
Quick answers - Utilitarianism, Argumentation Ethics, Motivations, Voting
I read your article about moral nihilism and libertarianism, are you a utilitarian?
No, I’m a moral nihilist — and that stance rules out utilitarianism. And though my preferences will often align with utilitarian views, they won’t always, since my moral feelings also tell me that individual rights are important (even at the expense of maximising utility, and even when enforcing individual rights couldn’t reduce to rule utilitarianism in any obvious way).
What you think is wrong with Hoppe’s Ethics?
I don’t believe that argumentation ethics is a valid argument. I don’t think that Hans Herman Hoppe (or anyone else, such as Stephan Kinsella), has succeeded in showing the following:
- Rejecting libertarian property rights, or self ownership as understood by libertarians, through argumentation, is a performative contradiction.
- Assuming the above necessitates contradiction, how it follows that this contradiction establishes the truth or desirability of libertarian property rights.
In my view the objections raised by David Friedman have not been satisfactorily answered.
Why do you defend libertarianism?
Libertarianism (more specifically, a regime of universally enforced private property rights) accords better with my most foundational moral feelings than any other system I’m aware of.
I also believe it will bring about better outcomes — according to my, and most others’ idea of better — than any other system can. These are the reasons I would like to see the world move in this direction.
I take the trouble to defend/advocate for libertarianism in part because I believe that enough others exist in the world who share my basic moral intuitions but who haven’t yet heard the arguments articulated, to make the effort worthwhile.
because it can cause the maximum good?
Yes, if I can stipulate a sense of good that means according well with my moral intuitions while seeming likely to be an excellent means of maximising preference fulfilment in general.
If tomorrow another thing can be better to provide goods and services than libertarianism, will you support this new thing?
Not necessarily. If I didn’t support it, I think it would be on the grounds that it didn’t accord, in some serious way, with my moral feelings about how people may be treated.
Do you think is better to vote or to separate completely from the electoral system?
I don’t think there can be a single answer to that. It depends who you are, what your temperament is like, how likely your vote is to be politically decisive.
Some say that to vote is to be complicit in the predations of the state. I don’t buy that. For instance a vote can be cast in self defence — in an attempt to minimise future predation.
A common response to that is that your vote helps to legitimise the democratic state. It might do, but if it does, it does so to such a tiny degree that I don’t think this consideration can be decisive. I can easily imagine other considerations weighing more heavily.
I think it is useful to keep in mind the vanishingly small likelihood of your vote counting in any large voting contest (I prefer to use that term over the euphemistic election), and also keep in mind that for most people, the act of having voted will likely predispose them to be much more psychologically vested in the outcome than they otherwise would be. I think it’s useful to ask yourself whether that’s the kind of person you want to be. Bryan Caplan has a good post on the subject.
