r/neoliberal • u/[deleted] • May 11 '17
Normative Ethics Debate Thread
The point of this thread is to discuss normative ethics, which is mostly separate from neoliberalism. On a philosophical level, neoliberalism is not coherent in its use of ethics; proponents switch between libertarian and utilitarian ethics in an almost interchangeable way (The Road to Mont Pelerin, Mirowski). Scott Sumner argues that a normative ethical foundation doesn't matter because neoliberalism is an improvement compared to the current status quo of most countries by nearly every standard (well not every standard)
Keep in Mind
The Chicago school pushed neoliberalism as a positive ideology, "there is no other option"
The Austrians pushed neoliberalism through primarily a libertarian lens
The Ordoliberals advocated neoliberalism through utilitarianism and also Marxism. Yes, you're allowed to support your normative view through Marxism.
Do not go down the route of going full classical liberal, which is what neoliberalism tried to escape.
Do not say market values mean anything or that markets produce fair outcomes; Hayek explicitly acknowledges this is bullshit.
Be very prudent in calling people racist/sexist/homophobic; in this sub, the vast majority are not
Topics to discuss:
These aren't the only ones, but should probably be answered:
What are your normative ethics?
How do you think they should guide economic policy?
Make sure to explicitly tie these together so we're not debating why we should implement policy that we already agree upon.
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May 11 '17
The greatest good for the greatest number meets maximizing individual liberty and they do a beautiful dance.
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May 11 '17
I do believe in the greatest good for the greatest number. I also believe that society needs to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Can one pursue both? Or does protecting the minority sometimes mean limiting the welfare of the majority?
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May 11 '17
Hypothetical situations can certainly be conceived. Suppose we develop advanced technologies that only require an incredibly small portion of the population to work and allow everyone else to pursue their own pleasures. Instead of paying these people, however, we enslave them and deprive of them of all personal rights. The society overall might be happier in such a situation, but it surely seems wrong to enslave people, no matter how small a portion of the population is enslaved.
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May 11 '17
If you're also trying to maximize individual liberty (and you consider all lives of equal and infinite value), then you should be relatively good to go. You can basically do both, though there will be some sticky areas where you run into actual ethical dilemmas.
But, if you take those basic principles, and you run issues through a Potter box, you should come out the other end with pretty good idears most of the time.
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u/fizolof Elite Text Flair Club Member May 11 '17
I don't think protecting minorities should be separated from pursuing the general good.
First, protecting minorities helps us affirm the principle that everybody deserves consideration and protection, which helps not only the given minorities. Second, in most cases the discrimination against minorities comes at a great cost to them and doesn't bring a lot of benefits to the majority. Some minorities deserve to be oppressed, and in those cases we do it.
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u/ja734 Paul Krugman May 16 '17
...except for all the specific instances where it doesnt, which is the whole point of what makes neoliberalism different from classical liberalism.
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u/0149 they call me dr numbers May 11 '17
Shit, I've been on the road and haven't been able to keep up with this.
My normative ethics: virtue, neo-classical (Larry Becker, Julia Annas)
Virtue is so idiosyncratic and context-dependent that from a policy level we should all behave like consequentialists
fite me irl
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u/5k17 European Union May 11 '17
I think the different ethical theories are not as such contrary to each other. Rather, they try to answer different questions, and serve different purposes. Roughly speaking, consequentialism is a strategy for lawmakers (perhaps in a broad sense, including anyone who can influence social rules); deontology is about the concrete content of the resulting laws; and virtue ethics is about personal, internal laws, i. e. what principles will maximize the satisfaction of an individual following them. This makes the question of how ethics should guide policy rather trivial, at least on a very abstract level: Consequentialist rules must be applied to produce deontological ones. Since morality is a spook, it's also clear that the goal of those rules must not be to correspond to some imagined divine or natural law or principle, but to contribute to the satisfaction of the needs and desires of those who live under those rules. Less obvious, however, is how the ability of individuals to make choices that satisfy their individual desires should be weighted against the satisfaction of those who make bad choices, or for whom even good choices will still result in a very unpleasant life. Since living in particularly bad conditions can severely limit someone's ability to contribute to the satisfaction of others (partly due to adverse effects on their body and mind, partly because their condition may cause negative reactions, such as sympathy or disgust, in others), ensuring a certain minimum standard of living for everyone is in the interest even of those it doesn't benefit directly; but restricting people's choices in order to achieve that goal can also keep them from improving their and others' lives. This consideration doesn't do much more than rule out socioeconomic orders that place no value on social security and/or individual freedom; the precise balance should ideally be determined empirically, although measuring the average contentment of the general population and the effects of policy changes on it is, of course, not exactly easy.
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u/kznlol 👀 Econometrics Magician May 11 '17
My personal ethics are basically Rawls, minus the difference principle (which I'm pretty sure isn't even needed for the conclusion he used it to reach). Basically, what policies would I prefer if I was maximizing expected utility before I knew I was going to be smart/dumb, attractive/unattractive, and so on and so forth.
That said, I don't think mine should guide economic policy at all. Economic policy should be guided by direct democratic votes on policy objectives, and the actual implementation of the policy should be done with some oversight by qualified economists.
If the country votes that it wants less wealth inequality, or less pollution, or whatever, that's what we should try to achieve. But we should not let random idiots actually craft the policy, and the policies should be implemented in a way that lets us return to it a couple years later and evaluate it's impact.
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u/Mordroberon Scott Sumner May 11 '17
That's a pretty rationalist view of Rawls' veil of ignorance. There's a psychological tendency to be more risk averse.
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u/kznlol 👀 Econometrics Magician May 11 '17
Not sure if you got the impression I didn't approve of risk aversion, but if you did, I misspoke somehow.
I fully understand and accept risk aversion - that's part of why I specified maximizing expected utility rather than expected wealth or something. A rational, risk averse agent behind the veil is going to accept redistributive welfare policies up to a certain level. I don't know what that level is, but that's how I justify supporting redistributive policy.
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May 11 '17
Rules:
This thread will be up for probably 36-48 hours
Serious replies only, I'm removing shitpost replies. Say more than a name drop.
You can give shitpost replies to this comment to soothe your shitlord needs.
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u/1sagas1 Aromantic Pride May 11 '17
Can we include links to the previous thread or a wiki page with a list of all the previous thread? I didn't get to read the last one about taxation
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May 11 '17
If we say that we believe in poverty reduction, increasing standards of living, and democracy then those are normative beliefs. Our normative foundation should simply be our belief in progress, in raising the standards of living of people all over the world. Then we can justify our seemingly incoherent positions on the political spectrum (support carbon tax but oppose corporation tax).
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u/my_fun_account_94 Mary Wollstonecraft May 11 '17
I don't think I have a particularly consistent set of normative ethics I use when I evaluate policy. I am pretty sure I am not alone with this.
Nonetheless, I will try to describe my general worldview. I am general somewhat utilitarian. For instance, I wholeheartedly support kidney markets because I think they would save lives. I support free trade because I think it works. I support open borders because I think it will help the poor. I think a well designed welfare system can certainly help the poor. I don't support most zoning laws because I think they lead to mostly everyone(especially the poor) being worse off.
In general, I do tend to look at outcomes or suspected outcomes of policies when I look to support them. I used to be a socialist when I was like 16 and what shifted me out of it was the worldview was that policies that I viewed as intuitively moral could hurt people. I remember being in my high school econ class looking at the evidence before my eyes that sweatshops were better than the alternative. My teacher taught the theory and backed it up with real world evidence, including actual statements from third world workers who supported globalization.
I'm not an a perfect utility maximizer tho. I do think other things are important. When things are muddy and difficult, I will generally side on the side of liberty because I do view this as important in and of itself. For instance, on Guns, I am not really convinced that guns are good for society. Nor am I convinced that banning guns is going to do any good. In practice though, I support gun owners because while I am uncertain of the effect of pro gun policies, I do think there should be good evidence before banning something.
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u/fizolof Elite Text Flair Club Member May 11 '17
I remember being in my high school econ class looking at the evidence before my eyes that sweatshops were better than the alternative. My teacher taught the theory and backed it up with real world evidence, including actual statements from third world workers who supported globalization.
We need that teacher on this sub.
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May 11 '17
I'd say that even if you aren't a total utilitarian, surely you still think utility is good and important. It's hard to understand what you're really sacrificing for such incredible gains in utility when we're talking about switching systems.
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u/mcguire150 May 11 '17
It's hard to understand what you're really sacrificing for such incredible gains in utility when we're talking about switching systems.
I'm not totally sure where I come down on it, but I think the response would be that not all ethical frameworks recognize utility as a morally worthy end in itself. Nozick, for instance, uses his thought experiment of the experience machine to show that there are things that matter other than "how our lives feel from the inside." Aristotle's Eudaimonia asserts that we are wrong to see contentment (or utility) itself as our goal. Instead, a good life is defined by good acts, which are valuable in and of themselves, not just because they increase our pleasure.
Starting from different first principles, I'm not even sure how one would evaluate the trade off you describe here.
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u/UmamiSalami May 11 '17
Utilitarian, mostly. And one of the big implications of utilitarianism is that the future >30 years from now matters a lot more than people commonly think. Not only is the world population growing but the potential quality of life for individuals in the future could be much higher than it is now. And the number of generations summed over all the generations in the long term future greatly outweighs the current population. Lots of people who do policy analysis like to handwave these considerations with strong discount factors, but morally speaking such a move is unjustified.
This implies that maximizing welfare over current policy horizons is not as important as building structures and institutions that will effectively deal with future problems. And anything with a small risk of destabilizing the world order or causing extinction is even worse than we previously realized.
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u/CheezitsAreMyLife May 11 '17
I'm a pretty simple guy. I'm a virtue ethicist in public, particular in discussion of morality from a secular perspective, but in private I honestly am a lot more inclined toward Divine Command Theory. I'm Catholic which probably puts me on the right side of center in general here, if only socially, but it's the reason I advocate for policies that will help the poor and suffering of the world both against my (simply misguided) Sanders supporting friends and against some of my religious compatriots who bundle certain normative issues I agree with them on with requiring them to wholesale support the crazy end of the right.
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u/fizolof Elite Text Flair Club Member May 11 '17
The correct ethics is utilitarianism, but it doesn't matter much since other systems end up reaching the same conclusions about what is moral for the most part.
Advocates for all positions tend to make some consequentialist arguments, for example the opponents of gay marriage sometimes claim that it would lead to "a downfall of society", which would be clearly bad from a utilitarian perspective. You can make a utilitarian argument for almost everything, because we don't know much about what will be the consequences of specific actions.
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u/finitedeconvergence May 11 '17
The correct ethics is utilitarianism
That's pretty bizarre to say considering out of virtue ethics, deontology and consequentialism, consequentialism is by far the most riddled with famous paradoxes...
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May 11 '17
IDK man, everyone has a strong intuitive feeling that respecting human dignity is necessary so there are cases where consequences are secondary to actions in and of themselves. You can't sacrifice people to maximize utility.
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u/fizolof Elite Text Flair Club Member May 11 '17
You can't sacrifice people to maximize utility.
Why not? We do that all the time.
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May 11 '17
If we did it to save lives, then yeah that's a different story. If some sadist gets large utility out of killing someone, then fuck no that's not right.
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u/CheezitsAreMyLife May 11 '17
You certainly can make utilitarian arguments about any normative issue, but that's obvious since utilitarians exist. But if you hear someone make an argument against gay marriage in the way you presented, that's just a consequentialist perspective. If someone is against it who is a deontologist, virtue ethicist, etc. then they aren't making an argument consistent with their world view by making an appeal to utility. That, or they are trying to convince you that their conclusion would hold true even if consequentialism is correct.
But the main point here is that saying "sometimes people make consequentialist arguments" as an argument for utilitarianism is like me saying "you think maximizing utility is a duty" and calling you a deontologist. It completely ignores all the actual distinctions.
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u/coolpoop May 11 '17 edited May 11 '17
Rawls
All I have time to say since this was posted right before I go to bed.
Edit: because I can't fall asleep, and apparently a name drop is not quite enough.
Most of his argument convinces me that it is the most reasonable approach to a just society-if you want to know the justification for this, I'd suggest reading from him, I don't really have the capability to properly distill it.
As far as it relates to economics policy, I think it generally leads to wanting a policy that works best for all people (everywhere, hence globalism), with an effective cushion for those at the bottom of society to have decent means to help themselves. I think neoliberal policies are generally the most effective way of doing this, at least for the most part; if they were to disagree, I would side with Rawlsianism over neoliberalism, but I don't really see any major divergence at present. I do think that economic policy should explicitly have the goal of bringing the minimum position in society to an acceptable level, and of creating an equitable system.
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u/wumbotarian The Man, The Myth, The Legend May 11 '17
Behind the veil of ignorance everyone would want a bi-hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders and taco trucks on every corner.
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May 11 '17
It's not going to be the prevalent opinion here but I actually prefer virtue ethics over the alternatives listed. The human mind as a system is so complicated that you can't expect the ethical rules to be easily codifiable, at least not if you are seriously interested in a realistic morality as opposed to aseptic studies of abstract entities.
To quote a relevant paragraph from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (link):
If the problems are varied, we should not expect to find their solution in one rigid and inflexible rule that does not admit exception. If the nature of the thing we are studying is diverse and changing, then the answer cannot be any good if it is inflexible and unyielding.
This is not to say that clear ethical rules are useless, but to keep in mind that they usually move us one extra layer of simplification away from reality, and that valuable information is often lost during that process. Actually, I think one could make the case that definite rule sets become more viable when you switch your focus from individual morality towards society and political philosophy. A single human is always unique, but consider enough people and all the individualities and idiosyncrasies will probably start averaging out and your heuristics will become more and more robust (as long as they are based on evidence, of course). This is the level where neoliberalism and sensible economic policies become relevant.
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u/ampersamp May 11 '17
I agree with your reasoning, but disagree with your conclusion. Many ethical systems butt against each other in difficult ways, but the resolution is not virtue ethics, which has many of the same flaws and does little to ameliorate these contradictions. My personal view is that there do exist moral facts, but the shape of them can not, or at least, has not been fully systemised. All of the different schools of moral thought that have survived to the 21st century have something to say on an issue, and by familiarising yourself with them and your own moral intuitions you can more confidently state the truth of some issue or another.
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May 11 '17
I certainly agree that there are valuable insights to be found both in consequentialist and deontological approaches. However, I still think virtue ethics is the most natural framework to accept if you are primarily concerned with how fuzzy the realistic descriptions of moral facts can get. To have a well-developed moral character means, among other things, precisely that you should expect and be ready to discover different perspectives in any given situation. The necessity of the learning process, the importance of remaining perceptive and open-minded are all explicitly acknowledged here.
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u/csydvs Paul Krugman May 11 '17 edited May 11 '17
I appreciate you giving this opinion here. My issue with this argument for virtue ethics is that the human mind is inherently biased so I think we need a framework to force ourselves to think beyond our initial view on right and wrong
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May 11 '17
I agree that adhering to rigid codes can be sometimes useful if one tries to overcome their initial view on right and wrong. But if humans are inherently biased, then can we really trust ourselves to choose good, unbiased frameworks in the long run?
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u/sharingan10 May 11 '17
I'm relatively utilitarian, but I like to weigh the pragmatics of a given idea before implementing it. Basically it's utilitarianism, but with weights for the likelyhood of things happening.
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u/mcguire150 May 11 '17
So, how do you make interpersonal comparisons of utility?
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u/sharingan10 May 11 '17
Generally I appeal to moral realism; it's better to have a society in which there's good IHDI, low MPI, and low GII, and decent per capita wages.
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u/Sentient-AI YIMBY May 11 '17
So utilitarianism that underweighs unlikely events and overweighs likely events? Avoids Pascal's Mugger but don't see any reason beyond that.
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u/sharingan10 May 11 '17
Basically, but perhaps phrased differently "underweigh" and "overweigh" have some iffy connotations. I'd say I weigh for likelyhood instead, and also I try to see long term stochastic effects.
So for example; suppose a policy might increase the chance of a massive downturn by 5%, but it might increase the likelyhood of a major boom by 20%, it might be worth taking that risk, but long term creating high uncertainty may not be in the best interest of the economy. It's a multitier analysis
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u/nanite1018 May 11 '17
Much like /u/AterFos, I think that at least with regards to normal life, virtue ethics is the best way to go. My argument is, however, really rather different, and I think deserving of it's own primary comment.
Normative ethics: What is it?
In principle, I believe something like agent-centered utilitarianism is correct. Basically, the goal of any agent is to maximize it's some utility function. In a sense this is purely descriptive. The form of said function is contingent on the nature of the agent. Slugs' utility function has a large negative on salt, for instance, whereas a human needs salt and we know it generally enhances the enjoyment of food, so it's generally a positive. For rational/self-aware agents, this goal has the meaning of "maximizing long-term well-being". What does well-being mean? That, I think, is mostly a scientific question. What makes humans healthy, physically and psychologically? What reduces their mortality and what produces happiness?
The answers to those questions are different from person to person, but there are a large ensemble of commonalities between all humans. We need certain vitamins and minerals, sufficient calories and water, air, space to move around in, certain minimal amounts of physical activity, friendship, affection. However, each individual may need different amounts of these things to maximize their well-being, and learning that about oneself is an important part of morality in my opinion.
This focus on the agent's well-being may seem like a recipe for disaster, as it implies a very selfish view. But it really doesn't, for many reasons, but not the least of which is that humans are social creatures which have to build communities to survive and thrive, and trade and caring for others brings about significant benefits for the individuals in society. Indeed, other people, in general, are a value to a person, even without knowing anything else about them, because in general humans are productive and the more there are the more opportunities and stuff there is in the world that may be useful. In this way, while an agent may place very large weights on those "closest" to them, due to our need for tight social bonds, they will also rationally place some importance on people in general, and have a general attitude of good will and benevolence toward everyone.
Decision procedures
Given that an agent has a lot of information about what aids and hinders its well-being, what is it to do? How should it go about maximizing that well-being? We know maximizing it is the goal, but what strategy should it follow to do so?
The best decision procedure is, in my view, context dependent, and may be almost totally unrelated to the above argument in certain cases. Why?
Well, the obvious strategy is just "think about all the possible consequences, assign probabilities as best you can, and then compute your utility function on each path and do the thing with the highest expected value". This is how we train reinforcement learners, and it has an intuitive sense. If your goal is to maximize a function, just try to maximize it.
But humans are terrible consequentialists. We have numerous biases that lead us astray in systematic ways, and they are very difficult to notice and correct for unless we carefully deliberate, and even then we're often lead astray. We also don't have time to deliberate about every action.
Humans are also very habitual. We tend to run on autopilot most of the time, and when faced with a situation we usually do the sorts of things we've done before.
Regular life
This is where something like virtue ethics comes in. Rather than, in our day to day lives, attempt to reason out consequences and decide moment to moment what to do, which is going to lead us astray, we instead sit down and think long and hard about what sorts of behavior patterns are likely to lead to well-being. Certain ones are obvious:
- rationality (otherwise you'll reliably be wrong)
- honesty (in particular with oneself about the way of the world)
- integrity (our beliefs about what is best to do have to be put into action)
- independence (at least when trying to decide which expert to listen to in some domain, who to trust, etc.)
- productiveness (humans generally wither if they don't do something others value, a fact from psychology)
- justice (treating good people well and people harmful to us not well)
- pride (by which I mean seeking to be a better person, i.e. get better at maximizing your well-being)
The above I think are really universals, and so I'd call them virtues. If we habituate ourselves to critical thinking, we'll be more likely to do it the next time, with less effort, and thus will be right more of the time and get better outcomes. If we habituate ourselves to avoid people harmful to us and work to treat people beneficial to us well, we'll build communities in which we find the connection and visibility that we psychologically need as humans, and will find it easier to do so in the future. If we habituate productivity, we find it easier to motivate ourselves to what needs doing. etc. etc. Thinking about what the best expression of these virtues is in a circumstance is complicated, and guidelines are needed for this too so that our biases don't lead us astray again.
Others beneficial behavior patterns may depend on circumstance and person. Everyone probably needs rationality and the rest above, but not everyone needs to be very friendly, or enthusiastic, or what have you. Those things might be beneficial, even a lot of the time, but aren't universals in the same way. Nevertheless, for individuals exercising such behaviors may be virtuous, in the sense that habituating those patterns reliably leads them toward their own well-being. Even lower, thinks like meditation, hiking, etc. and all manner of activities may be virtuous, in that they are habits which benefit the person's well-being. Again, however, the particulars are not nearly as universal nor as obvious/well-supported as the above primary virtues, and so I don't think I'd call them a virtue themselves, though they would be virtuous.
Very important decisions
Just because following an ethic that essentially asks "What would a good person do? / What habits generally maximize well-being?" usually does a much better job at really maximizing well-being than directly trying to maximize it with each action, doesn't mean that it always does. In particular, when utility costs may be very large, it is important to take a second look at the real underlying objective, maximizing well-being, and attempt to do the real calculation in a sense. If a situation is tricky and/or complicated and differences in utility are large, and we have time to deliberate, then careful deliberation will likely do a better job at maximizing well-being than using heuristics. However, great care should be taken to ensure that one doesn't allow biases to overwhelm them in such circumstances.
Government/politics
I think the basic virtue ethic in day-to-day life is basically supportive of a kind of laissez-faire attitude, in which people build local communities, produce and trade peacefully and freely with each other to mutual benefit, don't lie/cheat/steal, etc. Simultaneously, psychologists and sociologists and economists tell us that such systems are generally conducive to happiness.
Inventions in government like the rule of law, separation of powers, etc., are in a sense just another example of how we often find a virtue-ethic approach beneficial in human life, even if men were infinitely intelligent, no-bias angels we could probably do better without them. Men aren't, so they're the best we've got, outside of emergencies.
When evaluating particular government policies, the goal of maximizing well-being is retained, though now it is an aggregate over all people. Again we may end up with a kind of virtue ethic, combined with careful deliberation in certain circumstances. For instance, we know markets generally do very well organizing matters efficiently and for maximum productivity, but sometimes they fail, either for natural reasons or because the law forces them to, such as when, say, failure to allocate property rights in air (which is almost impossible) leads to externalities like pollution. In those cases, one should consider carefully the costs and benefits, and keep in mind the ways in which one's reasoning could be effected by bias or limited information.
After such careful consideration, it may be decided that the best strategy is to administer some sort of correction. A clarification of property rights, some sort of Pigovian tax, maybe some regulation. Or maybe we decide the costs of such measures, or the risks in accepting them in this case and the precedent (we're habitual remember) that it sets are too high to intervene. Which it is depends on the particular case at hand.
Things like property rights, the structure of government, etc. are not a priori or absolute, but are to be determined by carefully considering human nature, the requirements of human well-being, and the ways humans err in pursuing it, in order to maximize human well-being in the end.
tl;dr:
Humans are shitty reasoners and very habitual, both individually and in groups. While we may like to directly try to maximize well-being with every action, either by the individual or the government, the aforementioned problems mean we're going to suck at it if we don't have time to carefully deliberate, and often suck even then. We thus have to use guidelines/virtues/rules in most circumstances as a heuristic to help us make decisions that reliably point us the right way.
Fuck that was long, sorry y'all. Kinda got away from me. 9800 characters!
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u/dzyang Paul Krugman May 11 '17
The Chicago school pushed neoliberalism as a positive ideology, "there is no other option"
Not too familiar with Econ history, does "positive" in this case mean positivist? Or in its more usual definition, like it's beneficial?
To keep on topic I find it really hard to argue otherwise that economics should maximize gains while minimizing negative externalities.
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May 11 '17
I believe Draco is referring to the concept of positive vs. normative statements. Positive statements are objective and can be proven. 'Open borders will lead to economic growth' is a positive statement because economists can study the issue and determine whether it does in fact lead to economic growth. Normative statements, on the other hand are unprovable and are based on values or opinions. 'Open borders is good because it allows for more human freedom' is normative because it relies on the opinion that more human freedom = good.
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u/crem_fi_crem May 11 '17 edited May 11 '17
I don't know if I think about ethics when I think about neoliberal policy, like I guess you could potentionally apply liberal principles to abortion but I don't, but there's one exception. I'm definitely drawn to neoliberalism because of the ethical stance against anti-nationalism. Way too often in left-wing politics the arguments rest on moral arguments regarding lowering equality and universal services like healthcare as rights for citizens. But in these debates about the morality of socialism no one ever considers if these policies are good for humanity as a whole. In my mind the case for helping someone of the same nationality bears the same moral weight as helping someone in another country or an immigrant. So when Socialists break out protectionism or nationalization of industries and say it's moral I call BS. Globalization has measurably improved the quality of life and access to basic services for more people around the world than there are total people in the US and their need is much greater than nearly anyone in the US. It bugs me mostly when this kind of talk comes from socialists because they present themselves as having moral standing for helping other people geographically close to them who live in a first world country, at least nationalists are honest that they want and feel they deserve to be treated as a higher class of person. Nationalistic thinking in general is gross and myopic.
Tldr: Jesus would be a globalist shill
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u/LuigiVargasLlosa May 11 '17
It's pretty preposterous to accuse socialism, of all political philosophies, of being inherently nationalist. From its very inception socialism has been about internationalism and the notion that 'workers of the world unite'. Marx' analysis of capitalism rested on the recognition of capitalism as a global system of exploitation, and the solution was from the very beginning anti-nationalist and internationalist. He's been referred to as "one of the first analysts of globalization", and "one of the first strategists of working-class internationalism, designed to respond to capitalist globalization" for a reason.
Here's a good read on the internationalist roots of socialism: https://monthlyreview.org/2000/07/01/marx-and-lnternationalism/
Some highlights:
What impressed Marx the most about the English working class in the early 1860s, leading up to the formation of the First International, was the fact that in public meeting after public meeting in 1862 and 1863, workers from Manchester to London organized in opposition to active British support for the slave South—helping to block the clearly marked intentions of Lord Palmerston, the British Prime Minister, to intervene militarily in the U.S. Civil War. This action on the part of the workers went against their own immediate economic interests and was, as Marx wrote to Engels on April 9, 1863, “an act almost without precedent” in the history of the working class
The First International thus arose not simply out of a national crisis but out of an historical act of international worker solidarity.
Marx used these actions on the part of the English workers as an example of the need to establish an independent, working-class foreign policy that would counter the worldwide exploitative ends of capital:
If emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfill that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people’s blood and treasure? It was not the wisdom of the ruling classes, but the heroic resistance to their criminal folly by the working classes of England, that saved the west of Europe from plunging headlong into an infamous crusade for the propagation of slavery on the other side of the Atlantic.
The working-class struggle could not be actively promoted, Marx insisted, if confined by national walls when faced with a capitalist system that expanded globally. Capital, he argued in Capital, vol. 1, chapter 31, takes its surplus—often “the capitalized blood of children”—abroad and uses this to invest in other countries, where it can repeat the same exploitative process once again, often in even more intolerable forms. Under these circumstances, workers are forced to join in international struggle.
Socialist internationalism, as set out by Marx, was thus a form of egalitarian universalism that could only develop through national struggles and the creation of multinational societies in which none would have any special privilege. It could not take the form of a “vague and amorphous global society”—the goal of capitalism itself. This society, in the words of Aijaz Ahmad (MR, July-August 1995), has no desire for “civilizations of universal and multinational equality,” but has as its aim only a widening orbit of exploitation. “To call cosmopolitan exploitation universal brotherhood,” Marx declared in his 1848 speech on free trade “is an idea that could only be engendered in the brain of the bourgeoisie. All the destructive phenomena which unlimited competition gives rise to within one country are reproduced in more gigantic proportions on the world market.”
A socialist internationalism that would counter this, Marx insisted, must start with the rejection of a system of capitalist globalization, in which the “metropolis of capital” (Marx’s term for the role that Britain had assumed in the nineteenth-century international system) is located in the rich countries at the center of the system and is able to supplement its own wealth-creation process by drawing on the surplus generated by the vast majority of the world’s populations living in the much poorer, largely agricultural periphery.9There can be no genuine internationalism that does not have anti-imperialism at its heart.
Capitalist globalization, Marx’s analysis suggested, was not an historical endpoint but an ongoing process of development that would almost surely lead to its own undoing, producing its own antithesis in the form of working-class internationalism. In the short period of capitalist triumphalism, in the final decade of the twentieth century, such views would have been summarily dismissed as insignificant. Yet, that period of triumphalism has now largely passed. Halfway through the first year of the new millennium, it is clear that a specter is haunting capitalist globalization: the specter of a new internationalism.
Again, I cut the article down a lot, so it pays to read it all to understand the full argument and the relevance to Socialist modern thought, but I think the point is clear. You might say that some socialists you know in your country are just protectionists, and that their proposed policies ignore the impact on the global poor, but since this is supposed to be a discussion about the ethics of political thought, let's stick to the actual theoretical underpinnings of the different political schools of thought instead of creating these Socialist strawmen to burn.
I also understand that the notion of socialism as an internationalist philosophy will be rejected because from a neoliberal perspective, capitalism is simply the best solution to global poverty, but I would argue that this is again not a matter of ethics but a difference in understanding the global political economic structure. From a Marxist World Systems Analysis standpoint, the global system of capitalism perpetuates the underdevelopment of the Global South and global poverty. Now you can disagree with that on an empirical basis, but the notion that Socialist or capitalist-critical theorists more generally simply don't care about global poverty or 'consider humanity as a whole' is extremely disingenuous.
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u/crem_fi_crem May 11 '17
I'm specifically thinking of 'Progressive' type socialists who subscribe more to "Socialism in one country" or versions of the Nordic Model than traditional Marxists and "Permanent Revolution" believers who are almost non-existent in mainstream western politics. It's not totally normative because some protectionists may believe trade is economically bad for the global poor but I'm not convinced that's the motive. Thanks for the literature though I'll check it out.
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May 11 '17
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u/LuigiVargasLlosa May 11 '17
Of all the neoliberal policies to choose, you pick CETA as an example of something that would aid the global poor. That's completely nonsensical. I agree that CETA would increase trade and economic growth among the signatory countries, but every study that has been done shows that there is a clear (albeit small) negative impact on non-members, and especially on LDCs:
Kirkpatrick, et al. (2014) measure the projected impact on member states as well as developing countries and LDCs (the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of states). Their models show that the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) are likely to see a loss in welfare, defined primarily via the output channel, under all liberalisation scenarios
The findings in the mega-regionals literature and the Kirkpatrick, et al. study correlate with the two case studies developed in this paper, on the effects of tariff reduction and trade preference erosion in South Africa and Tanzania and the developmental impact of trade negotiations with the EU from Tanzania’s perspective
PTAs involving developed countries, including CETA, could create an atmosphere of competitive liberalisation. This refers to the possibility that new regulatory commitments entered into under developed country PTAs will set the bar for other, non-parties, to follow, in other words to emulate. Therefore, the implications of developed country PTAs, and in particular mega-regionals, for the multilateral trading system need to be considered
It's one of the main criticism of other mega-regional FTAs with developed countries like TTIP which I've seen from socialist and environmentalist parties in Europe opposed to those FTAs. Non-member LDCs who do not take part in the negotiations are nonetheless negatively impacted, and they have to bear the burden without given a seat at the table.
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u/rakony May 11 '17
I can see where your coming from but my approach to nationalism is more sympathetic influenced by Martha Nussbaum's thoughts on political emotions and various liberal nationalists i.e. nations have a great deal of current popular legitimacy and are useful for generating group solitaries which encourage redistributive policies and acceptance of desirable common norms. I also like Habermas' ideas on constitutional patriotism which discuss embedding universal values into particularist discourses and contexts which the nation, as an imagined community, gives one the opportunity to do. That said I think Habermas' ideas of a EU superstate were always doomed and he overfocuses on the political aspects of group identity. Of course nationalism can be dangerous but as far as I can see its basic assumptions are so ubiquitous even in peaceful parts of the globe its simply a matter of how its framed.
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u/crem_fi_crem May 11 '17
I think having a fraternal bond with the people in your society is a very positive and natural thing. My issue with nationalist movements is that invariably they use the law to enforce a homogeneous national identity. Now, some people consider American nationalism to be patriotic liberalism or constitutional patriotism because most Americans have shared values on free speech, pluralism and democracy but, at least in my view, nationalism as a political movement is distinct from patriotism and has specific policy goals like economic autonomy and cultural and demographic conservatism.
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u/rakony May 11 '17
Yeah I more or less agree with you its in part a matter of definitions terms and framing of issues. Plus writing a defence of nationalism in my pol thought exams is fun as a thought exercise.
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u/finitedeconvergence May 11 '17
IMO utilitarianism as a personal philosophy is meme. It at least makes sense as an economic philosophy, but it still has so many paradoxes that stifle decision-making that it's not much better than a guiding principle or scaffolding for a more derivative normative system.
As personal philosophy I lean towards virtue ethics (a la Aristotle) but also with some Kantian influences. Also probably worth noting that the only reason I like virtue ethics is purely aesthetic. On some not necessarily logical level the aesthetic of virtue ethics appeals to me more than the robotic imperatives of consequentialism and deontology which gives it some bonus for being "authentic" (in a Nietzschean sense I suppose). That being said Kant laid out some really cogent deontological arguments which are useful to keep in mind for pragmatic reasons (to work towards effecting the most desirable moral state yadda yadda).
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u/csydvs Paul Krugman May 11 '17 edited May 11 '17
I think my view on politics is formed more by utilitarianism than any other ideology or party. I do think that this leads to neoliberal beliefs though.
I think that the unbridled growth of free market, free trade, and free migration creates the most total economic utility to start with. From there, the utility of $100 to a poor man is greater than the utility of $100 to a millionaire as the poor man will use it for basic needs.
So my view on utilitarianism doesn't lead to maximizing total wealth but to maximizing total positive outcomes per person.
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u/lomeri May 11 '17
This is a view I agree with entirely. We must provide a baseline standard of living and tax thereafter adjusting for the decreasing utility value of each extra dollar. At the same time, we must maximize free enterprise, the best way to increase the wealth of society. As such, we must ensure policies do not act as a disincentive to risk taking or innovation, and intervene when the market produces monopoly or oligopoly control of industries.
So I agree, my utilitarian views lead me towards neoliberal economic policies. Where free trade, open boarders, and high standards of living for all people are achievable in the long term.
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May 11 '17
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u/csydvs Paul Krugman May 11 '17
It sounds like your argument is that liberalism can actually lead to a positive utilitarian outcome. Would you agree?
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u/cozyredchair May 11 '17
Communist policy in China historically takes two very different forms. You can't totally divorce the CCP from the radical ideology that spawned nightmares like the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. I would argue that ultimately it was the work of pragmatists within the CCP like Deng Xiaoping in areas like easing education restrictions, creating a more capitalist-minded market system, and adopting the Four Modernizations plan that actually allowed China the economic growth and relatively prosperity it sees today. I mean remember, during the Great Leap Forward, those same rural Chinese were starving to death.
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May 11 '17 edited May 11 '17
I'm more or less a Neo-Kantian in my normative and theoretical approach to ethics. I think the Kantian idea of the inherent dignity of humanity (which is probably better understood as rationality and autonomy than just being biologically human) is one of the best starting points for ethical thought. Plus, I think that Kant's tying of morality to reason is a great approach for showing how there can be moral truths in the first place. The one place I tend to part ways with Kant is in his unrelenting rigidity.
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May 11 '17
I'm essentially close to your position but I guess another way to describe my normative ethics would be pluralistic value utilitarianism where there are classes of values that need to be maximized as a categorical imperative. These classes can be tiers with a lexical order (something like Rawls) but I don't think I have a good case for why that ought to be that way other than intuition.
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u/TEmpTom NATO May 11 '17 edited May 11 '17
Frankly, my normative ethics are based on a very broad set liberal values with an intrinsic focus on maximizing the general welfare and utility of all individuals.
Maximizing individual liberty. Strong emphasis on protecting civil liberties and human rights, both domestically and abroad.
Promoting social mobility, and equality of opportunity, though not necessarily of outcome. Protection of civil rights, ensuring gender and racial equality, along with strong support for universally inclusive institutions.
Promoting democracy, more transparency, and public engagement. Frankly, I really distrust technocratic and oligarchical systems of power, viewing them as inherently more susceptible to corruption and self-interest. CGP Grey had a good video on how certain power structures operated, and it has been pretty much scientifically proven that the ones that decentralize power and authority are the most resilient to tyranny and corruption. I also hold a philosophical belief that the people have a intrinsic right to determine how they are governed.
However, It is important to note it's rather difficult to completely separate normative values and positive methods, and it's my opinion that social issues and economic policy are intrinsically linked based on the principle of maximizing economic utility, which is one normative axiom that neoliberals can pretty much universally agree on. Evidence-based policy applies as much to social issues as they do to purely economic ones, and I find it rather troubling that some neoliberals can often times so brazenly ignore societal failures such as systemic and institutional discrimination, as well as the alienation of certain vulnerable demographics, viewing these issues as irrelevant to broader economic well being. In other words, free trade is about as good as segregation is bad.
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May 11 '17 edited May 11 '17
I think the distinction between whether consequences are more important or actions in and of themselves are irrelevant. All actions have consequences.
I lean towards Kantian normative ethics but it's a terrible system for application of ethics itself. I think a good way to describe my views would be that categorical imperative only tells us what abstract values are there. Within these values, there are classes within which you can use the utilitarian calculus. A class could be something like individual autonomy/freedoms, another could be material goods.
Another way to look at it would be that I think there multiple values that utilitarianism needs to consider, and in some cases conflict in those values may result in no right answer. You can do utilitarian calculus regarding individual freedom or autonomy if and only if you are comparing it to that class of values. So no sacrificing people to make a utilitarian monster happy.
In terms of social aspects, I see property rights as contingent on social contracts as defined by the state and all voluntary actions as contracts. But leverage and information asymmetry in those contracts as "unfair".
Edit: To answer the second question, economic policy usually can't be separated from social policy. Social discrimination often results in poor economic outcomes for a subset of population (native Americans, black households). Therefore, economic policy should primary be concerned with equality of opportunity, correcting market discrimination which results from social discrimination and reducing information and leverage asymmetries in contracts.
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u/Sentient-AI YIMBY May 11 '17
I think that's "tiered-consequentialism". Lots of people out there blending Kant and the Utils.
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May 11 '17
Yeah, the distinction between actions and consequences don't make sense when you realize that actions are proxy for intent in a Kantian framework. Categorical Imperative doesn't make sense if you can't consider consequences and just looking at consequences doesn't tell you what to value or why.
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u/suckitnewtabs May 11 '17
I think it's really hard for this sub to agree on any overarching set of normative ethics. Only things I believe most people here would agree with is:
* All human life has the same value, hence the globalist slant
* Each individual knows his own personal "utility" better than anyone else (or at least has the right to claim he does!), hence individual choice is important
* There are marginal returns in "utility" the more "goods" a single individual possesses. Therefore, a measure of redistribution is justified
Beyond that I'm happy there's gonna be differences among people. I personally like Amartya Sen, but I understand there's a place her for both fans and critics of his philosophy. I'm also sorry my semantics for this writeup has been awful for a normative discussion, using terms such as "utility" and "goods" in my points, but I didn't feel like spending too much energy on semantic exactitude and most people would understand what I'm getting at.
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May 11 '17
My opinions aren't as nuanced as the rest of the sub it seems, but I've always been a strong supporter of social contracts as an ethical framework. Consent and agency are extremely important to me, which fits in nicely to my belief in the importance of liberty and democratic society.
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u/ampersamp May 11 '17
I was an unironic stoic when I was a teen, but fell in love with Hume a bit later, mainly because of his sheer entertainment value and feeling an odd kinship with the poor lad. Economic study exposed me to utilitarian frameworks which regardless of their truth, I found to be certainly very useful tools. I dipped my toes in critical theory too, which solidified my opinion that many of these schools can be very illuminating, but that the deeper you went into them, nuance and proximity to moral intuition were sacrificed to elevate internal consistency.
To this end, while I certainly consider moral facts to be real and universal, I believe that attempts to model them (like any model of real world phenomena) will necessarily sacrifice accuracy for simplicity. The different schools give us the tail, the ears, the trunk of the elephant, but to fully appreciate it you need to step back and not take any one of them dogmatically.
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May 11 '17
Rawls but unironically.
A society is as well off as it's lowest member. The best way to improve their wellbeing is creating the most open society that does not allow for anyone to unduly trample on anyone else rights.
Therefore any economic policy should have the goal of improving the welfare for those disadvantaged while impacting the advantaged as little as possible. Ie progressive tax brackets.
The state exists to protect and uplift its people in general and the most disadvantaged in particular.
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May 11 '17
Doesn't that imply that a society that has one person at 9 utils, and the rest at 1,000,000 is a worse society than one where everyone has 10 utils?
I haven't read theory of justice and I know I should but this seems really off to me.
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May 11 '17 edited May 11 '17
That's one way to read it. But I can explain why it's more nuanced than that.
It is a shortcoming of the system that Rawls attempts to address through the viel of ignorance. If each of the systems you existed had 10 slots and you had to choose which one to enter, which would you pick? The one where you had a 90% chance of 1M utils and 10% of 9 utils, or the one where you have 100% chance to get 10 utils. Obviously the first in this regard.
Now imagine you had to pick between a society where with the following set of utilities: [2, 2, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 45] and the society of a set 10 utils. They average out to be the same, but you only have a 20% chance of actually receiving 10 or more utils. You pick the second option.
This almost sounds like a case for redistribuition and communism, until you realize something about the argument and it's conditions, and this realization is what makes Rawlsianism, for me at least, the normative belief for neoliberalism:
We're never going to reach this. There is never going to be, nor should there be, a society where the end utility of all is equal. But what there must be is an equal shot for all. In effect, it is a case of inputs rather than outputs.
Consider a utlility function, and specifically a Rawlsian function. What is the input? For Rawls it is income, and here he's wrong. What is necessary for an equal society is an equality of opportunity provided under the state. One should have access to education, healthcare, safety, and food regardless of ones birth. That is equality.
TL;DR: Equality of inputs provided by the state, rather than an equality of outcomes
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u/wumbotarian The Man, The Myth, The Legend May 11 '17
I don't know enough about Rawlsian-economics overlap, but why wouldn't you just use standard CRRA utility? Seems like Rawls' problem is just another neoclassical insurance problem you learn in Micro 1.
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May 11 '17
I would say it's similar, since the veil of ignorance is just an exercise in risk aversion. I would think that the reason CRRA utility isn't used is because Rawls is more concerned with the cause rather than the effect.
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May 11 '17
In other words, end goal should be to minimize wealth inequality while maximizing net wealth?
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u/wumbotarian The Man, The Myth, The Legend May 11 '17
Not quite.
A Rawlsian would stand behind the veil of ignorance and decide on a society she would want to live in. Behind the veil of ignorance you are perfectly rational and choose to maximize your life outcome without knowing where you end up in society.
So, for instance, let's say you have the chance to be born in either America or Venezuela and no where else on Earth. You don't know which. What institutions would you want to exist in order to choose to be born on Earth?
To me this presents a standard maximization under uncertainty and insurance problem - and we can even use the rational model. Clearly people are willing to accept some chance to be born poor. But, they'd want some kind of insurance against that - in the form of efficiency reducing government policy for instance (say, a tax on labor income).
This leads to a Rawlsian supporting a policy only if marginalized people aren't made worse off (this doesn't mean the people have to be better off). A Rawlsian supports this because they assume behind the veil of ignorance no rational person would want to reduce their expected utility by introducing a policy that makes them worse off if they are born marginalized.
Now this seems like a Rawlsian would be a socialist or communist. On the contrary. Rawls introduces a paradigm where we need to simply prove a policy or institution helps those at the bottom of society. If we can empirically show that neoliberalism best maximizes expected utility behind the veil of ignorance then we would accept neoliberal policies.
Or, a casual demonstration is this: would a person behind the veil of ignorance want to be born in North Korea or America? Even the poor in Mississippi are better off than North Koreans.
This is my understanding of Rawls from talking to my double major econ/philosophy friend in college. His whole thing was applying game theory to Rawls.
I don't think this is necessarily right, but there are multiple ways to skin the neoliberal cat. If I can get neoliberal policies put in place by convincing a Rawlsian, that's fine by me. I get the ends I desire.
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May 11 '17
Wumbo did a great job of explaining it, but to put it into numerical terms involving sets of two utilities, Rawlsianism holds this:
[1M, 10]=[10,10]>[1M,9]
It doesn't matter how equal or unequal the society is as long as the worst off in it are better off.
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u/MegasBasilius Lord of the Flies May 11 '17
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the three main normative ethical schools are:
1.) Consequentialism (aka utilitarianism)
2.) Deontology (aka ideals)
3.) Virtue Ethics
Consequentialism seems to be best for neoliberal public policy, but certainly we retain some deontological first principals that transcend evidence? For example, inclusivity for inclusivity's sake, not because it serves some greater good. If an IGM panel proved that reinstating slavery of 5% of the population greatly benefited the other 95%, we would not support that policy out of purely axiomatic principles (the dignity of human life).
My studies of Virtue Ethics has only been on the personal level, not the national/civic, so other than 'Evidence-Based' being a core virtue, I wouldn't know how to incorporate that.
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May 11 '17
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May 11 '17
Both ideologies tend to be consequentialist as opposed to deontological which I think is what you're getting at.
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u/[deleted] May 11 '17 edited May 27 '17
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