Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Beware the World Changers!


Jason Brennan at Bleeding Heart Libertarians HERE  posts on a debate he has with Ross Levatter HERE http://www.libertarianism.org/blog/libertarianism-thought-experiments
I extract this statement from Jason with which I agree:
Libertarianism doesn’t follow from fundamental principles or axioms that are not open to question. Rather, to get to libertarianism, if you are at all sensitive to consequences, you need to make a series of empirical arguments about how institutions work. Now, in light of existing social science, it’s pretty clear that large-scale economies need to be run fundamentally on market principles. But it’s highly controversial to what extent government should supplement, enhance, regulate, or supplant markets in order to generate what consequence-sensitive libertarians would themselves agree are better outcomes.”
Comment
I prefer Adam Smith’s approach as a moral philosopher – “observe everything, do nothing” (History of Astronomy) as opposed to Marx’s later call: “The purpose is not to understand the world but to change the it”, because the world-changers always make things worse (no exceptions), particularly when they impose their utopian changes upon the rest of us.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions!

3 Comments:

Blogger airth10 said...

" because the world-changers always make things worse (no exceptions)"

That is to broad a statement to be true or make sense.

8:38 pm  
Blogger airth10 said...

" because the world-changers always make things worse (no exceptions)"

I can't shake off that nonsensical statement (opinion), especially the 'no exceptions' part. It has the earmarks of conservative thinking. Conservatives hate deliberate attempts at change. It is a remark made without much thought since one of the greatest world-changers was a conservative, Margret Thatcher. She helped change the world like nobody's business and generally for the better.

4:06 pm  
Blogger Gavin Kennedy said...

airth
"World Changers" cover those who want to change everything as a single act, examples of which I discuss and reject occasionally on Lost Legacy.
A changing environment poses problems for human groups. Moving location may be necessary (volcanoes, sinking land mass, etc.,) In retrospect, humans who moved survived, others who moved in the wrong direction did not, such as those who migrated north instead of south in the Ice-age, or those who climbed a mountain that erupted.
World changers whose proposals mean a total or major change in a society (e.g., communism, fascism) leads to social disasters.
Mrs Thatcher, with her many qualities, had a major defect - her inability to avoid bullying her necessary/potential allies (Julius Caesar similarly). She (and he!) turned victories into defeats.
Gavin

7:14 am  

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