DeCoster versus Postrel

Karen DeCoster takes on Virginia Postrel at Lew Rockwell’s blog: http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/012533.html#more

Postrel dumps on “deductivist” libertarians while praising “empiricists”. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/03/18/virginia-postrel/an-18th-century-brain-in-a-21st-century-head/

This issue, or rather a closely related issue, is very close to my heart. One of my ambitions in life was to be an “applied anthropologist”. Even my choice of a career in law was driven by a desire to be a social engineer. Anthropology, I reckoned, would better inform my understanding of human nature and how to engineer society for the betterment of mankind. The promulgation and implementation of public policy was the highest calling. In sum, I was a wanker.

My career path was derailed on a couple of accounts. In the first instance, I came to believe that cultural and social anthropology as these are presently constituted have no useful or beneficial application. Secondly, I came to understand what Weber meant when he wrote that social science cannot tell anyone what he ought to do. At best, social science can make predictions about the consequences of a particular public policy. In the end, human values and goals are predicated on underlying metaphysical assumptions, not on anything that can be empirically derived. Social scientists cannot legitimately counsel anyone on what they ought to want or what values to adhere to. At best, we can give advice on how to achieve our goals or what the likely outcome of the application of a value to the social order will be. Thirdly, any work in this arena by a social scientist is most likely to be deployed in the interests of ruling elites and maintenance of the established order.

I value liberty for its own sake. I derive this value primarily from my religious convictions. These convictions are not subject to any empirical test. For me, liberty is the end. For Postrel, liberty is the means to achieve some other ends. Presumably, to her way of thinking, too much liberty would be a bad thing if it led to a deviation from her vision of the good society. Even the state deploys such reasoning when it decides that giving its subjects more liberty through lower (but not too low) taxes will result in more revenue to the state.

Perhaps I am reading too much into Postrel’s essay. It is possible to read it as simply calling for more pragmatism (assuming you didn’t know any of Postrel’s other views). Maybe it isn’t much different to say that liberty leads to the desired end state than to say that liberty is the desired end state. Then again, in the former formulation, there might be an optimal level of liberty that falls well short of what most libertarians I know see as desirable. What is optimal depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If I am a ruler, I will want to give my subjects as much liberty as necessary to keep them governable and productive at minimal cost and maximum profit, but not so free that they overthrow me. Would I then be a “libertarian” despot? In such a formulation, anyone is a libertarian who advocates any freedom at all. If I allow my slaves to breathe as they see fit so that they might be more productive, then I am quite the liberal.

I also see liberty as desirable for its own sake because I do not presume to know what is best for my conspecifics. Central planning in culture, religion, or other areas of life doesn’t work any better than it does in the economy. My species will probably do better in the long run if it is free to pursue diverse goals and follow diverse values. The more diversity the better. Someone is bound to get something right that way. If Virginia Postrel became queen of the world and could impose her vision of the good society on every human being, who is to say that that would be a good thing? Her utopia could very well be my dystopia.

I agree with Postrel that libertarians should be willing to ally themselves with those who move in the direction of more liberty. Tax cuts are a good thing, but taxation is still theft. I prefer the thief who takes less to the thief who takes more. Public policy is important, but why would a libertarian look first to solutions based on violence and coercion? Wouldn’t a libertarian want to exhaust the possibilities of peaceful, voluntary methods before calling in government goons? It had better be damned important to do so and all but impossible to deal with any other way.

Let’s face it. The libertarian utopia is a long way off. We have to deal with the state as a social fact or risk being killed or imprisoned. We acquiesce in it because we are pragmatists, even though we deny it legitimacy. If we begin to grant it legitimacy, we have lost our souls, and to call ourselves libertarian is self delusion.