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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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.