--- In lpaz-discuss@y..., "Kent Van Cleave" <kvc@c...> wrote:
> I absolutely disagree. Utilitarians, because principle doesn't govern their
> decisions, can justify enslaving the few if the "calculus" of utility yields
> greater benefit to the many. Utility is fundamentally concerned with ENDS,
> and it can never therefore be compatible with libertarianism, which is
> fundamentally concerned with MEANS (viz, circumscribed means that exclude
> the initiation of force) and says absolutely nothing at all about ends
> (except to the extent that the state of living in a society of peaceful and
> honest means can be construed to be itself an end).
OK, now it's my turn to "absolutely disagree"...and being that I'm disagreeing on a philosophical issue, with Kent, I'm well aware I may be asking to have my ass handed to me on a platter. :-) Nevertheless, I must specifically disagree with the notion that "Utility...can never therefore be compatible with libertarianism". We all have our reasons for coming to libertarianism and the non-initiation of force principle. My own stem from a considered examination of the evidence that forceful means fail to succeed in yielding the promised "greater benefit to the many".
How many libertarians (not to even mention _L_ibertarians) do you really think there would be if government coercion actually worked and increased utility?...If the public schools were actually the finest institutions of learning ever devised...If affirmative action actually ended racism...If government run health care actually resulted in a higher life expectancy and a better quality of life than private health care did...If public housing was actually better than private housing...If public laboratories were actually the source of the most significant products that enhanced our enjoyment of life...If welfare actually ended poverty...If the war on drugs actually created a drug-free America...etc...etc.? I'm confident you get the idea. Sure, there might be a few die-hard moralists out there who wouldn't care that freedom clearly didn't work and force clearly did, they'd want freedom anyway. But they'd be really scarce, Kent. We're pretty damn thin as it is even WITH the mountains of utilitarian evidence on our side.
Maybe you're opposed to the initiatin of force because of a religious conviction or some metaphysical enlightenment you choose to believe in. FINE! No problems with that whatsoever. Glad to hear it. But please don't disparage those of us who oppose force for the simple reason that based on hundreds of years of history -- and hundreds of thousands of "good tries" -- force just flat out fails to deliver the goods. Such a line of thinking IS strictly utilitarian, but it is certainly not incompatible with libertarianism. Initiating force is wrong to utilitarians simply because it does not work in the long run...but it is no less "wrong".
I call our different ways of arriving at the non-initiation of force principle inductive and deductive, which is perhaps not the best set of lables to use. If you can think of better ones, be my guest. Anyway, it is perfectly legitimate to reach a "moment of conversion" when suddenly one accepts the non-initiation principle as morally right and then proceeds to conform all of one's actions an beliefs with that principle. It is equally legitimate to examine many issues, come to an independant conclusion about which means generate maximum utility (ends) in each case, and then decide that the non- initiation principle is the only principle that consistently differentiates the means that work from the means that do not work. The latter method is exactly how I came to accept the non-initiation principle, and I suspect that many (if not most) other libertarians came to it in a similar manner.
--Jason Auvenshine
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