ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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Bias?
I hadn't seen this before - but I just read your opening statement. Needless to say, I agree with it in it's entirety. My one question is - "how is that libertarianism"? You're really just describing all variants of liberalism. It certainly describes libertarianism too, but if you had just made that opening statements and left out the libertarian reference I never would have known you were a libertarian.
If you accurately related his views on genocide and canibalism, Hanson comes across as a caricature of a position compared to you. But where does that leave us? It seems to leave us concluding that efficiency is important but it should be cognizant of foundational ethics. That seems pretty vague. I think you'll find almost everyone agreeing with that, and yet still having a lot to disagree with each other about.
Robin seems to be referring to justice as the outcome of a bargaining problem. Well, consider this bargaining problem. There is a state of nature with a technologically advanced society and a primitive society. The advanced society would like the fruits of the labor of the primitive society. The primitive society disagrees. Thus we have an irreducible tradeoff. The primitive society is the least cost avoider.
What is the efficient thing to do?
I see two responses.
1. Claim that the primitive society could never be the least cost avoider.
2. Bite the bullet and put liberty ahead of efficiency.
Well, I sure feel like an idiot. I did not read Caplan's opening until after my comment. As Caplan points out "Robin’s devotion to efficiency is so strong, however, that he will bite any bullet you present." So apparently he takes a third option: slavery and genocide. That is so shocking that I don't even feel comfortable writing it.
It seems to me that Robin might categorize your outlandish examples (e.g. trillions of Nazis), as examples of "far" worlds that are too different from ours for our moral intuitions to be informative.
Hi Bob,
I don't think all those cases are "far" worlds (I like that term by the way - did you create it? Very useful for the unorthodox critical cases). For example, if you set aside morality it might be profitable for a corporation to hire some mercenaries and use slave labor for manufacturing.
yeah Justin! I agree with your point of view. They are only useful for those unorthodox critical cases.
I don't mean to be very confident in the general rule; I'm just less confident in most case specific intuitions. Such intuitions are usually about *hypothetical* scenarios far away from the person's immediate experience. So they are pretty far. I might trust my personal intuitions about specific concrete situations in which I might find myself, but I haven't been in a very wide range of situations yet.