Today, I want to discuss the first episode of a podcast entitled "The Pragmatic Libertarian" by a person named Shawn aka as XOmniverse on YouTube. I would recommend his channel as he has done a lot of interesting videos on topics like libertarianism, objectivism, and related matters. For the purpose of this post, I'm going to be dealing entirely with Shawn’s first podcast. So far, it looks good and I hope there are many more episodes to come. The tagline to the podcast is "Because Liberty Works" which is something that needs to be articulated if a liberty oriented viewpoint is to gain widespread adherence within society. What I want to do here is not a full review, but rather to touch upon a few points of interest for me within this episode and to add some of my own thoughts. My purpose for doing this is not for criticism (not really even constructive criticism) but rather to offer an additional perspective upon these issues. I would recommend listening to the podcast's first episode before reading the rest of this.
In this first episode, Shawn's main point was to introduce the podcast and the main part of it was first to deal with a certain kind of libertarian which he pointed out was a stereotype to some extent (though some do fit it) but he was mainly going after the kinds of ideas that these types hold to because they are at times held by more moderate libertarians. After that there was a brief explanation of deontological vs. consequentialist ethics and then a part where Shawn dealt with the misconceptions about pragmatists. There were a few points there that I wanted to touch on where I have a different perspective.
One thing I want to mention here is that very few libertarians would make their case for liberty entirely on deontological or consequentialist grounds. Furthermore, I think that the lines between these things are often quite blurry at times and that even people who are usually thought of as being in one camp can make arguments that would seem to put them in the other as Shawn points out in the case of Murray Rothbard. Also, when it comes to consequences, there is difference among people about would count as good and bad consequences as values differ amongst people. I, for example, disagree that self-preservation is always the most important thing, in contrast to many other people. In addition, I think I value individual liberty and autonomy more than the average person. Of course, one can argue that people should value certain results over others, but I think at that point you have step away from pure consequentialism (I could be wrong about this). I think my own views have been a mix to some extent, having changed my mind at times about these things over the years.
The first point that stuck out at me in the part dealing with misunderstandings of consequentialism was where Shawn uses the example of rerouting a train from one track where a certain amount of people would be killed to be one where less would be killed, of course dealing with the differences between how the two viewpoints would deal with this scenario. Shawn at this point seemed to me to accuse people who disagreed with the consequentialist position on this issue as possessing moral cowardice, and an inability to face the facts which I think was an unfortunate case of slightly ad hominem argumentation (though he may not see it that way). I have seen similar accusations hurled it pacifists, which is a position I don't agree with by the way, but I think that in the case of someone who actually lives that out, such a person could hardly be said to be cowardly, morally or otherwise. It seems to me anyhow that the majority of popular level arguments against pacifism assume all pacifists are insincere (that's my impression anyways). Anyhow, an argument that comes up quite frequently in favour of consequentialism is the one where a hypothetical situation is given in which one must deliberately kill one person in order to save a significantly greater number of lives. I have had this thought experiment in one of my own Ethics classes as I am sure millions of others have as well. Now of course, many people would see this thought experiment is a demonstration of the inadequacy of the libertarian non-aggression principle in dealing with the real world. I suspect though that if the person that had to be killed was oneself, the majority of people would hesitate to live out this principle in the real world much in the same way that people argue pacifists would not really live their principles out. What's interesting here as well is that Walter Block has a good response to this dilemma, from the perspective of a "hard core" NAP type libertarian that I happen to think is quite interesting it's the article "Radical Privitization and Other Libertarian Conundrums" specifically section 2 about the Martians. An additional thing I want to mention here is that the scenarios that critics of strict consequentialism like I go after, are not the kinds of situations like the example that Shawn gives which, fortunately are rare, but rather things that are everyday occurrences. As an example, in this article about Bill O'Reilly's take on racial profiling "stop and frisk" procedures by police in New York City, O"Reilly says that, "I believe the ACLU is the most dangerous anti-American organization in the country and if clear-thinking Americans do not confront this group and their members, and their support system in the media, people will die.” The argument is here that to oppose certain police tactics is equivalent to endorsing the deaths of a larger number of innocent people because of the correlation between certain police tactics and rates of crime. Now I realize that O'Reilly is a moron, and his argumentation is fallacious, but I think that it is understandable that some liberty-oriented people would be wary of consequentialist pragmatic approaches when they are used to justify such things. Hopefully, people like Shawn and others will contribute by their work to correcting such misconceptions.
The second point that Shawn dealt with was the fact that some see libertarian consequentialists as being ready to become statists at any point as soon as they are convinced by one argument against their position. He made the point that this view seems to imply that the arguments for libertarianism are so weak that they would not stand up to scrutiny. Now for myself, there are days when I do have doubts that a free society would produce the sorts of results that most people would find desirable so I think there is a kernel of truth to Shawn's point. I do think though that it comes down on some level to personal preference On the other hand, I think there are many people out there who have produced work showing how a free society can not only be viable, but also desirable.
The last part of the podcast dealt with sectarianism in the libertarian movement and the excessive focus on the state. I am in agreement with everything that Shawn said in this portion of the podcast. The only thing I would add is that just as people should be able to get along even if they have differences (anarchism vs. minarchism) shouldn't both deontological and consequentialist libertarians also be able to get along? After all, if we believe in the same end result, does it really matter if we have different ways of justifying it? Lastly, when it comes to the state, I agree that many libertarians both limited-government types and no-government types tend to obsess to much over it and let its existence and power deprive them unnecessarily of the best things in life.
Well that's all I can muster, my brain has basically turned to jelly and I suspect I might be horrified re-reading some of this later, but I just wanted to share some thoughts on this. Despite the fact that some of the things I have written here may appear critical, I think very highly of this person and I look forward eagerly to more podcasts of his in the future.
His blog, by the way is The Rational Animal
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