Re: What to call "Econ-Libertarians"?
Seth David Schoen (schoen@uclink4.Berkeley.EDU)
22 Oct 1997 15:27:15 GMT
Daniel Burton writes:
>Seth David Schoen <schoen@uclink4.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>
>: I think "consequential" or "consequentialist" captures it well. You could
>: then contrast this with a "nonconsequentalist" or an "intrinsicist" or a
>: "rightist" libertarian (in the sense of "of or pertaining to rights", not
>: in the sense of "of or pertaining to the right"). I'd say "per se
>: libertarian", but people don't like using "per se" as an adjective that way.
>
>A good word for this that I learned in my Polticial Science class is
>"deontologist" (from the school of thought called "deontology"). That is
>someone who believes that actions should be bound by a certain set of
>rules rather than their ultimate consequences. The classic example of a
>deontologist doctrine is the Biblical Ten Commandments.
That's the word I was trying to think of for "per se". Thanks!
>: I (a nonconsequentialist style libertarian) have long believed (perhaps from
>: too much conventional wisdom) that thorough, honest consequentialists would
>: never be libertarians, and I'm trying to write an article about this. On the
>: other hand, maybe some of your research in economics is helping to disprove
>: this conventional wisdom!
>On the contrary, it would seem to me that anyone who took the time to
>examine the ultimate consequences of government intervention would find
>that it invariably steps beyond its original intentions, and ultimately
>cannot be restrained to do only what is good for the country and not what
>isn't. This is one of the reasons that, even though I think some
>government interventions into the economy would be beneficial, I am
>nevertheless against them. (Not the only reason -- I try to balance all
>the various angles of analysis of issues that I can)
Before FDR, so I've heard, there weren't so many concerns about this.
Maybe it's possible to go back?
>If you look at Harry Browne's book _Why Government Doesn't Work_, almost
>all of the arguments presented are consequentialist.
I think a lot of these are exaggerated and unrealistic. Browne liked to
ignore negative consequences of things by arguing that some other benefit
of deregulation would make up for them. I hope all his benefits come
through!
I'm in favor of the deregulations Browne proposes from deontological
reasons, but I think he's just wrong and most libertarians are just
wrong about their optimism about some practical things.
Yes, there will be a huge increase in private charity if the income tax
is eliminated, but will it really be enough to make up for welfare?
All of the things government now provides still have to be paid for
if people desire them. I believe that most of them can be provided
more cheaply by the private sector, but lots of people don't think
about all of the government services out there, and I'm not persuaded
that it will suddenly occur to them that they actually want to pay for
some of these things. (Partly, it's the public goods problem, and
partly, it's a problem of apathy.)
There was also a statistic that the average person receives government
services with a greater dollar value than what he pays in taxes. This
makes sense, if true, because rich people are being taxed so much more
than everyone else. In that case, eliminating taxation will not benefit
the average person from a financial point of view, assuming that people
individually want most of the government services they actually use.
It can still be supported deontologically. :-)
--
Seth David Schoen L&S '01 (undeclared) / schoen@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Magna dis immortalibus habenda est atque huic ipsi Iovi Statori, antiquissimo
custodi huius urbis, gratia, quod hanc tam taetram, tam horribilem tamque
infestam rei publicae pestem totiens iam effugimus. -- Cicero, in Catilinam I