Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2014/07/why-philosophers-should-stay-out-of-politics/Bas:

Great piece. I would state the argument a bit more analytically:

1) In a democracy, political debate has nothing to do with truth and everything to do with obtaining power by marketing, rhetoric, and ideology. Policy preferences are secondary to obtaining power to enact what must result in compromise policies.

2) A philosopher’s only special function is to act as professional judge of reasoned arguments on logical or moral grounds. We can claim no other skill. Just as judges do NOT act on moral or logical grounds, but on legal grounds. (Law abides by a lower logical standard than philosophy.)

3) If we determine the truth or falsehood of statements, arguments, and policy preferences, then we are performing as judges of reason.

4) if we perform as advocates of policy then we are not acting as judges.

5) Academia is corrupted by activism. This is the unfortunate consequence of competing for funds and attention.

6) Since by necessity democracy imposes monopoly rule, models of government represent irreconcilable differences by which to make judgements: we must assume a particular good as a theory or a preference in the choice of political models to make judgements within. Now it is possible to make a judgement from each point of the ideological triangle, and that is perhaps the position we all should take in rendering our judgements. However if we are asked to choose one or the other it may be that the optimum solution to any problem is satisfied best by one model, and the next optimum solution to any problem satisfied best by another model.

7) Therein rests the problem of philosophical neutrality under democracy: democracy imposes monopoly rule under which we cannot easily construct the best solution to any given problem using different forms of government.

8) It may be possible to make use of all forms of government, but only under libertarian government is such institutional diversity possible. Why? because only fully atomic property rights allow for rational calculation of voluntary exchanges necessary for the construction of contractual government that provides the features of any form of government.

As such is it is most logical to construct a libertarian government, but to advocate an administrative structure for any given policy problem best suitable to its execution.

We can model the universe in mathematics because a number system consisting of individual units can represent any combination of units. We can model any political economy in libertarianism because individual property rights allow us the same logical freedom as unitary mathematics. The difference is that in math, we use an equal’s sine to test for truth, whereas in libertarianism we rely upon voluntary exchanges free of externalities.

Cheers