Libertarianism, Consequentialism, and Deontology
A recent post on Daylight Atheism explains why Ebonmuse is not a libertarian. But I think he bungled it 
. Aside from Ebonmuse’s support for military draft, I see no objections to calling him a libertarian. My bio page says I’m a “consequentialist libertarian”, and I think it’s time for me to explain what that means.
I think the fundamental split among libertarians follows an ethical fault line dividing deontology and consequentialism. Deontologists who strictly adhere to the “non-initiation of force” principle necessarily end up being anarcho-capitialists. I think that most people who call themselves libertarians are libertarians of the consequentialist variety. (I believe this in spite of the fact that the Libertarian Party’s oath demands that members “oppose the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals” — one more reason the LP will remain an impotent fringe organization.)
Consequentialism says that one should judge the probity of actions by examining their consequences. To arrive at a useful ethical system, the consequentialist must additionally lay out a theory of value to specify what ends are good and what ends are bad. Consequentialist libertarians believe that liberty is good and coercion is bad. This belief can be incorporated into a variety of theories of value; we don’t believe the goodness of a situation is solely a function of liberty/coercion. Thus, we are willing to do some coercion if it sufficiently improves the world in other ways. For example, we are perfectly willing to tax or regulate externalities such as air and water pollution. Still, we recognize that government action is coercive by its nature, and we dislike using government for that reason.
However, our strongest objections to government stem from the long, tragic history of attempts to do good through government which have ended very badly. Since environmental issues feature prominently in Ebonmuse’s article, I’d like to remind everyone of what well-intentioned central planners did to the Aral Sea. For some examples from the American west, read Marc Reisner’s book Cadillac Desert. Because government action so frequently has perverse and unintended consequences, libertarians advocate free-market solutions as the best default option; we view proposals to do good through government with a healthy skepticism.
Because free-market solutions don’t have perverse or unintended consequences?
Actually, no, they usually don’t have perverse and unintended consequences. There is a very simple, fundamental reason for this. Free markets are based on voluntary transactions. When two people make a trade consensually both of them will benefit; if this weren’t the case, one of them would have simply said no and walked away. Coercive transactions, which involve the threat of violence, are quite different. We most certainly cannot assume that a transaction between two people is mutually beneficial if violence is involved.
Yes, there are a variety of ways in which markets can fail. But in a free market the ability of each individual to decline non-beneficial trades provides a very basic check which does a great deal to prevent perverse and harmful outcomes. No such check exists for government actions, which are coercive. As should be clear from my post, I’m willing to make exceptions in cases where markets do fail, provided that we make sure that the state-imposed cure for a market failure won’t be worse than the original disease. But there are very good reasons for favoring free markets as the best default option.
I think I view attempts to do good through government with a healthy skepticism, and that libertarians generally view it with unhealthy outright hostility.
It is hard to see how something like state education has had perverse consequences. We would probably still be semi-feudal if we hadn’t adopted it - an educated workforce makes modern capitalism, democracy and technology possible.
In response to Joe’s comment, I have a very important point to make; hence I am going to post it on the main page, rather than burying it in the comments.
I’m with you on the consequentialist libertarianism. Deontologists will not support initiate of force even if refraining from initiating it would result in the destruction of civilization - by definition. That makes no sense. Consequentialism is the only rational libertarianism. I think your definition is off, though. The consequences we are trying to acheive is our happiness. Liberty is the means to happiness. We’re not pursuing liberty as an end in itself. Would we pursue liberty if it led to our own suffering? Of course not. It just so happens that liberty works. That’s why we want more of it. The more liberty, the better the consequences for ourselves, and/or society.
Well, I’m not a Hedonist: I don’t think happiness is the sole end to be sought (nor is it always a good measurement of how successful one has been in achieving whatever other ends one is seeking). But like I said, consequentialist libertarianism is compatible with a fairly broad range of value theories.