17 Jul 2012

Two Keynesians vs. Two Austrians

DeLong 95 Comments

Brad DeLong thinks Mario Rizzo is a “psychopath” (actual quote) for recommending that people don’t tip NYC cab drivers; DeLong recommends (obviously tongue in cheek) strip-searching “these people” (by which he means Austrians, I think, and not Italians) whenever visiting one’s house. Brad DeLong also thinks I’m nuts for saying that it would be immoral for the government to take money from people against their will and use it to fund the destruction of a killer asteroid. Daniel Kuehn agrees with both points.

At first, I was going to make a quick blog post about the oddity of this stance. Rizzo is recommending something that is not actually theft, but at worst is really uncool. But DeLong and Kuehn are so horrified at ripping off NYC cab drivers–regardless of what other injustices Rizzo thinks he would thereby be protesting–that it’s fine to label Rizzo a psychopath for such views.

On the other hand, taking money from millions of people with the ultimate sanction of putting them in cages if they refuse–by hypothesis, these people don’t want to hand the money over voluntarily–in order to destroy an asteroid is so obviously a fine thing to do, that DeLong and Kuehn call me nuts for objecting to it. (Technically, DeLong calls me “unbalanced” while Kuehn uses the term “nuts.”)

As I say, the above dichotomy doesn’t interest me. I don’t care what an odd view of property rights and ethical views that it entails.

Rather, here is what I want to think about: Suppose Brad DeLong had the opportunity to stiff a NYC cab driver, and use the money saved in order to spare the planet from a killer asteroid?

95 Responses to “Two Keynesians vs. Two Austrians”

  1. Bob Murphy says:

    The Answer: It was a trick question. DeLong’s head would explode from the contradiction, and then scientists could direct the debris into outer space, thereby saving humanity.

    Does everyone see the lesson here? Peaceful solutions present themselves, if only you will give them a chance.

    • Major_Freedom says:

      I love this post.

      Rather, here is what I want to think about: Suppose Brad DeLong had the opportunity to stiff a NYC cab driver, and use the money saved in order to spare the planet from a killer asteroid?

      The Answer: It was a trick question. DeLong’s head would explode from the contradiction, and then scientists could direct the debris into outer space, thereby saving humanity.

      You mean there is more than one asteroid up there that they’re not telling us about?

      ——————–

      While DeLong calls people “psychopaths” for making choices at the margin, he too would be faced with what all central planners are faced with, but didn’t know they would have to face it until they became central planners: Choices will have to be made at the margin. Costs will be incurred.

      Doing A means you can’t do B, C, D, E, and everything else you initially verbally claimed to be proper and valuable and only a psychopath would not do.

      ———————-

      If you really want to see heads explode, imagine DeLong became communist dictator over a population of only DeLongs. Then watch as DeLong the dictator chooses A rather than B, C, D, and E, which makes the citizen DeLongs rage at dictator DeLong. They call him a psychopath, and some of them even want to overthrow him because he’s not doing what the DeLongs want. Then watch as DeLong the dictator feels compelled to forming a personal army of DeLongs so as to protect him from the white shirt DeLongs who refuse to voluntarily become “socialist DeLong man.”

      The end result is millions of DeLongs in gulags, producing taxi cabs without wheels and asteroid missiles without fuel.

      • JFF says:

        Wait a sec, MF; why would the population of DeLongs rage against dictator DeLong? Wouldn’t a population of DeLongs instantaneously and unquestioningly accept any decision made by dictator DeLong even if it was painfully obvious that it was against the population of DeLongs’ best interests?

        I think true justice, particularly for the nasty quip Herr DeLong made about David Gordon, would be put dictator DeLong in charge of a society made up of Rothbards who’d not listen to a single word he’d say, ignore his pronouncements, and make fun of him openly to his face. Then watch as dictator DeLong broke down and begin cowering and weeping in the corner of his office.

  2. Silas Barta says:

    Both the stiffing of the cab drivers and the strip searching of your friends as they leave your place, are examples of breaking an implicit contract established by custom.

    Yes, it’s your money, but social conventions dictate that you not stiff the driver without warning (“w/o warning” being the key point — I see no problem with Rizzo hailing cabs while holding a sign that says “I will not tip”, and neither would DeLong/Kuehn).

    Yes, it’s your place, but social conventions dictate that your property rights do not extend to searching people on it without warning.

    While we’re at it, the proper way to protest the medallion system is do what UberCar is doing in San Francisco: start a service that competes with it and doesn’t charge the rent-seeking premium.

  3. Jeremy R. Hammond says:

    LOL! Great punchline.

  4. Jonathan M.F. Catalán says:

    If you’re interested in another DeLong v. Austrian “debate” see his comment on a recent post of mine (the relevant point on the post is #1). If you go back to DeLong’s post (linked to in point #1) you see he’s quoting the 1934 preface to the English translation of The Theory of Money and Credit, where Mises doesn’t actually say what DeLong accuses him of saying. I responded to his comment for a source, but we’ll see if he answers back.

    • Daniel Hewitt says:

      Jonathan, I am pretty sure DeLong is talking about this:
      http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/11/yet-another-note-on-gold-mining-and-cyclical-unemployment-in-austrian-economics.html

      Again, Mises didn’t say what DeLong accused him in that post of saying. All one has to do is read the entire passage that DeLong quoted snippets of (see Bob Murphy’s comment).

      • skylien says:

        Yes it appears to me, as DeLong doesn’t understand the difference between expansion of supply of commodity money itself, or of credit expansion. Big artificial credit expansion will cause an unsustainable boom, wreck the price structure and will set the stage for big price deflation.

        A big artificial increase of gold supply with the same amount will cause an unsustainable boom and wreck the price structure as well, but since physical gold itself obviously isn’t credit the prices cannot decrease generally the same way as with a credit expansion. How could this additional gold disappear suddenly? I guess the huge influx of Gold from the Americas to Spain in the 16th century is a good example for this.

        I thought this difference was not a very controversial point, or is it?

        I mean whether you believe an increase in the money supply is a problem or not (if the CPI is in the Keynesian determined safe range of <2% inflation) counterparty risk that is inherent in credit has different consequences this or that way.

        • skylien says:

          I am sure Mises would also argue, that a government that increases the money supply of its fiat notes without credit expansion (through directly financing its spending) would result in similar results as an increase of the supply of gold money with the same amount through government spending.

        • Daniel Kuehn says:

          It’s been a while since reading that exchange – I participated too, if I recall – but I think DeLong understood perfectly well the difference between commodity and credit expansion, and he was exactly right on what Mises was saying. The trouble with his position in that discussion was that he seemed to think that was all that Mises’s view boiled down too – that there wasn’t other discussion of credit expansion elsewhere.

          I may have just been reading him wrong – he might not have actually been making that assumption about Mises. But that was the biggest concern for me.

          • Daniel Hewitt says:

            DeLong was completely wrong on what Mises was saying. What he claimed Mises said was the exact opposite of what Mises actually said.

            I will cut and paste him and Mises below (not nested in this exchange).

          • skylien says:

            Daniel, why did DeLong write this then?
            “If the increase in the money stock in the 1920s had taken the form of an increase in gold rather than of paper money, there would have been no big deflation in the early 1930s. No big deflation in the early 1930s, no Great Depression.”

            Another interpretation is he thought there only can be a crisis if a big price deflation causes it. Mises didn’t thought this obviously and anticipated DeLong in the very text DeLong misinterprets. That is very weird.

            Mises:
            “One popular doctrine blames the crisis on the insufficiency of gold production. The basic error in this attempt to explain the crisis rests on equating a drop in prices with a crisis…
            It is true that there is a close connection between the quantity of gold produced and the formation of prices. Fortunately, this is no longer in dispute. If gold production had been considerably greater than it actually was in recent years, then the drop in prices would have been moderated or perhaps even prevented from appearing. It would be wrong, however, to assume that the phenomenon of the crisis would not then have occurred.”

          • Nodnarb the Nasty says:

            Daniel Kuehn? Reading people wrong? I don’t believe it!!!

            • Major_Freedom says:

              Horwitz writes:

              “Daniel has a very bad habit of getting offended when critics of people whose views he shares take said people at their word. When we quote Krugman chapter and verse, Daniel says “well he really means this instead.” Sorry, I can’t read minds, just English.”

              Troy wrote:

              “The problem is, Daniel, you disagree with all those you support on all the details of the things they actually say, but support them “in general” — on what you think they ought to have said.”

              I knew DK pulled that crap here, but it seems like it is his M.O.

              ————

              Then Horwitz with this knee slapper:

              “I’m now naming this the Kuehn sequence:

              1. Austrian claims Keynesian says X
              2. Austrian says X is wrong
              3. DK says “I don’t know of any Keynesian who believes X”
              4. Austrian points to textual evidence of X
              5. DK insists that’s not what the Keynesian meant
              6. Austrian does facepalm, wastes a bunch of time arguing about it and eventually realizes it’s pointless, and goes back to working on something more productive.”

              Pretty much

        • skylien says:

          Hm. Maybe I am wrong about that an artificial increase of commodity money will result in a general unsustainable boom at all. It will wreck the price structure and cause misallocation of capital. But would it cause a general boom in the market? Interest rates wouldn’t be effected by this if the new money doesn’t enter the market through the loan market, or would they at least partly?

      • Jonathan M.F. Catalán says:

        It may be that also influences his view, but he quotes an excerpt from ToMC in what I link to.

  5. Peter says:

    Strip searching? That’s a little kinky, even for Brad.

  6. Bob Roddis says:

    Please explain why anyone would ever take seriously anything DK writes. Any day now I fully expect him to announce that he really has a serious problem with people who think that the sky is blue and cows can’t fly.

    Rizzo is proposing a general PROTEST in the form of a reduction in tips of the outrageous institution of awarding of a limited number of taxi medallions and price fixing by the “Taxi and Limousine Commission” (do they also have a “Ministry of Left Brown Shoes”?). That sounds perfectly reasonable to me but it is also just Rizzo talking and no one else.

    Also, why would we assume that the general population of the planet would fail see the benefit of contributing to the destruction of this asteroid while the government that these same people chose would have such foresight? Why wouldn’t private defense agencies be able to require sufficient contributions voluntarily pursuant to contractual provisions that foresaw the asteroid problem? Why wouldn’t non-violent ostracization of free riders be sufficient? Why would anyone insist a priori that violence would be necessary to solve the asteroid problem? I suspect it’s because, as a general rule, statists seem to go berserk about peaceful ostracization and avoidance but don’t seem to have a problem with SWAT teams, cages and killer drones.

  7. Daniel Kuehn says:

    Ummm… let’s be clear about one thing: I never labeled Mario a “psycopath”.

    I did say your idea was nuts, but I didn’t say you were nuts (and even then “nuts” doesn’t have the blunt force of “psychopath”).

    And I said you should never, ever, ever be the director of NASA. But I don’t think you were intending to apply, so it’s a moot point.

    • Jonathan M.F. Catalán says:

      Bob claims DeLong did, not you.

      • Daniel Kuehn says:

        He said that I agree “with both points”. I’m just clarifying I wouldn’t toss around words like “psychopath”. I think people sometimes don’t appreciate the hyperbole with which DeLong wields some of these terms, but I certainly don’t use them.

    • Bharat says:

      People are too dumb to contribute voluntarily to a fund that will stop an asteroid from hitting the planet?

  8. gienek says:

    Mr. Kuehn agrees with a Keynesian economist?

    Now where did I put the key to my nuclear bunker?

  9. John Becker says:

    When I’m President, Murphy will be the head of NASA and Joe Salerno will be the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Mark Thornton will be in charge of Fannie Mae.

  10. Dan (DD5) says:

    “On the other hand, taking money from millions of people with the ultimate sanction of putting them in cages if they refuse–…..”

    Well, they don’t go to their cages voluntarily either, so ultimately, they’re fine with rounding everyone who disagrees with them and shooting them into a hole in the ground.

  11. Daniel Hewitt says:

    DeLong:
    And Robert Murphy inquires where Ludwig von Mises wrote my paraphrase:

    an increase in the real money stock that comes about from people spending time energy and resources digging gold from the ground and refining it is equally efficacious in curing a depression.

    So I went back to my notes and found it:

    If gold production had been considerably greater than it actually was in recent years, then the drop in prices [in the early 1930s] would have been moderated or perhaps even prevented from appearing…

    If the increase in the money stock in the 1920s had taken the form of an increase in gold rather than of paper money, there would have been no big deflation in the early 1930s. No big deflation in the early 1930s, no Great Depression.

    Mises:

    One popular doctrine blames the crisis on the insufficiency of gold production. The basic error in this attempt to explain the crisis rests on equating a drop in prices with a crisis…
    It is true that there is a close connection between the quantity of gold produced and the formation of prices. Fortunately, this is no longer in dispute. If gold production had been considerably greater than it actually was in recent years, then the drop in prices would have been moderated or perhaps even prevented from appearing. It would be wrong, however, to assume that the phenomenon of the crisis would not then have occurred.

    • Daniel Hewitt says:

      Also worth mentioning is, at the time, Brad DeLong deleted my comment (shocking, I know) on this post when I mentioned that the Mises quote in context was not consistent with what DeLong was claiming.

  12. Gene Callahan says:

    “On the other hand, taking money from millions of people with the ultimate sanction of putting them in cages if they refuse–by hypothesis, these people don’t want to hand the money over voluntarily–in order to destroy an asteroid is so obviously a fine thing to do…”

    Bob, as you ought to know, the idea of using a tax is to solve a free rider problem. And yes, coercion for anyone who would not voluntarily contribute to such an effort is an obviously fine thing.

    • Dan (DD5) says:

      As your neighbor, I just planted a nice tall tree in my backyard and I can’t help noticing that it also provides you with free shade and a nice scenery. Please pay up! pay up or die!

      • Daniel Kuehn says:

        It’s amazing that for some people the takeaway from an externality argument isn’t “they think that externalities provide ample scope for at least talking about social production and provision of goods” but instead is “They think we must monetize and balance the books on EVERYTHING!!!!”

        • Bharat says:

          Meanwhile, those who want to impose a tax because of externalities generally choose to ignore every factor motivating individual behavior other than the incentive to free ride.

          Regardless, the point of the reductio ad absurdum (likely done purposefully; I think Dan is smart enough to realize that people who make this argument actually don’t want to socialize everything related to externalities) was to expose the lack of principle behind the argument.

          • Ken B says:

            Here’s a hypothetical. Everyone owns a fraggle. We need all fraggles to stop the asteroid, but Roddis insists we pay him and worshiop him like a king or we cannot have his fraggle. How is that demand more reasonable of defensible than ours that unless he lets us have his fraggle we will we build him a cage?

            • Bob Roddis says:

              You could threaten to cut off my water supply. There are always alternatives to the initiation of force.

            • Bharat says:

              No third option?

            • Major_Freedom says:

              Here’s a hypothetical. Everyone is going to die from a virus or plague, unless your body is used in such a way that results in your death, because all your cells are needed for others.

              Because it is “reasonable” that you are killed, then by the DeKrugman logic of fallacy of composition, it is therefore justified that you are killed right now in the real world, because hey, in the hypothetical world it is justified!

        • Dan (DD5) says:

          This is precisely your problem. You think that any collection of assertions uttered out of anybody’s mouth is an argument.

          You have to have an actual argument before I can takeaway anything from it.

        • Major_Freedom says:

          Logically speaking, they’d have to.

          But because it would lead to absurdity, they only say the externalities of government activity are justified…I mean they ignore those externalities altogether.

          “What’s that? A is polluting B’s property? Let’s externalize the costs and steal from EVERYONE to finance a SWAT team to stop A.”

          It’s amazing how the arguments you are addressing are going over your head and yet you think you’re engaging them.

        • skylien says:

          What I think to be strange or a bit stupid about such extreme case examples is that obviously you argue that such things are a matter of degree. But then I ask: What exactly is such an example supposed to prove anyway? Even if Bob said: “Ok in this example I grant you that it would be ok to coerce people to pay a tax.”

          Then you won exactly nothing for any other tax that we currently have on earth… I mean it would be really stupid to say: “Hey you would agree to a stopp-asteroids-from-destroying-the-earth tax, so pay your income tax.” That is a non-sequitur.

          It really was a very very small victory.
          Also how far would you really go I ask? You are obviously prepared to kill people who do not want to pay this tax and resist going in jail.

          What if an alien race told us, we need to rape your children until tomorrow 12 o’clock or they will destroy our planet? Of course it was clear for us that they mean what they say, and that they are capable to do that without much effort. Was this ok? I say no. And therefore I am also not sure if it was ok to shoot people to get this asteroid tax. This example is of course scalable to any atrocity-degree you want.

          If you say “No, raping my children is never ok”, then I have got the same very small victory that you would gain if Bob said ok to the asteroid tax. I won nothing in the end because raping someone anyway is different than throwing someone into jail or killing him if he doesn’t give you a certain amount of money.

          I am sure even Bob sees this as a matter of degree at the end. He will say punching someone in the face is wrong. However if the aliens were satisfied and would not destroy our planet if Bob would punch Gene in the face, I guess he would do it. What would you have one? Again nothing.

          So Bob, would you?

          • skylien says:

            This is directed to Daniel.

            and at the end I mean “What would you have won?” … I hate it that I mix up words all the time..

          • Ken B says:

            Skylien: ” Even if Bob said: “Ok in this example I grant you that it would be ok to coerce people to pay a tax.”

            Then you won exactly nothing for any other tax that we currently have on earth…”

            We would have established that there is no a priori principle that forbids taxes, and so Bob et al would have to argue the actual merits of any actual proposal, not some alleged abstract principle. That would be all to the good.

            • skylien says:

              I tell you how far this would get you if you ask Bob about an ordinary real world tax. Bob would ask: “Would it cause at least a guaranteed genocide if this tax wasn’t levied?” You would say “No” And Bobs’ answer to this tax is predictable then at this point, isn’t it?

            • Bharat says:

              It would establish a priori that in made-up hypothetical situations where there are only two options, a tax is necessary.

              It would not establish anything a priori about the real world we live in.

      • Ken B says:

        As my neighbor you just planted a tall tree that deprives me of sunlight and blocks my view. I’ve been harmed. Pay up.

    • Ken B says:

      This is a rough day for me. I have to +1 Gene again.

      • Major_Freedom says:

        It’s only expected of you. It would have been a surprise if you never did.

        • Ken B says:

          I know you mean this as an insult — as ever — but it’s not. I don’t judge arguments by their advocates. That’s a virtue.

          • Major_Freedom says:

            I was referring to the arguments, not the advocate.

    • Major_Freedom says:

      Except the taxes DeKrugman are defending are taxes to finance SWAT teams and drones.

      It would be like a rapist defending his raping on the basis that should the world ever face extinction due to a rare plague which makes men sterile for one or two generations, that this rapist is justified in raping women to prevent human extinction.

      It shows the quality of discourse violence supporters have to relegate themselves to when they defend their violence advocacy.

    • Silas Barta says:

      It certainly *can* be a fine thing (I don’t go as far as Bob and Major_Freedom); the problem is where it ends. Once you accept coercion for this, you have to potentially pay up for any Chicken Little’s textbook-global-public-good problem-of-the-day. Whatever reason you give for “free riding” there can be potentially applied here.

      And, as we saw in the previous debate, your position is at least as problematic, since (IIRC) you balk at once government going to war with another for free-riding on a problem like this.

      • Ken B says:

        This seems an easy problem actually, if you assume the asteroid really is coming, which seems the specified conditional. Then the free riders are really playing the last hold-out game. It’s when the asteroid is only a maybe you get a real problem

        • Silas Barta says:

          Sure. But that’s the kicker, isn’t it? My point is that the transition from theory to practice is especially hard on this one.

        • Major_Freedom says:

          How does this hypothetical scenario justify taxation right now? Isn’t that the whole purpose of this silly game? For DeKrugman to feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside for having a knockdown argument against those who are anti-tax NOW, in the present, when no life ending asteroid is on a collision course with Earth?

          Just askin’

          • Silas Barta says:

            Whoa whoa whoa there, Major_Freedom! There *is* an asteroid hurtling toward earth, and I’m the only one who can stop it. GIVE ME A THOUSAND DOLLARS NOW.

            • Major_Freedom says:

              I’ll send you a check as soon as your girlfriend comes over so that we can repopulate the Earth, as there is a virus that is going to make all men sterile except me!

              What, no dice? You’re not a “psychopath”, are you? Saying no to what is necessary to save the human race from extinction?

              • Silas Barta says:

                Jokes on you — my “girlfriend” is my hand!

              • Major_Freedom says:

                Meh, at least it never gets a headache.

      • Bharat says:

        I get what you’re saying and agree. I think if people want to violate other’s liberties for the “greater good” they can do so. But if they are wrong and/or the person whose liberties they violated decides to press charges, they should be liable for their actions.

        In other words, sure, break the NAP, but the individual that was aggressed against still has legal recourse.

        • Dan says:

          I like this point a lot. If an asteroid was going to destroy the planet unless people stole from others I would understand why they would do it, but I think they still should be punished for theft.

          I’m not really sure why someone would be surprised that libertarians would find it objectionable to tax someone to save the planet from an asteroid. I get why non-libertarians would think taxing in this scenario would be justified, they usually don’t view taxes as theft, but it would be inconsistent for libertarians to judge this kind of action to be ethical. Besides that, it would be unnecessary and probably less efficient to try to prevent an asteroid through taxation.

    • Bala says:

      “Bob, as you ought to know, the idea of using a tax is to solve a free rider problem.”

      Brilliant!!! A “problem” is always faced by someone. If it is not faced by someone, it is not a “problem”. Now!!! Let’s get some clarity on who faces the free rider “problem”. Let’s define what a free rider is and explain why one person being a free rider is justification to initiate force on him and expropriate him. Please also explain who may do that and why it is justified for that person to do that.

  13. Lord Keynes says:

    “Brad DeLong also thinks I’m nuts for saying that it would be immoral for the government to take money from people against their will and use it to fund the destruction of a killer asteroid.”

    Although we can only guess, I suspect even Ludwig von Mises would declare you “nuts” as well for opposing collective action to save the planet, even if it involved taxes.

    Why? (1) Mises was a consequentialist in ethics and (2) could write passages like this:

    ““Economics neither approves nor disapproves of government measures restricting production and output. It merely considers it its duty to clarify the consequences of such measures. The choice of policies to be adopted devolves upon the people. But in choosing they must not disregard the teachings of economics if they want to attain the ends sought. There are certainly cases in which people may consider definite restrictive measures as justified. Regulations concerning fire prevention are restrictive and raise the cost of production. But the curtailment of total output they bring about is the price to be paid for avoidance of greater disaster. The decision about each restrictive measure is to be made on the ground of a meticulous weighing of the costs to be incurred and the prize to be obtained. No reasonable man could possibly question this rule” (Mises, L. 1998 [1949]. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn. p. 741).

    “There are people who call government an evil, although a necessary evil. However, what is needed in order to attain a definite end must not be called an evil in the moral connotation of the term. It is a means, but not an evil. Government may even be called the most beneficial of all earthly institutions as without it no peaceful human cooperation, no civilization, and no moral life would be possible. In this sense the apostle declared that ‘the powers that be are ordained of God.’” (Mises, L. von. 2007. Economic Freedom and Interventionism: An Anthology of Articles and Essays (ed. B. B. Greaves), Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, Ind. p. 57).

    http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2012/01/government-is-not-inherently-evil.html

    http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/09/mises-on-utilitarianism.html

    http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2010/10/was-mises-socialist-why-mises-refutes.html

    • Major_Freedom says:

      Too bad consequentialism is an impossible to practise ethic. I cannot know how to act now, if the validity of what I can do rests on the future outcome of my action, which of course is never 100% certain, especially for actions that are planned to have a desired outcome months or years down the road.

      If an action I perform today will have outcomes spanning 1, 2, even 3 years into the future, or more, then the consequentialist could not say I performed ethically or unethically until 1, 2, 3 years into the future, which of course implies that the consequentialist cannot know NOW what I can and cannot do NOW.

      The absurdity of consequentialist ethics is only matched by the intellectual bankruptcy of those who try to use it to justify state violence in the present.

      • Lord Keynes says:

        As usual, rubbish arguments.

        A consequentialist ethics – in fact like any philosophy by which we take action with consequences is the future – requires that one look at foreseeable and possible consequences to the best of our ability. There is no reason in principle why, retrospectively, we might sometimes find that action was wrong in the past.

        Consequentialism does not require perfect foresight or knowledge at all – that is utter garbage.

        .

        • Major_Freedom says:

          As expected, a weak and pathetic response masquerading as insight, and a total lack of engaging the actual argument.

          A consequentialist ethics – in fact like any philosophy by which we take action with consequences is the future – requires that one look at foreseeable and possible consequences to the best of our ability.

          The whole point of ethics is to know what actions to take and what actions not to take in the present, where choices are made, when it comes to exclusive designations of control of person and material goods.

          You can’t say that because consequentialism requires one to make expectations of the outcomes of present actions “to the best of one’s ability” just like in praxeology, which is descriptive, not normative, that it tells us which actions we ought to take in the present concerning such exclusive designations of control.

          You’re conflating descriptive, scientific means and ends, with normative, ethical means and ends.

          There is no reason in principle why, retrospectively, we might sometimes find that action was wrong in the past.

          There is no reason why one might find that a past action was wrong? So all past actions cannot be judged in terms of the outcomes they caused? Say what?

          I think what you tried to say in your blathering nonsense is “There is no reason in principle why, retrospectively, we cannot find that sometimes an action was wrong in the past.”

          Let’s suppose you did mean to say that. OK, but I didn’t say you couldn’t say that. It is precisely that which makes it an impossible to practise ethic.

          Ethics deals with what people ought to do what they ought not do NOW, when there are other people alive, and scarce material goods the exclusive control of which has to be decided now. We couldn’t even act in the meantime as we approach the outcome, because our very actions in the meantime will necessarily presuppose a set of exclusive designations of who controls what, which is the very set of behaviors ethicists are trying to establish as ethical and not ethical in the first place.

          Consequentialism does not require perfect foresight or knowledge at all – that is utter garbage.

          I didn’t say it did. I said that consequentialism is an impossible to practice ethic precisely because it hinges on uncertain outcomes in the future, and not on the NOW in the present, when people have to make choices on what to do and what not to do, where decisions have to be made as to who has exclusive control over what.

        • Major_Freedom says:

          Oh, and it’s rather amusing watching you explicitly and with self assurance utilize the “trivially true” (your words) praxeological concept of human action as the entire grounding of your argument.

          It’s even more amusing than you presupposing it in your ridiculously crude Keynesian policy magic formula of

          (i) calculate potential GDP and estimate how severely GDP is likely to collapse by,
          (ii) estimate the Keynesian multiplier and
          (iii) then design fiscal policy to expand demand by tax cuts and/or appropriate level of discretionary spending increases to hit potential GDP via the multiplier.

          Those are all actions. Looks like Keynesianism is built on a “trivially true” axiom, LOL.

  14. Ken B says:

    RPM:

    On the other hand, taking money from millions of people with the ultimate sanction of putting them in cages if they refuse–by hypothesis, these people don’t want to hand the money over voluntarily–in order to destroy an asteroid is so obviously a fine thing to do, that DeLong and Kuehn call me nuts for objecting to it.

    Hmmmm. Bob seems to argue here that we are putting them in jail essentially for not paying for the asteroid, because that’s the real substance of the issue, and not for say violating a court order that they do so. I think that’s right.Anything else is sophistry really. But what does it remind me of? Hmmmm. It couldn’t be about the civil war really being about slavery, and the spread of slavery to new territories could it??

    • Major_Freedom says:

      Because if rape is the only available option to save the human race from extinction in my made up hypothetical scenario, rape is therefore justified right now in the real world.

      After all, that logic is why DeKrugman defended taxes to finance SWAT teams, prisons for non-violent “criminals”, and drones, isn’t it? Because in a hypothetical scenario taxes would be justified?

  15. Bob Murphy says:

    No way I can keep up with all the arguments here, but two quick points of clarification:

    (1) Just because I say it would be immoral for 51% of us to force the other 49% to fund something they don’t want to, I obviously recognize degrees of immorality. Taxing people to fund an asteroid collision, particularly if it’s really a free rider issue and not that some people want to die (maybe they think it’s second coming, etc.) or that they reject the “science of asteroid impacts,” is not as offensive to me as robbing a liquor store with shotguns. But I still maintain that there’s something wrong with it, and that we should hold up our ideals as trying to find voluntary solutions to social problems.

    (2) I was a bit cheeky in saying Daniel Kuehn “agrees” with DeLong calling Rizzo a psychopath. In my defense, this was clearly a humorous post on my part, and Daniel definitely agrees with the spirit of what DeLong is doing–going so far as to cast himself and DeLong as the standard bearers of civilization against the oddballs Rizzo and Murphy–but I can see why Daniel objected to my characterization.

    • Major_Freedom says:

      “Taxing people to fund an asteroid collision, particularly if it’s really a free rider issue and not that some people want to die (maybe they think it’s second coming, etc.) or that they reject the “science of asteroid impacts,” is not as offensive to me as robbing a liquor store with shotguns.”

      I think taxing people to fund an asteroid collision would be far, far, FAR more offensive than robbing a liquor store. LOL

      (Yes I know it’s a typo, but hot diggity, is that ever funny to read)

      • Bharat says:

        Where in the middle east is our government directing the asteroid? This is the US government right? Please, this is a serious question for our hypothetical, no stupid answers (e.g. Israel).

        • Major_Freedom says:

          I’m not touching that one.

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