" And the reason why I made that conversion is important. Libertarian insights in a lot of ways are basic, Econ 101 insights about the efficiency of free contracting writ large and converted into norms or political values. In other words, I think one of the most essential libertarian fallacies is building a politico-ethical system around positive social science findings (and, I want to stress, basic and introductory social science findings at that). It's kind of an odd way of going about formulating a politico-ethical system. We don't adopt Nietzschean super-man ethics because of evolutionary biology, and we shouldn't simply adopt libertarianism because of these insights. I want to be clear - my point is not that you have to mix up normative and positive findings to come to libertarianism. My point is only that it's possible to get everything there is to get out of libertarianism simply by improving people's knowledge of social science. This is only to say that it's not entirely clear to me what should be important here: teaching people more social science, or sharing libertarianism. But even that isn't entirely satisfying - after all, the reason why I abandoned libertarianism was because I kept learning social science. Yes, the market is efficient and the price mechanism leverages decentralized knowledge. But if institutions don't or can't internalize costs and benefits social scientific insights start to militate against the efficiency of markets. Uncertainty and imperfections ensure that market forces, as fantastic as they are, are going to remain sub-optimal. I haven't abandoned any of the introductory insights in adopting these views - the complement the introductory insights that I still use. I still have a relatively contractarian view of human relations. I still take a fairly atomized, individualist view of things. I still come down on Hayek and Mises's side of the socialist calculation debate. But I can't call myself a libertarian. So, if what we really want is to get people to take the implications of social science more seriously, then its not clear that that would move people towards libertarianism either." -Daniel Kuehn
I think this is an interesting insight, though I find issue with it for this reason: Did Rothbard not "keep learning social science"? What about Walter Block, or other career Austro/Libertarians? Is there an implication that in order to maintain Libertarianism, we must stop at elementary observations? I'm sure DK can clarify if he wishes, and I hope he does. Anyway, thoughts?
Daniel Kuehn: re: "But Hume and Smith were not Historical School Schmollerites." And one need not invoke historicism to acknowledge that there is a distinction between political philosophy and policy recommendation (just like there is a distinction between epistemology and scientific investigations). In both of these circumstances you seem to take the relationship between practical activity (ie - policy, science) and philosophical justification as being much, much tighter than I do.
re: "But Hume and Smith were not Historical School Schmollerites."
And one need not invoke historicism to acknowledge that there is a distinction between political philosophy and policy recommendation (just like there is a distinction between epistemology and scientific investigations). In both of these circumstances you seem to take the relationship between practical activity (ie - policy, science) and philosophical justification as being much, much tighter than I do.
Indeed I do, and that seems to at least be the more obvious stance to take. Do you have any particularly strong reasons to not have your general views about validity guide your specific quests for the truth and to not have your general understanding of human affairs guide your specific positions concerning specific policies?
1. Who said I'm on a quest for truth?
2. Certainly an understanding of human affairs is necessary as a guide - but so are circumstances and prospects for success. One need to have a historicist understanding of human affairs to have a historically contingent understanding of practicalities.
And even if you discount policies, what is the particular consonance between the political philosophies of Hume and Smith on one hand and Keynes and Galbraith on the other? The only way you can make the two sides consonant, is if you impose an undue emphasis on "cultural" matters and an undue neglect of "merely economic" affairs.