Yes. Diagnosing the faults in Alvin Plantinga’s reasoning is important. Am I to understand you’d prefer a frank exchange of views with Jerry Falwell?
I see little value to discussion with either. Given the fundamental problems with theism (primarily a lack of empiricism), I can reasonably expect that “better” theist arguments will only be more elaborate and rigorous argumentation from the same broken axioms. Unless I were preparing for a formal, public debate with a theist it wouldn’t be worth my time.
Yes. I included one such argument in the post you just replied to. I quote myself:
The phrase “policy libertarianism” gets only a couple thousand google hits, many of which are false positives. Eliminating the most common false positive (the phrase “foreign policy, libertarianism”), your own LW comment comes up on the first page of results. The remaining results seem to mostly concern matters of evolutionary vs. revolutionary change as a means of implementing libertarian goals, not arguments for goals, and bear no obvious relation to what you’ve mentioned. If you’re referring to a major school of libertarian thought, I’m assuming there’s another, more popular term for it, but I don’t know how to figure out what it would be, sorry.
In other words, government decision-makers (i.e. bureaucrats) have just as much trouble integrating new information, violating social norms, and admitting error as consumers or decision-makers for firms, but bureaucrats are also subject to perverse incentives, regulatory capture, etc.
This point is not under dispute, but it also does not suffice to prove that governmental action is therefore less effective, especially given imperfect markets, other problematic incentives for smaller agents (e.g., problems of collective action), and empirical evidence showing that governmental programs can sometimes lead to better results than non-governmental programs (e.g., European vs. USA health care).
The implied primary terminal value here is welfare-maximization, according to some material standard that I’m assuming we could agree on, given that we’re both here. No specific claim about the efficiency of markets is made. A fortiori, the argument derives some of its strength from the acknowledgment of certain deviations from rational behavior that (once again) we both presumably know about, because we’re both here.
Some form of welfare-maximization, yes. Various quality-of-life metrics are a (rough) approximation. I’m not sure what else you’re getting at here.
I should say again, it is likely that we agree on the vast majority of actual conclusions. My complaint with libertarianism as a political philosophy is that (like most other political philosophies) it has no apparent, consistent empirical basis and resorts frequently to bottom-line arguments, even though many of their conclusions can be justified rigorously.
I am convinced of this in large part because most libertarians I have encountered have been completely impervious to real-world examples of government programs being more efficient and effective than equivalent non-governmental systems, leading me to conclude that the mainstream of libertarian thought is essentially anti-empirical.
The phrase “policy libertarianism” gets only a couple thousand google hits, many of which are false positives.
It’s a fairly recently coined term. The first use I’m aware of is here. The distinction between policy and structural libertarianism has been picked up quite quickly as many have found it useful.
In that case I remain confused in that it seems to mostly refer to a framework for how to achieve libertarian goals, not for justifying that said goals will successfully confer the advertised benefits (e.g., some type of welfare maximization or general utility).
The post is on a libertarian blog and as such is aimed at an audience who already accept the case for libertarian goals being desirable. It’s making a distinction between libertarians who believe that the best way to achieve their goals is to work within existing democratic systems to promote libertarian policies and those who believe that existing democratic systems are fundamentally inhospitable to libertarian policies and that achieving libertarianism requires addressing structural factors that tend to produce unlibertarian societies.
The ‘policy libertarians’ tend to be the ones focusing on demonstrating empirical support for improved outcomes under libertarian policies. The idea being that it may be possible to get more libertarian policies implemented by appealing to empirical evidence for their efficacy on a case by case basis rather than by trying to convince people that libertarianism is the ‘one true way’. That would seem to be precisely the kind of approach you would seem to prefer.
I see little value to discussion with either. Given the fundamental problems with theism (primarily a lack of empiricism), I can reasonably expect that “better” theist arguments will only be more elaborate and rigorous argumentation from the same broken axioms. Unless I were preparing for a formal, public debate with a theist it wouldn’t be worth my time.
The phrase “policy libertarianism” gets only a couple thousand google hits, many of which are false positives. Eliminating the most common false positive (the phrase “foreign policy, libertarianism”), your own LW comment comes up on the first page of results. The remaining results seem to mostly concern matters of evolutionary vs. revolutionary change as a means of implementing libertarian goals, not arguments for goals, and bear no obvious relation to what you’ve mentioned. If you’re referring to a major school of libertarian thought, I’m assuming there’s another, more popular term for it, but I don’t know how to figure out what it would be, sorry.
This point is not under dispute, but it also does not suffice to prove that governmental action is therefore less effective, especially given imperfect markets, other problematic incentives for smaller agents (e.g., problems of collective action), and empirical evidence showing that governmental programs can sometimes lead to better results than non-governmental programs (e.g., European vs. USA health care).
Some form of welfare-maximization, yes. Various quality-of-life metrics are a (rough) approximation. I’m not sure what else you’re getting at here.
I should say again, it is likely that we agree on the vast majority of actual conclusions. My complaint with libertarianism as a political philosophy is that (like most other political philosophies) it has no apparent, consistent empirical basis and resorts frequently to bottom-line arguments, even though many of their conclusions can be justified rigorously.
I am convinced of this in large part because most libertarians I have encountered have been completely impervious to real-world examples of government programs being more efficient and effective than equivalent non-governmental systems, leading me to conclude that the mainstream of libertarian thought is essentially anti-empirical.
It’s a fairly recently coined term. The first use I’m aware of is here. The distinction between policy and structural libertarianism has been picked up quite quickly as many have found it useful.
In that case I remain confused in that it seems to mostly refer to a framework for how to achieve libertarian goals, not for justifying that said goals will successfully confer the advertised benefits (e.g., some type of welfare maximization or general utility).
The post is on a libertarian blog and as such is aimed at an audience who already accept the case for libertarian goals being desirable. It’s making a distinction between libertarians who believe that the best way to achieve their goals is to work within existing democratic systems to promote libertarian policies and those who believe that existing democratic systems are fundamentally inhospitable to libertarian policies and that achieving libertarianism requires addressing structural factors that tend to produce unlibertarian societies.
The ‘policy libertarians’ tend to be the ones focusing on demonstrating empirical support for improved outcomes under libertarian policies. The idea being that it may be possible to get more libertarian policies implemented by appealing to empirical evidence for their efficacy on a case by case basis rather than by trying to convince people that libertarianism is the ‘one true way’. That would seem to be precisely the kind of approach you would seem to prefer.
That clarifies the relevance, thank you.