A warning flag should go up when someone devises an argument in which the smartest political strategy, historical forces, and his own personal preferences happen to be in almost lockstep accord. In Against The Dead Hand, Brink chronicles in lucid detail and limpid prose how the very smartest experts of the early 20th century were absolutely convinced that their ideal social policies were confirmed by science, morality and History. There's a similar whiff of hubris coming off libertarians who are not only sure that theirs is the best path, but that it will also be the most successful path.
I think Goldberg is onto something here, but moves onto other issues. Any political philosophy - heck, any vision of the world - has to make an argument for what the world should be like. but what will the world be like?
To justify "devising an argument in which the smartest political strategy, historical forces, and his own personal preferences happen to be in almost lockstep accord," we then have two possible explanations, not mutually exclusive.
(1). the author invented the explanation of inevitability to persuade himself that his optimism was justified.
Ie, Optimism + "platform X is good" ----> "a course of events where platform X helps/comes about is inevitable."
A happy socialist must conclude that the world is inevitably headed toward socialism, no?
(2). The author cited inevitability as an argumentative tactic; ie, he did it to bring others to fight for platform X.
Inevitability is a powerful argument. If something is inevitable, why fight it? Thinkers from Mises, Hayek, and Popper to C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling have all recognized this.
But - and maybe Brink Lindsay makes this argument in Against the Dead Hand, I haven't read it - (1) is an equally powerful reason why such arguments of inevitability get made - self-deception.
I consider myself a libertarian/classical liberal partly because I'm an optimist, and Smithian classical liberalism reconciles what is and what should be. (Sorry, Rand, you weren't the first to bridge is and ought). People are self-interested, even selfish, but that is not bad per se. Choice both enables morality - for how can one be virtuous if one does not freely reject sin? - and prosperity.
So I'm a libertarian because it makes things fit together. And I also happen to be an optimist. Thus, Brink's argument that a more libertarian future is inevitable strikes a deep concord with me, and likely also with Brink. Especially because an optimistic libertarianism will likely believe our Utopia is stable once reached.
And the same is true with any other ideology.
On a more personal note, consider the decision to believe in a religion. I've been exploring a particular one recently, and am currently loosely contemplating conversion. Right now, it makes sense to me - all the doctrines fit together, together with my moral sensibilities. It doesn't, say, punish people who've never heard of the true religion with eternal damnation. But does that make it true? I don't know. I'd like to believe so.
But if the vision of some subjective pieces of information fitting together can lead to flights of fancy, perhaps we ought to be more cautious when we think we see the pieces fit. The Dan Brown genre should stay fiction in our minds.
UPDATE: David Friedman was here first too:
If I conclude that the rules that would be just are similar to both the rules that exist and the rules that would be efficient, that may simply be evidence that my moral judgments are ex post rationalizations of the world I live in or the conclusions of my economic analysis.
[originally posted 7/26/07]
1 comment:
Well written article.
Post a Comment