Great question, let’s take another example: Economists argue one group is correct or incorrect, but this is false framing of the discipline. The discipline of economics can be broken into three schools that describe a degree of discretion.
The Austrian(aristocratic/ conservative) school pursues social science: the means by which we improve (reduce the frictions) of cooperation, without interfering in (lying) the information system we call the economy.
The Chicago(classical liberal / libertarian) school pursues rule of law: we can interfere as long as those engaged in planning understand the rules under which we will interfere, and that they are non discretionary, and non-arbitrary, formulae. This achieves the desired result of compensating for ‘stuck’ patterns of sustainable specialization and trade, but does so ‘truthfully’ and ‘transparently’ and ‘predictably’.
The saltwater(left/social democratic) school seeks the maximum interference (lying) that we can perform that will produce the maximum amount of consumption, under the assumption that we can repair externalities using the same tools at a later date, and that the benefits of discretionary rule to those who engage in planning is sufficient to compensate for their increased risk and hardship.
The same is true for eugenic policies. We cannot do much under the non-interference of social science except attempt to educate others on the consequences of reproduction – yet they are the most impulsive and least open to education.
We can construct rule of law under which we pay people subsidies for single children, and anyone can prosecute anyone on behalf of the commons, if it’s violated, and people will be involuntarily sterilized, lose their subsidies, and be sent to the desert to live in unpleasant communes (slums) for their crimes. If sterilization is legal and subsidy is highest for non-child bearing women, and lower for child bearing women, and non-existent and accompanies by punishment for multiple childbearing women, then this is merely rule of law.
There is no government intervention here other than the courts. I think the opposite is true, is that we must expand rule of law and eliminate government discretion. Not just in economics, but throughout the production of commons. Markets not government. Rule of law, not discretion.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute