Part 2

>3. On whether “libertarianism” has intrinsic ties to “liberty”

>Regarding that libertarianism is “not really a ‘political theory’ but a social theory”, sure, I do not object, although I might still not talk this way in the future.

And if asked for my “political theory” I would probably usually reply “libertarian anarchy”.

>I might say that it is true that every libertarian in history has cared about liberty, but I guess I still don’t think a concept of liberty needs to be central to the theory.

It does if a libertarian wants to explain how policy X is libertarian while policy Y isn’t. Or why does he prefer policy X? Because it increases utility? Then he is a utilitarian.

>There are many words for ideologies where the root of the word is not central to the theory;

But with libertarianism and utilitarianism things are different. More precisely, however, it is not about the “root of the word” (philosophy is not about words, although it must use them) but about some, often tacit or even inchoate, theory of liberty or utility.

> in my post I had given the examples of “pro-life” and “pro-choice”, and I might add that a theory of “fascism” has no central concept of “the fasces” (certainly fascists care a lot about this metaphor of the bundle of sticks, but their political theory can be developed without any account of it), “globalism” has no central concept of “the globe” (certainly they care about the globe, but they need not have theories about it), and maybe others.

Yes, not all political philosophies have some central idea. But some do.

>It is true that the concept of “utility” is central to utilitarianism, as Lester points out. I guess I think a concept being included in an ideology’s name is simply not, by itself, a good reason for being as insistent upon it as Lester has been in all his works that I’ve read; and I am not aware of any other good reason.

Liberty is not central because it is included in the name “libertarian” (and it is not, without a lot of dubious etymologising, in “classical liberal”; which description I am equally happy to accept). Liberty is central because all libertarian theories at least tacitly appeal to a theory of liberty. If they tacitly appeal to something else (welfare, social justice, whatever), then they are not really libertarians.

>4. On the classical-liberal/libertarian compatibility conjecture

>Lester asks where he can find a refutation of the conjecture. When I said that “I believe there is no hope for” the conjecture, I meant by this that I found it unlikely that I would see a proof of it,

Proofs are for mathematics and logic. And even there (as Lakatos explained), any proof relies on its assumptions/conjectures (including the assumptions that the logical inferences are valid and have been correctly perceived). Euler faulted many supposed mathematical proofs.

> and this was due to my finding it very difficult to clarify Rothbard’s attempt at proving something like the conjecture with his demonstrated-preference theory, cf. this blog post in December: thiagovscoelho.blogspot…

As Aristotle rightly observed, “Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clarity as the subject matter admits; for precision is not to be sought alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts.” Nicomachean Ethics (Book I, 1094b–1095a). Consider a country with great poverty, political persecution, and apparent general misery (such as North Korea) and another with great wealth, relatively liberal rule, and apparent general happiness (such as South Korea). It seems obvious to me that the second country has more liberty and more welfare, both per capita and absolutely. You seem to be committed to the view that we cannot possibly say which country has more liberty or more welfare; and, moreover, the very ideas of “liberty” and “welfare” are too vague to make any sense at all.

>My conclusion has been, since that post, that once you formulate a welfare theory that is strong enough to prove that respecting libertarian private property is the best way to maximize welfare, and then clarify its concepts, you’ll find it doesn’t look much like a welfare theory at all. Lester has linked a paper with his own approach, which I will check out later.

You seek both an impossible “justification” (“proof”) and more precision than is possible or necessary.

>5. On welfare theories more generally

>Lester says:

>> People are generally better off to the extent that they receive more of what they want. This occurs more with free markets than any other known systems. This is to speak broadly, of course. Precise welfare calculations are neither possible nor necessary. Compare countries with free markets to those with great state interference. Q.E.D.

>I am sympathetic to this point insofar as I am sympathetic to free markets, but I am unsympathetic to this point insofar as I am unsympathetic to “reading people’s minds” regarding what they “want” psychologically, which seems to be what is required to talk about welfare, or wellbeing.

We don’t need to be telepaths. A little normal human empathy is all that is required to see that a severely authoritarian society of great scarcity has less welfare than a relatively liberal (in the classical sense) one with great abundance.

>Social-democrats would certainly press the point that, with a social safety net, the poor get even more of what they want, and that this is in line with what social-democratic societies want, since the majority vote for it. I am not a social-democrat, but I think in order to properly answer the social-democrat, we need a more developed welfare theory, even if it doesn’t have precise welfare calculations.

Social-democrats (like all statists) primarily need to understand economics better. That is what mainly explains why private property promotes welfare and forced transfers undermine it. But some philosophy can help too.

>Due to my previous bad experiences with finding very unclear concepts at the core of all welfare theories, I have adopted a position of nihilism toward welfare theories,

It is not psychologically possible to do this. We can’t help empathising. There is no way that you can honestly say that you have no idea whether a man screaming as he is being tortured has less welfare than someone sitting on a beach in the sunshine drinking a cocktail and smiling. It is just that your implicit theory of welfare is not formalised and precise.

>where I will criticize their use to defend policies I disagree with, but will also not use them to defend policies I do agree with. It is possible, in principle, that one of Lester’s linked texts can overcome my pessimism about welfare theories; we will see.

Briefly, we know introspectively that we are usually better off when we have more of what we want. We assume that other people are the same. We see, and theoretically understand, that libertarian property promotes this for everyone.

>6. Conclusion

>I reiterate that, although I went through the post point-by-point, I skipped over any points that involved a link to an external text, since although I hope to check those out later, I am getting a response out quickly so that Lester sees that I saw his comment, which I thank him for.

And I thank you for your very welcome criticisms.