From: mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.marrou,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: LibEcon (Was: Re: Marrou shows his true colors!)
Date: 5 Nov 1992 15:00:15 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.2.36

In article <1992Nov3.193443.26649@b30.ingr.com> craig@jido.b30.ingr.com writes:
>In article <1d41ksINNmb@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
>[...]
>   ... [I'm] interested in looking at a larger 
>   set of costs and benefits than the big parties or libertarians want to.
>   For example, libertarians like to look exclusively at the costs and benefits
>   accruing to the one individual making a decision(F).  This shallow decision
>   making ignores downstream effects, and leaves some problems to others who
>   may not have the means to solve them...
>
>What selection of libertarian economists are you basing this on, Mike?
>If you look at e.g., Hazlitt, you see a lot of concern for following
>the consequences of policies "downstream", and that's where a lot of
>the well-meaning utilitarian/modern liberal ideas get off the track.
>For a fact, if you were to get your LibEcon 101 mostly from USENET,
>you'd be getting a very skewed sample ...

Good point.  Why is it that most libertarians on the net seem incapable of
effectively transmitting theory from someone like Hazlitt, and instead
rely on bumpersticker slogans and one step thinking?

I'd like to see such examples of downstream consequences made explicit
when I argue with libertarians.  Please exhort your fellows to be a little
less shallow if they want to argue.

>I wonder how many people are actually using the "utilitarian" label
>for anything coherent nowadays, anyway? I noticed a diatribe about
>"The New Utilitarianism" in the Mensa Bulletin of all places, and it
>was by someone affiliated with a "utilitarian think tank" -- I have no
>way of telling if his think tank is the same as mine -- one guy with a
>computer and a modem in a messy study ;-) but his essay surely read
>that way. (I'm not trying to tar you with any brushes here, just
>thinking aloud. The article is at home or I'd ID it better. If
>anyone's curious, send email and I'll look it up).

My reaction to Mensa is "Eeewww..."  A matter of taste.

>David D. Friedman did a short piece on evaluating policies in
>_Machinery of Freedom_. To give the shortest possible summary from
>memory, he said to use utilitarian evaluation only as a tie-breaker,
>in cases where it's not clear how to choose based on libertarian
>principles, of which (cases) he knew at most a handful. Putting
>utility first can get you 'way off in the weeds ...

So Friedman would advocate libertarian principles over severe disutility?
(On a theoretical basis of course.)  Wouldn't that put a "pure" libertarian
society at a disadvantage to an "impure" libertarian society that would
sacrifice principles in such a case?

It strikes me that giving principles primacy over utility is a dangerous
strategy for maintaining a society: it restricts options and makes you
more vulnerable to outside manipulation.

Mike Huben

"Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the
evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species."
Konrad Lorenz in "On Agression" 1966.