Pragmatarianism Disproved?

A couple guys from the libertarian forum just started an anarcho-capitalist blog.  Their blog is off to an auspicious start given that their first post was an in-depth critique of pragmatarianism...Pragmatarianism Disproved.

They cover many of the relevant economic concepts...with graphs even!  But what's really funny is that they based most of their critique on a 100% tax rate!!  Ouch...my most of me!  As I mentioned in my entry on pragma-socialism...try as I might...it's impossible for even me to imagine a pragmatarian system with a 100% tax rate.   I just can't wrap my mind around it.

My bottom line rebuttal doesn't directly address their points.  It addresses the fact that they used a 100% tax rate as their example.  That's what's really fascinating.  The Magna Carta Movement gave taxpayers the keys to the car and for some reason they decided to drive us from our current tax rate all the way over to a tax rate of 100%.  How do the guys from the LibertarianAnarchy blog explain the taxpayer's behavior?  

The most universal economic principle is that everybody wants the most bang for their buck.  This is what Adam Smith considered "self-interest".  The neoclassical economists refer to this as "maximizing utility" and the Austrian economists refer to this as "people acting purposefully".   

If we somehow ended up at a 100% tax rate then....as far as I can tell...there are only two possibilities... 

1. All those economists were wrong...people do not want the most bang for their buck

2. A tax rate of 100% would give taxpayers the most bang for their buck

I can argue for days and days against a government committee setting a tax rate of 100%...but I've got absolutely no argument against millions and millions of self-interested...utility maximizing ...individual taxpayers acting purposefully to set a tax rate of 100%.  

At this point it might help for me to explain how taxpayers would indirectly determine the tax rate.  Basically...the tax rate reflects how much the government does.  The more things the government does...the greater the justification for a higher tax rate.  The less things the government does...the greater the justification for a lower tax rate.  In a tax choice system...people could vote for things that they wanted the government to do...but it would be up to taxpayers to use their own, individual, hard-earned taxes to indicate exactly what the government should do.  

For example...if taxpayers chose not to allocate any of their taxes to the drug war...then the scope of government would narrow....and people would pressure congress to decrease the tax rate.  If taxpayers chose to allocate their taxes to public healthcare...then the scope of government would expand...and people would pressure congress to increase the tax rate.  This is assuming of course that enough taxpayers allocate enough of their taxes to congress to maintain its existence.  

Regarding the moral arguments...

He truly doesn't care--at all--about the infringement of Natural Rights and libertarian ethic.

Here's what the anarcho-capitalist David Friedman has to say on the topic of moral/deontological arguments versus consequentialist arguments.  

The short version...

I generally prefer consequentialist arguments. I think I understand economics better than I understand moral philosophy, and possibly better than anyone understands moral philosophy. - David Friedman

The long version...

I guess the first thing is that it offers arguments which don't require that people already share your religion...using the term "religion" broadly. That as far as I can tell, nobody, whether deontological libertarians or communists or anyone else really has a really convincing argument to show that their moral views are right. Many people believe that they do but I don't think that they do. Ayn Rand, at least, presented an argument. Ayn Rand claimed in effect to have defeated David Hume's is ought problem. Hume argued that you couldn't derive on ought from an is. I have a discussion up on my webpage of the holes in Rand's arguments. As far as I can tell she simply didn't do it. I don't think it can be done as far as I know. So in order to persuade people by a natural rights argument there has to be some reason why they believe in natural rights to start with because you don't have any good arguments to show that they ought to believe it. Whereas my argument...it claims to show...it hopefully shows...that my system would be better in terms of the value that almost everybody already has. So I'm really saying if you regard natural rights to be really important...well look...in my system rights will rarely be violated. If you regard people being happy and being healthy and living long lives...look in my society people will be in effect wealthier than in societies with governments, therefore you should like the results of those things...and so forth and so on. So I think that I have an argument which does depend on convincing people that economics is relevant to human behavior but doesn't depend on convincing them of your particular right and wrong beliefs.

Now the further problem with at least the versions of deontological libertarianism that I'm familiar with is that in the form in which people often state them they lead to conclusions that nobody believes. I spend a chapter in Machinery and Freedom going through that and if you really believe that the solution to polution is to say that nobody is allowed to pollute anybody else's property without their permission well you can't really exhale because carbon dioxide is a pollutant and you can be sure that some of the carbon dioxide you exhale will go onto somebody else's property. And similiarly you can't turn on a lightbulb because your photons will trespass. And once you start trying to make a more sophisticated version of the theory which deals with those...pretty quickly you start running into the kind of arguments that you run into in the consequentialist defense of libertarianism. - David Friedman, Legal Systems Without Government

In my post on the opportunity costs of public goods...I shared a few videos of Rachel Maddow arguing for more spending on public goods.  In one of her videos she says...

Not every idea that is good for the country, is a profit making idea for some company somewhere.  It's never going to be a profitable venture for some company to come up with this idea and build it on spec.  That's not going to happen!  We need some government leadership, frankly, to get something done in common that's going to benefit the country as a whole. - Rachel Maddow, Lean Forward

Rachel Maddow was making a consequentialist argument.  Her goal is for the government to do things that "benefit the country as a whole".  The thing is...Rachel Maddow and I are not going to have a very productive discussion if she makes consequentialist arguments and I respond with deontological arguments.  It's like if she says something in English and I respond in Chinese.  If her target audience understands English...then why would I argue in Chinese?  If her target audience cares about benefiting the country as a whole...then why would I argue for property rights? 

Sure you could argue that property rights actually do benefit the country as a whole..but that would of course be a consequentialist argument.  If property rights do have any sort of measurable value/benefit...then why wouldn't the tax allocation decisions of millions and millions of taxpayers reflect this truth?

Here's what else the guys at the LibertarianAnarchy blog have to say about morality...

By analogy, the founder of pragmatarianism plays the role of a sort of amoral deity: concerning morality, he says that we ought to make no judgement.

Pragmatarianism is neutral on morality because everybody already has their own morals.  Pragmatarianism isn't a religion.  With regards to making judgments though...

Yesterday on Fox....Bill O'Reilly had Lt. Col Ralph Peters on his show.  During their discussion on Afghanistan...Peters said, "When we invest our blood and treasure I expect a positive return".  This is of course the universal "maximizing utility" concept that I discussed in the beginning.  Compare it to this quote that the guys at LibertarianAnarchy blog shared...

There is always open to each actor the prospect of improving his lot, of attaining a value higher than he is giving up, i.e., of making a psychic profit. What he is giving up may be called his costs, i.e., the utilities that he is forgoing in order to attain a better position. Thus, an actor’s costs are his forgone opportunities to enjoy consumers’ goods. - Rothbard

Coincidentally...David Henderson, over at the Econlog Blog, also saw the same show on Fox....Sunk Costs in War.  Here's a bit of my comment...

It's been a few years since I was stationed in Afghanistan, but looking through my photos in the folder which I dedicated to "crops"...I see figs, grapes, pomegranates, wheat, eggplant, etc...but by far the most common crop was the opium poppy. If a small village only had one crop then it would invariably be the opium poppy.

Whether it's a retired Colonel expecting a positive return from his taxes...or Rothbard discussing psychic profits...or Afghan farmers selecting the most lucrative crops...it should be self-evident that everybody wants the most bang for their buck.  This is the universal economic principle.

If we allow taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes...then we can be all but certain that they would behave according to this universal economic principle.  The question then becomes...why do so many supposed proponents of this principle struggle to recognize the value of pragmatarianism?  What am I missing?  Why wouldn't we want to give the taxpayers the keys to the car?  What are we afraid of?

That's the mystery!  The proof is in the pudding but neither side is willing to taste the pudding.  

OR...maybe I'm the one that is missing something obvious!  It kind of makes more sense that I'm the bonehead....versus everybody else being the boneheads.  Well...keep the critiques coming!  Eventually we'll solve the mystery.

Fallibilism vs Fairness

Here's my comment on Matt Zwolinski's entry on What We Can Learn from Drowning Children.  The subsequent discussion between Zwolinski and myself prompted Zwolinski to ban me from the Bleeding Heart Libertarian website.

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Xerographica

You didn't even skim the surface of the problem.   The problem isn't just that there is a child drowning in a pool...the problem is that there is also a baby that a parent left in the car with the windows rolled up during summer.  The problem doesn't end there.  The problem is also that you only have $1 to spend correcting the problem.  Does the problem end here?  Of course not.  You also have the option to spend that dollar on a procreation licencing program.  If you think the problem ends here then you'd be wrong.

We're dealing with n+1 problems multiplied by n+1 solutions.  YOU see a drowning child so you think everybody should have a moral obligation to do something about that drowning child.  Do what though?  Should people spend their limited time/money trying to save that one child or spend their limited time/money trying to prevent future children from drowning?  Or should they spend their limited time/money trying to solve the problems that THEY see?

That's the thing...you don't realize how truly limited your perspective is.   You don't see all the other problems that other people have access to and you don't see all the other possible solutions that other people have considered.  That's why you failed to understand the point of this comment of mine.

If you want me to spend my $1 on trying to fix your problem then you need to convince me that your problem is more important than my problem.  Not only that but you need to convince me that your proposed solution to your problem will actually solve the problem.  Why should you have to persuade me?  Because in the process of doing so you might learn that my problem is more important than your problem and/or my solution is more effective than your solution.

Having studied International Development Studies at UCLA I can promise you that a ridiculous amount of your money was wasted on failed solutions to problems that you weren't even aware of.  From my limited perspective the only tried and true method of lifting people in other countries out of poverty was when we sent them our jobs.  American unions have unintentionally done more to help people in developing countries than any intentional effort by government.  This was the point of my blog entry on the Dialectic of Unintended Consequences.

Well...this is probably the gazillionth time I've brought up Hayek's partial knowledge and Bastiat's opportunity cost...yet your posts still haven't put 2 + 2 together.  That's ok though...because maybe I'm wrong.  So...even though it's frustrating when you continue to ignore these basic but important concepts...the possibility that I might be wrong encourages me to embrace tolerance.  If you're willing to entertain the possibility that perhaps you might be wrong then check out the Wikipedia entry on tax choice.  It has links to Hayek's partial knowledge and Bastiat's opportunity cost.

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Zwolinski

You didn't even skim the surface of the problem.   The problem isn't just that there is a child drowning in a pool...the problem is that there is also a baby that a parent left in the car with the windows rolled up during summer.  The problem doesn't end there.  The problem is also that you only have $1 to spend correcting the problem.

No, that's not the problem. That's a problem you just made up. You're welcome to create your own hypotheticals. But in the one I presented, you're faced with a drowning child and the question is whether you have an obligation to rescue him or not.

If you're willing to entertain the possibility that perhaps you might be wrong then check out the Wikipedia entry on tax choice.  It has links to Hayek's partial knowledge and Bastiat's opportunity cost.

You do realize that I'm familiar with Hayek and Bastiat, right? So perhaps if I'm ignoring your ad nauseum appeals to their ideas, the explanation has to do with something other than my ignorance or close-mindedness?

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Xerographica

Economics is the study of scarcity.  I just made that problem up?  Fallibilism is the understanding that everybody makes mistakes.  I just made that problem up as well?

Why would you want to separate morality from reality?  That's the very problem that we need to deal with in the first place.  What we need is for voters to understand the value of allowing every single person to directly bear the costs of every moral and proper thing that they want the government to TRY and do.

It's fine if you think the government should be responsible for TRYING to save drowning kids.  But it's not fine if you don't understand the value of putting your own, individual taxes where your heart is.  Why isn't it fine?  Because it's one thing to make a mistake with your limited resources but it's another thing for you to make a mistake with my limited resources.  Scarcity+fallibilism = hedge our bets.  This is the same conceit vs humility concept you ignored last time.

So no, you're not at all familiar with Bastiat or Hayek if you think there's any value in pretending that there aren't price tags attached to every single good...moral or otherwise...that people want.  That means that, unless I'm mistaken, you're only making the problem worse.   If you do think I'm mistaken then for goodness sake just point out the error in  my logic.

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Zwolinski

Economics is the study of scarcity. I just made that problem up? Fallibilism is the understanding that everybody makes mistakes. I just made that problem up as well?

No. That's not what I said. The problem I said you made up was this:

The problem isn't just that there is a child drowning in a pool...the problem is that there is also a baby that a parent left in the car with the windows rolled up during summer. The problem doesn't end there. The problem is also that you only have $1 to spend correcting the problem. Does the problem end here? Of course not. You also have the option to spend that dollar on a procreation licencing program.

Like I said, you're free to make up whatever hypotheticals you want. But this one doesn't have anything to do with the hypothetical I presented. In that hypothetical, you have a choice between rescuing the child or not. Getting a baby out of a locked car or sending money to a parental licensing program isn't an option. So bringing them up is just dodging the issue.

Why would you want to separate morality from reality?

I have no idea what this means or why you think I'm trying to do it.

So no, you're not at all familiar with Bastiat or Hayek if you think there's any value in pretending that there aren't price tags attached to every single good.

For someone who talks so much about the value of humility, you display shockingly little of it.

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Xerographica

My hypothetical situation addressed morality, scarcity and fallibilism.  Your hypothetical situation only addressed morality.  That's why I asked you why you wanted to separate morality from reality.

Reality = morality + scarcity + fallibilism + + +

Yet...you have no idea what I meant when I asked you why you wanted to separate reality from morality.  You read my hypothetical situation but thought that I was just attempting to dodge the issue of morality by highlighting other extremely important issues that we HAVE to consider....scarcity and fallibilism.

So let me break my hypothetical situation down bit by bit and show you exactly where the scarcity and fallibilism are located.

Scarcity - In my hypothetical situation you only had $1.  This reflects that in real life you have limited resources.  Having limited resources forces you to prioritize how you spend your limited resources.    Do you spend that $1 on TRYING to rescue the drowning child or on TRYING to rescue the child in a car?  Having multiple options forces you to make hard decisions with your limited resources.

There is an opportunity cost to every thing you want in life.  If you spend that $1 on TRYING to save the drowning child then you forgo the opportunity to spend that $1 on TRYING to save the child in the car.  This is where partial knowledge comes into play.  Maybe you don't know how to swim.  Maybe the car is locked.  Your partial knowledge and opportunity cost decisions are unique to you.

Scarce resources are efficiently allocated when everyone makes opportunity cost decisions.  These decisions naturally incorporate people's  unique/partial knowledge.  This is how the invisible hand works.

Fallibilism - I keep typing TRYING in all caps to emphasize that there's no guarantee that A) your effort will be successful or B) your choice was the best possible use of your limited resources.  Maybe it would be a mistake to require that people obtain licences if they want to procreate.  Maybe it would be a mistake not to.

Reality - The problem with our current political system is that voting only deals with morality...much in the same way as your hypothetical situation.

For instance the private consequences of fulfilling "her duty" towards the poor will emerge with certainty if a rich woman votes for higher tax redistribution favoring the poor.  She can "consume" the "warm glow of fulfilling her duty" while her vote itself will be insignificant for whether or not she will indeed have to pay higher taxes. - Hartmut Kliemt, The Encyclopedia of Public Choice

If you want to help the poor...then  you need to put your own, individual, hard-earned taxes where your heart is.  This is the only way we can help ensure that scarce resources are efficiently allocated.  You need to decide what other valuable things that you are personally willing to forgo in order to help the poor...

Nevertheless, the classic solution to the problem of underprovision of public goods has been government funding - through compulsory taxation - and government production of the good or service in question. Although this may substantially alleviate the problem of numerous free-riders that refuse to pay for the benefits they receive, it should be noted that the policy process does not provide any very plausible method for determining what the optimal or best level of provision of a public good actually is. When it is impossible to observe what individuals are willing to give up in order to get the public good, how can policymakers access how urgently they really want more or less of it, given the other possible uses of their money? There is a whole economic literature dealing with the willingness-to-pay methods and contingent valuation techniques to try and divine such preference in the absence of a market price doing so, but even the most optimistic proponets of such devices tend to concede that public goods will still most likley be underprovided or overprovided under government stewardship. - Patricia Kennett, Governance, globalization and public policy

This is the opportunity cost concept..."When it is impossible to observe what individuals are willing to give up in order to get the public good, how can policymakers access how urgently they really want more or less of it, given the other possible uses of their money?"

This is why taxpayers should be allowed to choose which government organizations receive their individual taxes.  We need them to consider the opportunity costs of their tax allocation decisions.  We need all their partial knowledge to help determine what the public sector should produce.  Morality...and bleeding hearts are wonderful...but only when combined with a firm understanding of scarcity and fallibilism.  If we don't factor scarcity and fallibilism into the equation then we're divorcing morality from reality.  This is the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the feet.  Fairness is not worth failure.

Regarding humility...really?  I display shockingly little of it?  Look at my comments on  Kevin Vaillier's entries on contractualism.  I have no problem admitting when I don't understand a concept.  We would have resolved this issue long ago if you displayed the same willingness to admit when you don't understand a concept.  You're a philosophy guy.... no one expects you to understand economic concepts as well as you understand philosophical concepts. Yet you completely ignore me when I try and bring these essential economic concepts to your attention.  Maybe because you think you're familiar enough with them...but your posts sure indicate otherwise.

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Zwolinski

Go back and read this thread again, starting with my original post.Your original reply accused me of missing the point. But on closer examination it turns out that what that means is that I didn't discuss the point that you wanted to talk about.

And this is how it always is with you on this blog. You're a true believer. You've got your one idea about how to change the world, and the only thing you're interested in is convincing other people of its truth, usually with a healthy dose of links to your own blog. You can't approach a conversation with an openness to learning something new, to talking about something besides your own pet issue.

And this makes me tired. And I think it makes other people on this blog tired. Do you ever wonder why people aren't more responsive to pragmatarianism than they are? Do you wonder why people don't engage with your comments more than they do? Is it possible, in your mind, that perhaps the fault is not entirely with them?

At any rate, I'm tired of this. You've got your truth, and I wish you the best of luck with it. But please, preach it somewhere else.

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Xerographica


Read your post again.  Your point was that libertarians should support government efforts to help people in need.  How was my question to you not valid?  Why do you want to separate morality from reality?  All you had to say was..."here are my arguments for why we should only focus on the moral issues..."

You say that I'm not open to learning something new...but what did you try and share with me that I wasn't open to?  Can you list any concepts that I rejected or ignored?  Can you show me a single discussion between us where this occurred?

No, I don't wonder why more people don't engage with my comments.  Look at how you engaged with my comments.  You never once responded to a single economic argument that I made.  You couldn't respond because...obviously you lack an understanding of the economic concepts that I tried to share with you.

Let's take a walk down memory lane together...

Exhibit A - we discussed whether business owners should be allowed to discriminate
Exhibit B - we discussed if foreign intervention was ever justified
Exhibit B1 - this is the continuation of our discussion on foreign intervention
Exhibit C - I brought up my concern regarding the issue of conceit vs humility but your response was...

Believe it or not, not every book deals with your pet issue. Not every blog post on this site deals with it. And yet, sometimes, you can still learn something from them.

Exhibit D - you made a joke about pragmatarianism and I ran with it but no discussion followed

And that's it.  That's the extent of our interactions on your blog.  You were perfectly willing to discuss discrimination and foreign intervention with me but you never once discussed any economic issues with me.

So what do you do?  You block me from your blog.  But by blocking me from your blog you separate morality from reality even more!

The Pragmatarian Challenge to Stefan Molyneux

How many "natural rights" (deontological) oriented anarcho-capitalists are barking up the wrong tree?  That's a link to my challenge to Stefan Molyneux.

My challenge to Stefan is to explain whether the biggest obstacle to his World of Beautiful Freedom is people's "immorality" or their unfamiliarity with the concept of the invisible hand.  This challenge is in response to his video on Beautiful Freedom where he answers frequently asked questions on how a stateless society might work.  By far and large the video consists of him explaining how the invisible hand works.

As a pragmatarian I say nothing about whether "taxes are theft"...my only argument is that taxpayers should be allowed to directly allocate their taxes.  Even though the total amount of taxes would be exactly the same, the most common response to pragmatarianism is that some "important" public good would be underfunded.  For a mountain of evidence that supports this conclusion see my post on Unglamorous but Important Things.

It's clear that the biggest obstacle to a stateless society isn't that people are immoral...it's just that they have no idea how the invisible hand works.  Therefore, the revolution wasn't postponed because of immorality...it was postponed because it was outside of everybody's area of expertise.

My pragmatic recommendation is for everybody to bark up the right tree by focusing on helping people understand how the invisible hand works.  In my opinion...asking people to consider the outcome of allowing taxpayers to directly allocate their individual taxes...aka pragmatarianism...is a really good way to introduce them to the invisible hand concept.