Empiricism, Liberalism, and Consequentialism

Jonathan Chait responds to my concerns about the looming public health dystopia (and I respond back) below the fold:

You argue that liberal pragmatism is politically weak, and I agree with you. I had thought about making that point, but it seemed like a diversion from my central thesis. But yes, have a platform that constantly changes and can’t be explained on a bumper sticker is a serious electoral weakness. I think it can be overcome – Clinton overcame it -- but it’s a weakness.

Your quarrel with my argument centers around a reduction ad absurdum argument that my pragmatism would lead to a totalitarian dystopia of banned junk food and mandatory workouts. But that wouldn’t be pragmatic at all. It would make people tremendously unhappy. People like eating cheeseburgers even if it shortens their life span. They wouldn’t like government agents pointing a rifle at them while they pant away on the treadmill. Such a system would obviously decrease the sum of human happiness. Pragmatism doesn’t mean single-mindedly pursuing one metric of human improvement without taking account of other factors.

But even if it somehow were the case that pragmatism could, at some level of logical absoluteness, lead to your totalitarian scenario, your argument doesn’t really address my central point. What I’m trying to describe is American politics as it exists. My claim is that contemporary economic liberalism is basically pragmatic, and therefore better able to formulate practically-effective policies than contemporary conservatism, which (like socialism) is fundamentally ideological.

I  thought you’d be grabbed by the fact that my piece was more philosophically-oriented than your average magazine piece. Of course it wasn’t nearly philosophically-oriented enough to withstand your analysis. But I didn’t intend the piece as a pure philosophical treatise. (I took my last philosophy course more than 10 years ago.) It’s possible that I used some philosophy jargon incorrectly and therefore inadvertently suggested that my argument means something other than what it I intended. My basic point is this: people often think that liberals and conservatives have different conceptions about the proper size of government, and they do. But the more precise distinction is that liberals are agnostic about the size of government, and therefore more evidence-based in their approach to public policy, and therefore better able to make policies that create a better life for most Americans (as most people would understand it, and excluding those people who think small government is a good in and of itself.)

If, despite my many caveats, the above definition endorses an ideology that would lead to mandatory facial tattoos or mass slaughter of some unfortunate demographic group or the abolition of football, please believe me that I did not intend to do so.

My reply: Agreed, basically.

(Most) American liberals are committed to a pragmatic problem-solving model of government in a way that (most) American conservatives and American libertarians are not. This makes liberals good people to vote for if you want pragmatic problem-solving from your government. Since I do want pragmatic problem-solving, I tend to think you should elect liberals. This is also why the non-liberals at Marginal Revolution make for congenial reading to me to despite their libertarian orientation. Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabbarrok also share my pragmatic problem-solving approach to policy issues even if they (often) come to different conclusions about it. They and I (and Jon) are all offshoots of the same consequentialist brand classical liberal reformism you see in Adam Smith, J.S. Mill, and Jeremy Benthan. Even if Tyler and Alex hew closer to the original policy prescriptions, we're all working broadly inside that tradition.

The quibble I meant to raise was merely that a pragmatic problem-solving approach to governance doesn't get you anywhere unless you first specify what the problems to be solved are. This process is difficult, especially at the level of abstract philosophizing, since different problem-solving efforts tend to interact. Jon believes he can dodge the perverse results of public health totalitarianism because such policies would "decrease the sum of human happiness." In other words, by adopting a Benthamite utilitarianism. I'm pulled toward this view myself, but it's not without it's own problems. All brands of consequentialism, moreover, tend to push you toward Parfit's "Repugnant Conclusion" which many people, including Parfit who ultimately holds that it's correct, find rather repugnant.

Still, all views have their problems, and I think this sort of thing -- pragmatic, empiricially oriented consequentialism, is the best way to go. I merely wanted to point out that this position does have its own dilemmas, dilemmas which perhaps can be solved by people smarter than me at some point in the future.

On the politics, which I think is interesting, part of the problem with this sort of view is that it tends to make defeats self-reenforcing. The case for Al Gore in 2000 actually good be put down in a simple postage-stamp kind of way -- "Things are good, keep the team that's been running the show and bringing the good times." And had he won and kept delivering good government, Democrats could have kept running on a platform of good government and gradual but real amelioration of living conditions (just as the Clinton years managed to produce steady progress in wages for the poor without any major new programmatic achievements) and, perhaps, winning. Once you're out of power, though, it becomes very hard to articulate a new platform and win public support.