Deductive Politics
Justin Raimando’s response to my criticism of Andrew Sullivan revealed a major source of friction between Burkean conservatives and libertarians. He brought up the point that statistics were dangerous and baleful, not least because they’re usually collected by government do-gooders seeking to re-engineers our society. I certainly have little use for the latter. But is Rothbard’s original criticism of statistics and empirical analysis in general a sound one? I don’t think so.
For starter’s, Rothbard’s point seems quaint and outdated. Ordinary people use government statistics--from the EPA or the Census, for example--in deciding where to locate businesses or homes. That is, private people making decisions affecting their private lives want to know the things that are told by statistics. This is not to say that it’s worth the expense or that the government should generally collect these data, but I hope we can concede that taking a census is constitutional. Incidentally, many of the statistics collected today are not collected by the government but by researchers at private universities, marketing gurus, pollsters, scientists, and the like. Much of the IQ data we have is not from government sources but from groups like the college board. Incidentally, the data showing various racial differences in everything from crime to IQ to participation in the welfare state are well documented.
Second, Rothbard’s point seems to reveal a real methodological flaw in Austrian Economics. I think on a policy basis much of Austrian Economics is true. I believe in a gold standard, oppose price controls, recognize the impossibility of most economic planning, and the like. Yet, even though I think Austrianism reaches the right conclusions often enough, it does so in spite of its deductive methodology. Since human groups differ wildly in their behaviors, such philosophical opposition to empirics leads to mistakes and facile explanations for inconvenient facts, such as dynamic economic regimes characterized by industrial policies and limitations on free trade. There success would be even more without the trade barriers we’re told, but without observations and empirical tools by what tool can we test these very certain explanations.
On economics, the use of sound, common sense axioms about aggregate human behavior often stands up to empirical analysis--i.e., regression analysis. Yet real economic systems are often complicated, and it’s difficult to isolate this or that variable in the form of policy to identify a particular success or failure. Sometimes the unexpected happens. It’s important to test theories and make economic theory (like any tool of analyzing aggregate human behavior) one that is grounded in reality and as predictive as possible. Rothbard himself did this in what I believe is some of his best work, the study of the panics of the 19t Century. The idea of deductively reasoning a moral philosophy and a practical matter like economics is frankly ridiculous. Human action is complicated, subject to multiple motivations, made confusing and unpredictable by various inherited heuristics, and not entirely rational and self-interested. Austrian economics and moral philosophy does acknowledge this in part--through the idea of the subjective source of value--but it also purports that careful, deductive reasoning from a few sensible and true axioms will lead to a proper practical and moral understanding of human life.
This is pretty ambitious. For starters, we know that some human societies suffer from too much government--Cuba, USSR, Nazi Germany--just as others suffer from too little--Lebanon, Somalia, etc. It is problematic and less-than-fully explanatory to ascribe all big human failings--as groups and individuals--chiefly as the consequence of some government intervention, i.e., the suggestion in the last thread that the sexual revolution stemmed solely from government action. It seems just as often people fail (or disappear) from a lack of government or a weak government, such as when they are conquered by a neighboring people. While government can faciliate massive and negative social changes, it can also preserve inherited customs from the prviate and religious realm, as in its recognition of marriage and the creation of various family laws to buttress the same. Until recently, politics had a limited and human mandate. We wanted our own governments, to protect us from external and internal disorder, just as we wanted them to work in parallel with civil societies and the like to preserve the moral order and other characteristics needed for a self-governing society. Conservatives want to be free both from too much government and the horrors of anarchy. We want statesmen and critics of statesmen to know their subject with some depth.
Quite frankly, deductive and abstract formulae are often wrong, and renouncing empircal testing and statistics makes it pretty difficult to test whatever it is one is advocating. Marxism, for example, has a certain elegance to it; it too proceeded from a few axioms and buried its head in the sand like the Ostrich when empirical data--both obvious ones like empty shelves as well as things like GDP statistics--show what an utter failure it was compared to capitalism. So I’ll take horse sense and statistics, particularly when the latter pass the “straight face” test supplied by the former. As for the specific subject matter of the last thread, it seems pretty hard to discuss elections without looking at numbers. They do involve counting votes, after all. I do not consider myself a white nationalist, but I do consider myself a race realist. The extreme media double standards on how the two groups are allowed to behave was striking, particularly in light of the fact Barack Obama’s belonged to an anti-white church for 20 years and black political leadership has been found wanting in places ranging from New Orleans to Detroit. I also found the sentimental appeals to the soul and the denial of group trends by Justin and some of his supporters shocking. But when I re-read some Austrian and other libertarian sources, I think it makes sense: Austrianism and other libertarian philosophies depend upon abstracting from the whole of humanity to posit a single human nature for political and economic purposes. A single human nature, coupled with a deductive philosophy, leads to a single political prescription for all people everywhere: more liberty all the time.
I think this is all too convenient and also wrong. In what sense do Somalians or Cambodians or Lebanese need more liberty, I wonder? Did Poles or the French need more liberty in August 1939? Or did they need a cohesive and effective defense policy? Hasn’t Russian benefited mightily from stronger and more effective government under Putin compared to the disorder of Yeltsin and his oligarchs? Times and places and people are different. It’s true we all have souls and human dignity. Then again, we’re all made up of atoms and electrons. There’s a point where emphasizing commonalities may obscure as much as it reveals. As Burke said, far from needing a deductive politics, statesmen need a deep understanding of human beings, which includes a deep understanding of both their similarities and their differences. “The legislators who framed the ancient republics knew that their business was too arduous to be accomplished with no better apparatus than the metaphysics of an undergraduate, and the mathematics and arithmetic of an exciseman. They had to do with men, and they were obliged to study human nature. They had to do with citizens, and they were obliged to study the effects of those habits which are communicated by the circumstances of civil life. They were sensible that the operation of this second nature on the first produced a new combination; and thence arose many diversities amongst men, according to their birth, their education, their professions, the periods of their lives, their residence in towns or in the country, their several ways of acquiring and of fixing property, and according to the quality of the property itself — all which rendered them as it were so many different species of animals.”
Comments
Mr Roach: Wonderfully insightful post. As I said in the other thread, between the two small islands of knucklehead neonazis and ideological race deniers, there’s a vast ocean of moderation. Some of the commenters may want to consider taking a dip.
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Mr. Roach, regarding the aprioristic understanding of economics, I recommend von Mises’ “Theory and History”. If you’ve already read it but were left unpersuaded, there’s no point in my wasting ink here.
As to racial profiling, the issue is not whether there are intrinsic differences in the aggregate, but whether any one person, regardless of race or national origin, can be reliably described in terms of those differences and consequently assigned a station in life. Races and nations do not have rights, individuals do.
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http://gopcatholics.blogspot.com/2008/05/house-loss-in-mississippi-accentuates.html
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Mr. Roach and Mr. Roberts are correct.
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@ CRoach. You keep going back to the same theme, over and over. Try something new, and persuasive.
You write, “A single human nature, coupled with a deductive philosophy, leads to a single political prescription for all people everywhere: more liberty all the time.”
Wrong. Your examples: Somolia, Cambodia, Lebanon--no the people don’t need more liberty--they need a gvoernment that enforces BASIC rights. Protection of property and from gangs who harm them. What those countries don’t need is a string of victimless crimes to lock everyone up that the government doen’st agree with--as you have repeatedly advocated.
France and Poland: A storng national defense. Not more governmental regulation and/or laws over private behavior which doesn’t harm anyone.
Maybe you should read The Economist. There was a good column last week on IQ and race. You’re probalby too closed minded to absorb it, but it might make you think. It’s an area worthy of discussion. To write that it’s “well documented” is patently untrue.
Between you and Tom Piatik (who advocates tariffs as a mechanism to accomplish even more wealth transfer(s), this site is getting more and more Neo-con. The only difference being you and Mr. Piatik advocate governmental intervention at home, instead of overseas.
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@ Cognate, Well said sir:
Races and nations do not have rights, individuals do.
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“this site is getting more and more Neo-con..”
It seems that way doesn’t it? I too have noticed more and more people here justifying big government recently.
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“Ideological race deniers” are a “small island”?! Ideological race denial is the civic religion of our ruling elites and governing class, the psuedo-empirical and moral basis of “affirmative action,” racial guotas, “multiculturalism,”
“political correctness,” the celebration of “diversity,” our lunatic immigration policies and the invasion of tens of millions of Third-World immigrants, media propaganda on race and immigration, mass censorship, educational thought-control from kindergarten through graduate school, and much else.
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Mr. Brown:
The name is “Piatak,” not “Piatik.” You’ve picked up Mr. Cundiff’s annoying habit of misspelling my name when expressing disagreement with me.
Tariffs were used to both protect American markets and fund our comparatively small federal government until Wilson. Since tariffs were replaced by the income tax, government has grown enormously. I think there’s a connection here.
And no, advocating tariffs doesn’t make me a “neocon.” National Review and the Weekly Standard regularly denounce tariffs or anything they think might lead to “protectionism.” Your position on trade is far closer to the neocon position than my own.
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We should get rid of tariffs AND the income tax
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@ Tom Piatak, My apologies for misspelling your name.
As to your assertion on tariffs. We have gone back and forth on that subject at length. It was, and is, not my intention to reopen that debate.
My point was that tariffs were simply another tax, which would expand an already oppressive government. I indicated that, if income tax was exchanged for tariffs, there could at least be a discussion of the benfits of one vs. the other. However, to propose tariffs, without the eradication of the income tax, would simply expand government--to the detriment of its citizens. That seems to be the lodestone of the Neo-con movement to me (a big government is “ok” as long as its “our” big government)--the War in Iraq being a symtom of the disease.
The tariff is also a form of wealth transfer, from one segment of the economy to another, with the govermnment sucking its percentage from the river as it flows by--thereby screwing things up even more than it already has.
Mr. Roach has made it clear he has no qualms about government intervention in our every day lives--because he doesn’t like certain groups within our society--and is willing to use laws to accomplish ends unrelated to those laws--which I find morally indefensible.
You agreed with him.
It seems to me that, ultimately, both of you want to use the government as a mechanism to accomplish your ideological ends.
That’s how I define “Neo-con”
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@ Jerry, 100% correct.
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Don’t let Raimondo fool you. Rothbard knew about IQ differneces and wrote an excelent review of The Bell Curve.
The basic facts about race and IQ have been known for at least 50 years. Only a fool or a liar would deny them.
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Mr. Brown,
Apology accepted. I am not a libertarian, but neither am I a neoconservative. As Mr. Roberts was saying with respect to race, there is a huge middle ground between libertarians and advocates of big government.
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@Bernie
“IQ differneces...”
‘Nuff said
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This is not intended as an adequate response to the important objections Christopher Roach raises against deductive methodology in economics. But I wish to call attention to what seems to me an error that he, along with many other people, makes. He assumes that deductive reasoning must consist of abstract formulae. This is not so. Consider, e.g., the most famous of all syllogisms: All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; Therefore, Socrates is mortal. What is abstract about this?
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Dear Mr. Roach,
If you’re interested in engaging the most highly-sophisticated defense of Austrian Economics and its aprioristic method, I would highly recommend that you read Professor Roderick Long’s manuscript, entitled “Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action: Why the Laws of Economics are A Priori,” which can be found at:
http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/long.pdf
I can’t commend Roderick Long’s work highly enough (although, if he were a traditionalist Catholic, I’m sure I would like him much better). Sustained and careful reading of his oevre over the last several years has allowed me to remain committed to the truth of the libertarian conception of justice and rights (rightly understood) while otherwise more or less jettisoning Enlightenment categories…
Thanks,
Araglin
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Races and nations do not have rights, individuals do.
The belief in individual rights is just as irrational (or rational) as believe in racial or national rights. The former are simply posited—“We hold these truths to be self-evident” simply means I cannot prove their existence either inductively or deductively. In fact, empirically, national and racial rights have a far longer pedigree and are even more evident in any cross-country comparison today. The Japanese, Chinese, Singapoorean Chinese, Indians, etc all believe in racial rights, and this belief is reflected in their immigration policies.
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The very foundational (supposedly) document of our ‘propositional nation’, the Declaration, is indeed quite racial
Here are some complaints against the Crown
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
“For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province”
And while this may seem pro-immigration…
“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”
Jefferson really wants more European immigrants (remember, non-whites were forbidden from naturalizing until 1922, in a demographic duel to the death with those he termed savages.
Libertarianism is ahistorical, anti-empirical, and thus wrong.
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@Stari Momak
Libertarianism doesn’t (or, at least shouldn’t) attempt to provide a comprehensive account of how we should order our common life. Rather, all it does is provide certain non-overrideable side constraints on what we may permissibly do to others and their justly-acquired property without their consent. It also provides guidance as to when we may permissibly use force to prevent others from doing certain things to us without our consent, or to obtain redress from them when they have already done those things.
To say that, as a conception of justice, it is wrong because it is “ahistorical [and] anti-empirical,” I think proves far too much:
After all, are time-invariant prohibitions on rape, murder, and arson also wrong because they are “ahistorical, anti-empirical”?
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@ Stari Momak, Your conclusion is, in your words, “wrong”.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..”
Did you miss that, in digging around in the penumbra of the Declaration trying to support you position?
Also, you might [re]read the Constitution. As any fifth grader knows, it is the far more important document. It set forth the rights of US citizens--not races---differentiating it from the countries you so admire.
I’d suggest you move to Japan, China, Singapore or India--if you value racial rights over the individual’s.
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The question, mcbrown, is how to reconcile Jefferson’s specific bill of charges against George III with his complaints about Savages and (Slave) Insurrections. And of course the first paragraph is about ‘a people’—i.e. white , overwhelmingly British descended colonists. That was Jefferson’s vision of the American people, as it was for most of the founders.
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@ Stari Momak, Your intial question was whether Libertarianism was “ahistorical, anti-empirical and, thus, wrong.” I pointed out that you has missed the key points support the rights of the inidividual in the US--and that, accordingly, you assertion was wrong.
Now, you’ve posited a different question. In response to the new quesiton, I don’t know how to reconcile those Jefferson’s positions. Regardless, they have nothing to do with Libertarianism.
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