Rolling Political Philosophy Thread

I mean someone supports economic philosophy XYZ because they believe it leads to the best outcome for society (or the best outcome for themselves, and there's some reasoning where society will ultimately benefit, or society doesn't matter. but you can't remove morality from this.)

there were people who made arguments for the Poor Law from morality but there were people who made solely "this will keep the rabble quiet" arguments, in the same way that I know of very few contemporary arguments in favour of Germany's early welfare programme that weren't "undermine the Bolsheviks/keep the State strong". I don't think those are the kind of moral arguments that Euler is talking about? or really that they are moral arguments at all in the usual sense of the word "moral"?

it's not really an intro, but i highly recommend Robert Pippin's "Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy" which is very accessible to new philosophy readers and has the advantage of feeling very current.

― Mordy, Tuesday, May 10, 2011 10:33 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark

the best means of preserving the State is a technocratic argument. it can easily be divorced from any reasoning about what is right or wrong in an ethical sense, which isn't the same as saying that technocrats and economists don't also have ethical sentiments beyond their work, hard as that is to imagine.

I'm saying that 'this will keep the rabble quiet' people still had some moral/economic system they believed in, and this logic apparently didn't break it.

I get that euler is probably talking about a different type of moral argument, I'm just saying that there's a moral system behind any economic system and I don't think you can isolate them.

likewise the technocratic 'but does it work irl?' side can't be ignored either - it doesn't matter if you can reason w/ pure philosophy that it's moral for the government to give everyone in the country 1 million dollars.

I mean someone supports economic philosophy XYZ because they believe it leads to the best outcome for society (or the best outcome for themselves, and there's some reasoning where society will ultimately benefit, or society doesn't matter. but you can't remove morality from this.)

― iatee, Sunday, July 31, 2011 7:00 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

i basically agree with the last part, but not the first. i don't think policy is decided for purely economic *or* moral 'reasons'. rather: economic imperatives, political imperatives... morality is in there somewhere sometimes.

xp i'll def check out the Nietzsche book. he's such an excellent writer + fun to read which is so rare for philosophers at his level

i think what euler wants is an argument for the welfare state as an end goal & one that's good in itself, as opposed to an argument for the welfare state as a byproduct of a "successful" state, or the welfare state as "good for [stability/peace/the_market]" instead of just good

I think the moral vs. technocratic element basically comes down to, is this decision grounded in something "outside of" the positive existence of the state—which normative or moral commitments would (presumably) be, through the appeal to "human rights" or w/e

I don't think you can detach that from economic thinking when the welfare state is an economic concept xp

i don't think policy is decided for purely economic *or* moral 'reasons'.

Agreed, although I'd argue that some considerations tend to trump others when it comes down to getting politics done. But I was talking about arguments in general and there are plenty of pro-welfare arguments from political philosophers and others which don't foreground moral considerations, even if they're floating out there as some unspoken other.

xp

I don't think the Welfare State is a purely economic concept.

but what you or i think is immaterial to the question which was "have some people argued for it from morality without bringing in other reasons?"

this is like saying 'is the number 4 good'

the welfare state only exists in the context of an economic system. whether that system works irl (technocrat) and whether that is the 'best' system (economic philosophy) can't be removed from the discussion.

what does the 'welfare state' mean in the context of an amazon rainforest tribe? nothing.

xp yeah I agree, that's one of the things that keeps doing my head in whenever I try to post

still tho I think it should be possible in practice to separate "arguments in favor of expanding social welfare provisions on the basis of economic efficiency" (e.g. Keynes) from "arguments in favor of expanding social welfare provisions because failure to do so would leave citizens inadequately cared for" or w/e

(where "expanding social welfare provisions" could obviously also be "maintaining at a given level" or "not cutting back", etc, depending on context)

right, but keynes ultimately believed that economic efficiency would lead to greater good for society.

for the individual iirc

i agree you can't really have a moral argument for the welfare state without addressing the rest of the political-economic system

xxp "ultimately", sure, but along the way everything is framed in terms of an amoral analysis of the tendencies of a capitalist economy—business owners are asked to go along with it not out of some altruistic desire or obligation to help their fellow man, but because it will help avert (a certain type of) economic crisis!

(I mean I guess you can say that "the economy ought not collapse" is a moral stance, but hopefully it's an uncontroversial one...?)

I don't think the 'along the way everything is framed in terms of an amoral analysis of the tendencies of a capitalist economy' matters. there is a moral belief system behind the logic of capitalism and the 'along the way' is not objectively amoral. those businessmen would say they're creating wealth and jobs for society and it's morally wrong to prevent that.

if you remove political-economic considerations then how would a purely moral argument differ from that for almsgiving or any other 'social' altruism?

max is right, I would like arguments for having a welfare state that aren't just "it's stimulus!", that make a case that it's a morally good thing to collaborate under the aegis of a state to ensure the common welfare of fellow citizens via the redistribution of wealth.

Arguments that a welfare state protects the state sit in a middle ground, since "the state" is a moral structure inasmuch as it has the legitimacy to dispense justice & thus protecting it could be a moral end in itself...but also could be stand-ins for "we need to preserve the present economic status quo & this'll do the trick".

Yeah, a welfare state is an economic structure, since it involves transferring wealth. But it's a moral structure too, & I want to see what kind of secular case can be made for it as a moral structure. I get that the case is gonna depend on which society we're talking about; the "social imaginary" of the USA is different than France, etc.

again, I don't think you can isolate that moral structure.

I mean you can say

"if we are to agree that political-economic system X works irl and is the 'best', what's a moral argument for a welfare state?"

otherwise how can we argue about the moral structure of whether the gov't should give poor people $ if we don't agree on the real world effects of the gov't receiving/spending money and poor people receiving/spending money?

I think we can take for granted that some basic degree of wealth is necessary for the good life: enough for food & shelter at least. Let's add health care also. How much more do we need to know about the "real world effects" of having the wealth necessary for those transferred by the state?

Of course in taking for granted that such wealth is needed for the good life, I don't mean to assume that it's self-evident that everyone is entitled to the good life, if even only on other people's dime. That's exactly what I want to see argued for.

real world effects:

a. does gov't wealth transfer XYZ ultimately (after all short and long-term effects are factored in) lead to more economic growth for the country?
(are we assuming that more economic growth is an inherently good thing, if we already have reached the basic degree of wealth?)
b. does gov't wealth transfer XYZ ultimately (after all short and long-term effects are factored in) lead to a fairer share of wealth?
(are we assuming that a small gini coefficient is an inherently good thing? why?)
c. if we have to make a decision between a 'rising tide' vs. smaller gini coefficient, what's the point where we'll sacrifice one for the other?
d. does the economic context affect the morality of wealth transfer XYZ? (is it moral for greece to increase the size of its welfare state today?)

wrt a: no, we shouldn't assume economic growth is an inherently good thing.
wrt b: fairness is a moral concept.
wrt c: I'm interested in arguments that decide the "point" on moral grounds.
wrt d: I think morality doesn't apply to democratic nations as a whole, but only to individual agents.

It's not shocking that so many classical economists were utilitarians.

c. you can't decide that point on moral grounds without agreeing to an economic framework and working out the math. you can plot that trade-off on an graph, put your finger on it and say "there, that's the moral point" but the graph first requires an agreed-upon economic framework.
d. then how can you discuss the morality of an economic concept?

and b. yeah I prob shouldn't have used the word fair, that term already assumes something. I meant 'smaller disparity'.

I think that if you are asking 'why should...' anything, then you are asking a moral question. All of the arguments for the welfare state (or any other kind of state) are moral, because you have to decide on a goal, and why that goal is better than any other. For us in general? We all know why the welfare state is better - fewer people starve, die of unnecessary illnesses or exposure due to homelessness, Whether these are worthy ends is, of course, a moral argument.

fewer people also starve, die of unnecessary illness etc. thanks to the wealth gains from free markets

wrt c: sure, fix some economic framework & ask what's the right action given that framework. I was thinking of this as less "first principles work" than "given current economic reality, what's the best secular moral case for a welfare state?"

wrt d: we're being asked to pay taxes in order to support our welfare state. is our participation in that transfer of wealth morally permissible? obligatory? optimal?

alternately: is participating in that transfer conducive to the good life?

Well, if we assume that reducing death, illness, homelessness etc. are worthy goals then the question becomes socio-economic: Does our current course of action help us achieve these goals. Free markets do help in this process, to a point, but a stage is reached (a long time ago) when it becomes an obstacle to these goals. Either way, we always have to first decide what we want from life, what a society or government is for. Then it's just statistics.

'given current economic reality' - I mean, there is no easy or absolute 'economic reality', there are drastically different ways of looking at macroenconomic data and there are very different lenses with which people look at it. and even those have changed drastically over the last decade. 'fix some economic framework' isn't easy or quick - and in the process, you've already included a certain moral framework.

basically I think economists are the moral philosophers you're looking for

By "current economic reality" I mean our present economic practices: how we trade, etc. My proviso was there to indicate that I'm not envisioning some kind of reductio against Western capitalism.

xp absolutely not, they are as I said earlier mostly utilitarians, & that's the kind of technocratic reduction I want to avoid.

Who would be a deontological economist, some of the hardcore Monetarists or Adam Smith types?

idg technocratic as a bad word. I mean it's used to describe mcnamara types, but in a strict sense, why is a technocratic view of things reductionist?

I'd say anyone approaching this subject without realizing how much of it is political-economic is being reductionist.

Well, if we assume that reducing death, illness, homelessness etc. are worthy goals then the question becomes socio-economic: Does our current course of action help us achieve these goals. Free markets do help in this process, to a point, but a stage is reached (a long time ago) when it becomes an obstacle to these goals. Either way, we always have to first decide what we want from life, what a society or government is for. Then it's just statistics.

if, changing nothing else, we decided it was illegal to charge more than $1 for a prescription in america, the immediate effect would be very, very good socio-economically, as millions of people would have cheap access to medicine. the long-term effect would not be entirely good. you can't isolate these actions from their effect on markets.

i feel as if iatee you are saying that all political or economic arguments are founded on a fully-examined set of ethical beliefs? is that correct or what am i misunderstanding?

euler do you think there's a religious argument for the welfare state?

no, not always full-examined! but it makes more sense to examine the morality *behind the system* than a specific concept within it.

why is a technocratic view of things reductionist?

Here's why. Take the following passage:

if, changing nothing else, we decided it was illegal to charge more than $1 for a prescription in america, the immediate effect would be very, very good socio-economically, as millions of people would have cheap access to medicine.

Being "good socio-economically" ≠ being good. That's the reduction I'm trying to avoid.

I was responding to "are worthy goals then the question becomes socio-economic"

max: yeah, I think so, in classical Catholic writing on social justice for instance.

it makes more sense to examine the morality *behind the system* than a specific concept within it.

is that a kind of abstract morality belonging to or residing in the system itself then?

Euler, are you looking for a non-utilitarian argument for the welfare state?

I am too, and in many ways our current federal government is farther to the left than it's been in decades just by virtue of leaning on the NDP. If anything, this once again speaks to the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of a one-size-fits-all reading of the 'international' left, which is something we must aspire towards, but whose pragmatic existence is so flimsy as to be laughable. Hence the need, once again, for some measure of caution when writing such pieces, unless you explicitly identify with the Zaporozhian Cossacks, which the author clearly does.