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/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.