When a killer review turns into a boomerang review.

First, let's stipulate that a "killer review" is a review that ends a philosophical debate (or closes out a tradition, etc.). Presumably such a review would include devastating objections and well-deserved ridicule for its target. For example, sometimes I indulge myself in fantasizing that I could write a killer review that ends discussion of fine-tuning arguments for the existence of God. Second, let's call a "boomerang review" a review that intends to be a "killer review," but that (you guessed it) rebounds on its author (by, say, damaging the author's reputation). Presumably the non-negligible risk of becoming an unwitting author of a boomerang review prevents the proliferation of attempted killer reviews. Perhaps, most reviewers recognize how difficult philosophy is when you start really thinking about it.

There are, of course, many strategies by which killer reviews can be executed. One that had never occurred to me before is by way of praise. In Dutch we have a saying, 'iemand het graf in prijzen' (literally: to praise somebody into his grave), by which we convey an instance of high praise that is intended to produce negative feelings about the objects of praise. (Think about how parents might get rid off their child's intended spouse.) In this review, Mark Sagoff clearly aims to kill off welfare economics by way of praise.

The first sentence of the review sets the tone: "In the Introduction to this excellent book, Matthew Adler states..." The tone is measured, yet appreciative. Unfortunately, the second paragraph escalates its praise beyond the reasonable:

In its ambition -- to defend within the four corners of welfarism a particular version of the social welfare function (SWF) -- this book represents a stunning achievement. It is definitive along many dimensions. It is definitive for the intellectual clarity and rigor it brings to a defense within welfarism of a SWF approach that analyzes well-being in terms of the "fully informed, fully rational, extended preferences" of everyone in the population and that "allows for interper­sonal comparisons of utility" (155). It is definitive for its comprehensiveness: it explores to a fare-thee-well every welfarist objection to this way of estimating and comparing utilities. It is definitive in its critique of competing welfarist positions, for example, those associated with cost-benefit analysis, Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, and the reliance on willingness to pay (WTP) or to accept (WTA) as measures of well-being. This book is so definitive that further discussion of welfarism must reckon with it. Anyone who wants to comment intelligently on the welfarist program from within it must first master the intricate and difficult argument of this book -- a bar to market entry so high that it ought to dissuade all but the most erudite or intrepid theoreticians.

Now, the reader starts to wonder, "how definitive" can an "excellent" book ever be? But because of that "within," I started to smell a rat. I mused: could one, thus, continue to comment intelligently on the so-called welfarist program from without, without reading this definitive book? Moreover, (in the age of technocratic worker-bees) these days among practicing economists and people that think seriously about economics the very idea that a theoretician could ever be or would have to "erudite" would be almost nonsensical. (Of course, there are very erudite theoreticians -- I have met such black swans --, but their erudition generally counts against them.) 

Even so, I kept reading because (as it happens) recently I have been reflecting on the possibility that the paternalist folks that bring us so-called neuro-economics may be able to salvage welfare economics by combining the findings of brain science with the enormous amount of data that is being collected about each and every one of us by thousands of computers at a time. Maybe it will become possible to execute "interpersonal comparisons" in real time.

Let's leave that aside. After critically summarizing the chapters of the book (and calling attention to some purported criticisms of welfare economics), but without leaving this reader any wiser about its contents, the reviewer does teach us that he had already made up his mind about welfare economics from without. Claiming to echo a tradition going back to "Adam Smith," he writes:

By nodding to the cognitive and motivational limitations of those who employ the cold steel of the law, Adler acknowledges the most significant critique of this position that can be mounted from outside of welfarism. This would be the well-known arguments associated with "Invisible Hand" or free market institutions such as are advocated by Von Mises and Hayek and with the dyspepsia about the use of state power associated James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock.

Now, as somebody (shall we say) invested in the continued currency of Smith's ideas it would, perhaps, be ungrateful for me to complain here. After all, the reviewer is, of course, entitled to his view that "the most significant critique" of welfare economics comes from the Austrian(s) and Public Choice economists. Even so it is a peculiar form of tone-deafness that all mention of, say, Rawls and Amartya Sen (and their respective followers) is omitted in a philosophical review.

The final paragraph and its closing lines are supposed to deliver the coup de grâce appropriate to a killer review: "This book is so brilliant it does not just bang another nail in the coffin of welfare economics. It is the coffin itself." These must have been fun lines to type. (I assume that Sagoff has given up using his fountain pen.) Even so, such lines must be earned with delicacy and judgment. Absent these, this purported killer sags under their weight and reveals itself as a boomerang review.