiny amounts to a dismissal, then, for heaven's sake please do not act on it. Heaven knows that you are probably wrong and that the ecological rationality of the emergent order is probably right. Certain things are simply indismissible.
I have trouble understanding this as anything other than a pure rejection of reason thinly clothed in five-syllable words.
Perhaps I should read a little Vernon Smith?
Gary -
ReplyDeleteBuilt upon an intellectual tradition, perhaps. Certainly not a practical tradition.
autofrysto -
ReplyDeletePerhaps it would help if you clarified why "be cautious about your ability to reason through enormously complex social processes as a whole" translates to "a pure rejection of reason thinly clothed in five-syllable words". What are you seeing in what I am saying that suggests to you that reason is off the table as a tool for scrutinizing and revising the social order?
@Gene Callahan
ReplyDeleteAnd when we create a religion based on reason, which itself is unreasonable, we create an ideology of suicide for human civilization.
As James Burnham pointed out.
That is why American liberalism is a doomed failure. Under the American liberal movement, we have a giant army of people who think that if just enough legislations were passed, if just enough degrees were promulgated, if just enough people had housing ownership, and if just enough hordes of educators and educationists build an educational bureaucracy, all of society's problems will disappear.
Such is the result of viewing human beings as atoms and planets that can be predicted and molded.
As has been pointed out by Haidt, libertarians are most distinguished from others by their preference for negative freedoms. This means that people can choose how to arrange their own lives, because (paying attention, DK?) there is so little blueprint. Calling the freedom to choose a blueprint the imposition of a blueprint is pretty pinheaded.
ReplyDeleteAlmost any idea espoused by libertarians has been tried over and over and worked smashingly: private property, privatized roads, privatized "courts," privatized medicine, privatized schools, minimal taxation, markets, fewer guns in peoples' faces, etc. To call any idea espoused by most libertarians "untested" is pretty pinheaded.
The American Management Association is a giant body of private corporate law that privately arbitrates contracts and disputes, and English law since time immemorial requires companies to maintain Articles of Association where they personally decide how stakeholder relationships and agreements are handled. Legislators do not have the time to keep updating corporate law.
ReplyDeleteThere is and has been a system of private law for a long time, and most of it was incorporated into the government's system of law. Which is to say that the government's rules for property and contract enforcement are redundant, and good corporate law and bad corporate law is merely distinguished by how quickly the government adopts existing private arbitration techniques.
mobsrule - none of those things you listed are anything I'm coming out against, and you don't have to be a libertarian to promote them! If you want to be a libertarian on the margin like Greg Mankiw and spend your time emphasizing that those elements of libertarianism (really they're elements of classical liberalism in general) have stood the test of time and pass both rational and experiential tests I am (are you paying attention mobsrule?) 100% behind you on that point. The real sticking point comes with a minarchist state instead of a constitutionally limited democratic state. A state where constitutional self-government is severely curtailed vs. one that acknowledges self-government. This is where libertarians propose substantial overhauls - and my message is simply: "let's step back and take this more cautiously - the modern American state evolved the way it did over time, and while there are certainly pieces that can be dropped or changed a full-scale overhaul because of an idea you've had that you've never tested seems like something that we should take more gradually".
ReplyDeleteDon't wrap yourself in property rights that you know I and everyone else in the liberal tradition agrees with and tell me that's libertarianism.
re: "Perhaps it would help if you clarified why 'be cautious about your ability to reason through enormously complex social processes as a whole' translates to 'a pure rejection of reason thinly clothed in five-syllable words'. What are you seeing in what I am saying that suggests to you that reason is off the table as a tool for scrutinizing and revising the social order?"
ReplyDeleteThe first passage does not translate to the second, but then again, I did not quote the first passage in my previous comment. Please stay with me. The passage I quoted in my previous comment was, exactly, although edited for space: "Brooks ... rejects ... action that dismisses ... the 'ecological rationality' of emergent order." The rejection seems to hold regardless of any rational basis for the action. The five-syllable words in question are 'ecological' and 'rationality'. I do not understand how this does not translate to a rejection of reason thinly clothed in five-syllable words.
As I read Brooks, he is not saying "be cautious". As I read Brooks, he is simply saying "don't do it." There is a difference. "Be cautious," is a proposition that I support. "Don't to it," is not.
Perhaps you could quote for me the passage of the Brooks column in which he expresses support for the "be cautious" approach, as opposed to the "don't do it" approach? I re-read the column and could not find it.
On your end, perhaps you can explain to me how "reason" translates to abstractions "we've dreamed up." This does not sound to me like the language of a person who holds reason in particularly high regard. I recognize a difference between "reasoning" and "dreaming".
But why are you taking a plea to apply reason in a reasonable way as rejecting reason?
ReplyDeleteI could just as easily accuse you of "rejecting reason" because you embrace it so haphazardly. I think it's more sensible, though, to say all of us have apparently embraced reason and we have differences on protocols for its reasonable use in society.
You ask for the part where Brooks urged caution. The whole article covers this, but this is especially relevant:
"Burke was horrified at the thought that individuals would use abstract reason to sweep away arrangements that had stood the test of time. He believed in continual reform, but reform is not novelty. You don’t try to change the fundamental substance of an institution. You try to modify from within, keeping the good parts and adjusting the parts that aren’t working.
If you try to re-engineer society on the basis of abstract plans, Burke argued, you’ll end up causing all sorts of fresh difficulties, because the social organism is more complicated than you can possibly know. We could never get things right from scratch."
What's completely missing is this idea that you're promoting that Brooks wants to freeze society in time, never changing it when reason suggests a change is worthwhile.
As for reason and dreaming - a lot of people use the excuse of rationalism to derive very elaborate conceptions of ideal social orders from a few simple premises. They often don't closely interrogate those premises. They often don't consult experience. They often leverage more out of those premises than is justified. Communists do this. Libertarians do this. Technocratic utopians do this. I called this "dreaming" because it's a sort of wistful faux-rationalism. If you have intuitions that minimally intrusive government is efficient and people can take care of themselves, that's a good thing. I have those intuitions too. You move things in that direction, take a look at what happens, re-evaluate, decide if other competing priorities should take precedence, etc. That "libertarianism at the margins" disposition strikes me as reasonable. But a lot of libertarians think they're smart enough to reason through a social order much broader than that "think it through, test, and evaluate" approach. I call that "dreaming" for its perjorative effect. If you think I should have used another word, perhaps you're right. But that's what I mean. It's a way to highlight a misappropriation of reason.
I should note - you're getting caught up on that first line: "Burke was horrified at the thought that individuals would use abstract reason to sweep away arrangements that had stood the test of time."
ReplyDeleteI would think a trained lawyer could figure out that the fact that he was horrified at "sweeping away arrangements" does not imply that he was horrified at doing other things on the basis of reason.
You take one application that he was horrified about and then you try to tell us he was horrified at all applications? That logic would not hold up in court, my friend. And for an alleged friend of reason I'm surprised you're making claims that amount to "A->B, therefore A->C & A->D & A->E, etc.".
"I do not understand how this does not translate to a rejection of reason thinly clothed in five-syllable words."
ReplyDeleteThen you have a lot of reading to do. May I suggest the later Wittgenstein, the later Hayek, Oakeshott, Polanyi, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre? You might also pick up Vernon Smith's latest book (_Rationality in Economics_), which I reviewed last year in _The Review of Political Economy_. Smith's book discusses ecological rationality extensively.
Smith has a shorter AER article on it as well.
ReplyDelete"Calling the freedom to choose a blueprint the imposition of a blueprint is pretty pinheaded."
ReplyDeleteNo, because that is not, in fact, what libertarianism amounts to. (That is your self-image; it's just not what happens in reality.)
In *reality*, libertarianism proceeds by forcing people to accept market arrangements over any other possible social arrangement.
DK,
ReplyDeleteWhat libertarian idea is untested? Is it some gestalt you're talking about? Or is it only legitimately counted as a tested idea if it's been done in the period of american history you've read a book about?
GC,
There are many arrangements that aren't market and aren't govt. How does one force someone to use markets? If you want collective action in a liberty state, you convince others to go along with you. Libertarians won't stop you; they'll ask you to stop pointing the gun at them.
That some sort of modern minarchist government in a modern economy would do better than a modern constitutional democracy in a modern economy.
ReplyDeleteAbove, for example, mobsrule notes private schools, private property, private roads, etc. as successes. If that's what you count as a test of a libertarian idea, then the ranks of libertarians are going to swell tremendously. Everyone in the liberal tradition includes these things in their understanding of the ideal social order. These have been tested. They've done well. They've stuck around because societies incorporating these things have done better than societies that have not. I don't see how the very clear evidence that these things perform well is evidence for a minarchist state.
In response to your question to Gene, I think the point is more that libertarianism restricts other forms of self-government. This formed the bulk of Jefferson's complaint against George III in the Declaration - there were certainly citations of positive tyranny on the king's part, but a lot of the accusations were that the king would not let them manage their own affairs through a democratic government. Why do you think libertarians are wary of classical liberal proclamations about democracy and why do you think many even have a soft spot in their hearts for monarchy? It's because libertarianism requires the restriction of self-governance.
Yes, but for good reason.
ReplyDeleteLook, one does not have to be a "libertarian" to come to the conclusion that "self-governance" itself is dangerous, destructive, and not all that it is made out to be.
The same conclusions have been reached by the so-called American "paleoconservatives" and French traditionalists such as Tocqueville.
California's and San Francisco's local laws and self-governance have led to deliberate laws to raise housing and property prices. Thomas Sowell was joking that one will almost never find a black man walking across San Francisco. Why? Because zoning laws, housing restriction laws, and all the rest have made it too expensive for black Americans to own housing in the area. They are driven out.
No matter how "communal" these arrangements are and no matter how closely knit the group of people who implement, the end result is always about one party being made to lose out and the other gaining everything at all other's expense. Many Californians get to raise their property prices and drive out other locals they don't want there.
Yes, it is such social arrangements that people are "forced" not to use. How dare anybody want that?
Prateek -
ReplyDeleteThat's precisely why I almost always have "constitutional" in front of "democracy". Tocqueville stands between radical democrats and radical libertarians, and it's precisely the sort of ground I'm trying to stake out.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteA quite practical tradition actually.
You pontificate on a subject you really know very little about.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteName drop much? Tocqueville's politics are slightly more complex than how you describe them.
re: "You pontificate on a subject you really know very little about"
ReplyDeleteThat's projection if I ever saw it. I stick to a few central ideas on this blog on issues that I've put a lot of thought into and know quite well. I'm not the one running around with an opinion on everything and dragging the discussion in all sorts of weird directions because there's some link or person I want to share.
re: "Name drop much? Tocqueville's politics are slightly more complex than how you describe them."
Huh? I didn't drop any names - I was responding to Prateek's mention of Tocqueville. And I was responding to a very specific insight that Tocqueville had. Neither of us even pretended to provide a summation of his politics.
Geez Gary - somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning!
No Daniel, what you do is define libertarianism in the way that is easiest for you to attack it. It thus becomes this sort of slow lumbering beast that cannot think.
ReplyDelete"I'm not the one running around with an opinion on everything and dragging the discussion in all sorts of weird directions because there's some link or person I want to share."
Which has what to do with what exactly? Nothing of course. Hand wave much?
Looks like name dropping to me.
I'm identifying a specific approach to libertarianism and criticizing it. I was pretty clear that that's not the only way that people approach, talk about, or think of themselves as libertarians.
ReplyDeletere: "Looks like name dropping to me"
Well, if by that you mean "using someone's name in a sentence" then I suppose I was name dropping.
As for my post-slumber activities, they have been perfectly sublime.
ReplyDeleteI do not think that you treat libertarianism fairly or that you know much about the historical or intellectual content of libertarianism either. You don't show any evidence of such as far as I can tell.
No, you talk about "strict libertarians" as opposed to those "on the margin." Well, I am a strict libertarian, and I don't approach libertarianism in any way that you describe. There are a whole zoo of strict libertarians out there; most of them don't approach libertarianism the way you describe.
ReplyDeleteOf course Tocqueville's views were more complex, Gary. But I think Daniel was giving one legitimate angle from which we may see the matter.
ReplyDeleteEither way, the truth is obviously not always a halfway point between two untruths, and I think there is good case to be made for how democracy should be seen as the greater problem that is to be minimized as far as possible, if not eliminated.
One example, going back to Tocqueville himself, is that demolishing the aristocracy and giving universal suffrage allowed the French leader to have absolute power and to not have any strong group of aristocrats to counter his power. Thus comes a man like Napoleon and later Napoleon III. It's like that illustration in the Simpsons where Mr. Burns never got sick, because several dangerous viruses were competing inside his body.
Now, Gary, you might neither like the central banking institution nor like the legislature. But you have to admit that if Bernanke were pushed over and Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich got charge of monetary policy, US might be in trouble.
Today's central banks are another imperfect institution like the aristocracy, where better educated and better thinking technocratic aristocrats stuff down the power of populists.
Those better educated people are a source of another problem in themselves, just the way more local government is a problem in itself. Like democracy, their power too should be compromised and pushed down.
WOW There has been a lot of activity here. Sorry I have not kept up. I'm just responding to the posts directed to me.
ReplyDeletere: "But why are you taking a plea to apply reason in a reasonable way as rejecting reason?"
Perhaps you could direct me to the work of some philosophers who have extrapolated this futher, but I understand the phrase "apply reason in a reasonable way" to be redundant. The way I see it, either a person is applying reason in a given situation or a person is employing fallacy in a given situation. I think the phrase properly collapses simply to "apply reason". That said, I do not see Brooks's column as a plea to "apply reason in a reasonable way". I see it instead as a plea to apply reason to some situations but not to others. I am of the opinion that reason should be applied in all situations and fallacy should be avoided in all situations. Your next point helps clarify:
re: "What's completely missing is this idea that you're promoting that Brooks wants to freeze society in time, never changing it when reason suggests a change is worthwhile."
ReplyDeleteI apologize for being unclear. I do not understand Brooks to reject all uses of reason. As I understand Brooks, he approves the use of reason for the purpose of tinkering at the margins, but he rejects the use of reason for the purpose of sweeping away the wisdom of the ages. My position is that one must always apply reason. Actually, I believe that both of these named uses are poles on the same continuum of evaluating societal institutions. I would always apply reason when evaluating societal institutions. Period. Surely, I would admonish that the closer one is to advocating sweeping away the wisdom of the ages, the more careful one should be to avoid fallacy. However, I do not believe that reason applied to the sweeping away is conclusively unreasonable.
re: "You take one application that he was horrified about and then you try to tell us he was horrified at all applications? That logic would not hold up in court, my friend. And for an alleged friend of reason I'm surprised you're making claims that amount to 'A->B, therefore A->C & A->D & A->E, etc.'."
ReplyDeleteI apologize once again, but hopefully this is now clear. Let's suppose that purpose 'B' represents the proper evaluation of "the wisdom of the ages". Let us suppose further that David Brooks accepts the use of reason for purposes 'C', 'D', and 'E'. The latter is fine. I applaud that, but Brooks's acceptance of reason for purposes 'C', 'D', and 'E', is no defense for his rejection of reason for purpose 'B'.
If you would like to talk more about what would and what would not hold up in court, I'd be happy to indulge you.
"How does one force someone to use markets?"
ReplyDeleteTry enclosures, to start with. Zone to make cottage farming illegal. Switch from taxes in kind to taxes in cash to force people into the cash economy. There are tons of ways to do this, and they were extensively employed throughout the 18th and 19th century.
I know, I know: None of this is the trufry market. Just reality.
"Perhaps you could direct me to the work of some philosophers who have extrapolated this futher, but I understand the phrase "apply reason in a reasonable way" to be redundant."
ReplyDeleteAristotle, _Nichomachean Ethics_. Politics, for instance, is not a deductive science. To try to treat it as one is to apply reason in an unreasonable fashion. Or to sweep away the wisdom of the ages because you CAN'T PRESENTLY SEE THE VALUE OF IT is also extremely unreasonable.
"Surely, I would admonish that the closer one is to advocating sweeping away the wisdom of the ages, the more careful one should be to avoid fallacy."
ReplyDeleteHere is your fallacy, autofyrsto: "the wisdom of the ages" does not generally consist in pieces of formal logic, some of which can be said to be "fallacies," or where one's evaluation of them is likely to contain formal fallacies. Instead, they are rules of thumb, or guidelines. They apply in some situations and not others. To figure out which is which takes not formal logic but experience.
re: "Perhaps you could direct me to the work of some philosophers who have extrapolated this futher, but I understand the phrase "apply reason in a reasonable way" to be redundant. The way I see it, either a person is applying reason in a given situation or a person is employing fallacy in a given situation."
ReplyDeleteThis is entirely legitimate. I was hoping my way of putting it would clarify the differences. If you think this language is more appropriate, then I can leave it simply at "you are employing fallacy and calling it reason".
"Name drop much? Tocqueville's politics are slightly more complex than how you describe them."
ReplyDeleteGary, did you notice it was Prateek who brought Tocqueville up, not Daniel?
"No matter how "communal" these arrangements are and no matter how closely knit the group of people who implement, the end result is always about one party being made to lose out and the other gaining everything at all other's expense."
ReplyDeleteSo says you. It might not be so obvious to a peasant who lost access to his communal land and thus was forced to work 14 hours a day in a factory that he has just been forced into a win-win situation.
re: "It might not be so obvious to a peasant who lost access to his communal land and thus was forced to work 14 hours a day in a factory that he has just been forced into a win-win situation."
ReplyDeleteMutual beneficiality is a fair enough assumption, but as I think you are implying - fairly weak. But optimality is always with reference to some status quo. I don't know why this is always so hard for people to internalize.
re: "This is entirely legitimate. I was hoping my way of putting it would clarify the differences. If you think this language is more appropriate, then I can leave it simply at 'you are employing fallacy and calling it reason'.
ReplyDeleteI'd like that. You can do it for yourself, but unfortunately you can not do it on Brooks's behalf.
Your next step would be to identify the fallacy. To my knowledge, nobody in any of the above-referenced posts has ventured to do this.
Of course, that should take a full post rather than another comment. If you'd like to direct me to one or two, I'd be delighted to have a look.
re: "Your next step would be to identify the fallacy"
ReplyDeleteOh, well I figured we'd been over this.
Humans have restricted and uncertain knowledge of the detailed circumstances of society. Society is complex and subject to stable evolutionary arrangements and sudden collapses (cascade behavior) that are largely unforseeable because the knowledge of any given human is restricted and uncertain. Identifying a broad plan for the organization of society on the basis of logical derivations from a few premises risks an inability to account for unforseen circumstances. One can rationally expect evolutionary processes - the emergence of a social order over time - to be robust to social instabilities precisely because social orders that are vulnerable to these instabilities are selected out over time. The rational approach, then, would be to be circumspect about substituting ones own logically derived social order for an evolved social order. This does not mean that logical derivations are completely useless. They may offer substantial improvements. But an understanding of the limits of the human mind would dictate that a rational approach would be to substitute logical derivations for time-tested experience cautiously and perhaps in limited, incremental ways.
To do otherwise would fallaciously assume more for the human mind than it has to offer us.
I've addressed this in other posts... no time now, but I'll try to provide links in this same comment section later.
Mark Pennington (a reader at the University of London) has a great deal to say on the topic of rationality and the limits to such: http://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-podcast/robust-political-economy
ReplyDeleteHis argument being in part that our limited rationality makes a good argument for classical liberalism.
Gene Callahan, your usage of Enclosure Acts example is, ironically, a repetition of my very point about local laws and it is especially a repetition of my example of zoning laws, which have had similarly destructive effects.
ReplyDeleteMuch the way these "localized", "communal", social arrangements such as Enclosure Acts led to a destruction of a way of life for thousands of English peasants, the zoning laws in California led to a destruction of a way of life for thousands of working class Americans who were shut out of towns that offered better jobs.
As I said, politics is a zero-sum game, and the only way to win this game is to not play at all. Local politics is no different.
Sir, I am not an ideological person, I do not have top down plans for society, and neither should you and Daniel. Modern Britain is a perfect example of that supposed democratic paradise of localised, decentralised, and empowered city and town councils - these eccentric councils that punish people for smiling or cursing against minorities are the fine example of local government ad absurdum.
This whole line about robustness of emergent order in social arrangements would make more sense coming from someone who doesn't advocate for national single-payer health care in the US. The whole point of this post is to generate a culture-war comment count by creating strawmen and then calling libertarianism untested. More Keynes, please. I want to hear more about your particular take on the super empirical science of Keynesian macro.
ReplyDeletePlus. Why is there no wiki entry for cottage farming and nobody needs to force people to use money. One can trade in kind happily in a market if there are few options, but money always emerges because it's awesome.
re: "Oh, well I figured we'd been over this. ... One can rationally expect evolutionary processes - the emergence of a social order over time...[and so on]"
ReplyDeleteOkay, I have this legal mind. You've alluded to it. I prefer to deal in "actual cases and controversies." What I mean by "identify the fallacy", is that I'd rather you respond to the actual words that libertarians actually say, rather than to these sorts of generalized ideas that you project onto libertarians. Do me that favor, eh?
I thought your line of reasoning was very interesting. I'd like to bring it back over to my blog to respond in greater detail. You've given me something to think about!
Gary -
ReplyDeletere: "His argument being in part that our limited rationality makes a good argument for classical liberalism."
Yes, it certainly does.
Prateek -
Some of those local councils sound absurd, but we have a saying in America that the states are the "laboratories of democracy". Self-governance fails just like agents fail in the market. It's better for decentralized government to fail because it won't take everyone down with it - it's more robust. The flip side of that is that experimentation at the state level can provide good guidance for other states. Different solutions to different problems can be tried simultaneously, and everyone learns from it.
mobsrule -
Have I ever supported single-payer? I know I've come out in favor of a public option, but I don't think I've ever supported single-payer and you honestly haven't been commenting here all that long so I'm not sure how you would conclude that. I may have noted that single-payer is preferable to some other worse alternative, but I'm not a proponent of it by any means.