You've got to admit that HN isn't meant for long running conversations. But if you prefer it, so be it :) Here's what I posted over on yakkstr:
You gave me a lot of reading material which will take me a little while to go through, in the meantime I'll give you my point of view.
Given some policy proposal we should attempt to measure it's effectiveness and determine if it leads to a better outcome than we currently have. If it does, we should adopt it. We have to figure out what it means to be "better", but I think we can agree easily in many cases.
My problem with philosophies like libertarianism is that they start with some accepted truth (i.e. NAP) before any attempt is made to measure or predict an outcome. It's effectively a faith based belief. Let me give one example, I think it's clear that our country benefited enormously from public education. That is the government using force to take money from some people to pay for schools for other people. I'm pretty sure this is diametrically opposed to libertarian philosophy, but we are better off for it. Why would we not do something good based on a philosophical ideal like libertarianism, communism, etc? Why start from an ideology rather than measuring what does and doesn't work? If you identify yourself as a libertarian then you're psychologically less likely to accept evidence for a policy that goes against the ideology.
You are correct this isn't great - lets move to email.
danny ---- dannygagne ----- com
As for your objections.
A pragmatic approach, where we only look at outcomes is flawed in a few interesting ways.
1. We cannot know for sure the effectiveness of any given action so it's still a guess.
2. It's an ends justifies the means world philosophy
3. It has no moral basis, anything is good as long as the end result is what you want.
I prefer to take a process based philosophy, if each step along a path is moral then the end result is moral even if it's negative or suboptimal.
For instance, the argument about creating a better society one could easily be used for a totalitarian eugenics program.
Libertarians aren't against public schooling, just the manner in which it is funded. If you look at how much government schools cost and how poorly the perform, I think it's clear that private solutions are superior. Since the market allows experimentation and gives people a choice on what type of school they want instead of a bureaucrat deciding for them. This can be replicated through school vouchers/school choice and relaxation of standards.
I kind of meandered off topic, but I think it boils down to a faith in people to create what they need. If people value school, which they do, then they will find a way to provide it.
Except all the countries with good education outcomes have the state heavily involved in schooling. There are tons of countries that don't have he state heavily involved, and they have far worse outcomes.
Like I said, it's faith based adherence to ideology versus measuring outcomes and trying to do what works.
Also, the problem with basing anything on morality is that we all have different moralities. Whose do we choose and why? Perhaps we measure outcomes and base it on that with a few, generally accepted, moral constraints?
You gave me a lot of reading material which will take me a little while to go through, in the meantime I'll give you my point of view.
Given some policy proposal we should attempt to measure it's effectiveness and determine if it leads to a better outcome than we currently have. If it does, we should adopt it. We have to figure out what it means to be "better", but I think we can agree easily in many cases.
My problem with philosophies like libertarianism is that they start with some accepted truth (i.e. NAP) before any attempt is made to measure or predict an outcome. It's effectively a faith based belief. Let me give one example, I think it's clear that our country benefited enormously from public education. That is the government using force to take money from some people to pay for schools for other people. I'm pretty sure this is diametrically opposed to libertarian philosophy, but we are better off for it. Why would we not do something good based on a philosophical ideal like libertarianism, communism, etc? Why start from an ideology rather than measuring what does and doesn't work? If you identify yourself as a libertarian then you're psychologically less likely to accept evidence for a policy that goes against the ideology.