Playing the right kind of games

So I’m not going to get into the game of thinking thoughts too many, of trying to break down the wrong of raping an unconscious person in terms of psychic discomfort at disapproval.  It’s the wrong game to play.--Jacob T. Levy at BHL.

This seems to me the right kind of response to the pseudo-philosophy [Trigger warning: the post discusses rape] of Steven Landsburg, an economist and popularizer at Rochester.

As Levy writes, Landsburg's post

demonstrates, first, the familiar problems with blunt hedonic utilitarianism that has been detached from utilitarianism’s roots as a moral theory, and, second, the selection effect about what kinds of people are attracted to that theory. Lansburg [sic] is entirely too pleased with himself for being willing to Think Challenging Thoughts (thoughts that pretty much get covered in a first semester moral philosophy class as the frosh learns why blunt hedonic utilitarianism is not a very good theory), and determined to get through his cute hypotheticals for the fun of it, regardless of whether they convey anything useful or not.

It's just a fact of the matter that economists are not trained to be philosophers (and they are no better at it [recall here and here] than we are at economics [here]). But (not unlike philosophers) they do get socialized into thinking they are really smart boys (recall this). Since the Samuelsonian, revealed preference revolution cut the link between economics and hedonic utilitarianism (utility curves are not supposed to refer to mental pleasure entities entities, they are just a ranking of choices--recall this post), Landsburg is not even bringing any of the standard economic's tools to bear on the case. He is simply out of his depth. (Of course, that's just a daily fact of life in blog-land, the problems start when one forgets this.)

Now, the interesting issues here pertain to Levy's decision to speak up about Landsburg's moral and intellectual obtuseness without giving Landsburg credibility in doing so.

For, Landsburg is a self-proclaimed Libertarian, and  he has had a certain amount of credibility (by being smart, in public eye, and successful). By academic standards he is a gifted writer, and he says he likes reading poetry which makes him even cultured.

The problem for thoughtful Libertarians is that  even in recent memory too many, influential Libertarians embrace nativist (if not racist) and nearly paranoid ideas as well as cozy up too closely to corporate interests. When BHL started Levy made it very clear that for the intellectual wing of that movement these evils had to be confronted and faced down. In recent months BHL has also started to confront very publicly the sexism and misogyny among its intellectual ranks.

This matters because Libertarianism is a permanent option in the American conceptual space.  All of us who have humane or just ameliorative aspirations for politics need the BHL version(s) of Libertarianism to flourish. As long as Libertarianism indulged in a politics-free fantasy not much  (i.e., rule by markets or rule by experts) could be expected from it. Yet,  after a century of growth in the military-industrial-pharmaceutical-prison-complex state, thoughtful Progressives can't overlook the fact that many of the petty and outrageous barbarisms of our times at home and abroad are not mere incidents, but also the systematic product of the bureaucratic state and the quiescence of the rent-seeking (often highly educated) elites in them. While there is no substitute for activism, public enlightenment, and coalition building these cannot do without the fresh  ideas that lead us all to a better and more hopeful future. Disciplining one's thoughts and community to play the right kind games is -- as one can learn from Plato Laws, 803 -- an important step in the right direction.