RoR: Forum

This is a short column... too short. Williams is so on-target. The little chunks of his that I joined together to make that quote don't begin to do justice to this jewel of a column.

Post 1

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 9:17am

This is a repetition of the amoral skepticism of the Viennese school which Rand properly condemned.

It starts with "neither you nor the U.S. Congress has the complete knowledge to know exactly what's best for you" and ends with, but at least Congress has noble motives while your actions are based on self interest.

The fact that a person draws the proper conclusions from improper premises is nor reason to applaud his reasoning.

Post 2

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 9:58am

Ted,

Please check again. I'm not sure why, but you appear to be misreading this column. The "complete knowledge" Williams says that we don't have, is about the market place and about the future (in reference to how our market decisions turn out to suit our needs as the future unfolds). We don't have complete knowledge as to how our decisions will turn out - e.g., "Is this the best house for me to buy?" We won't know for years. And his argument is about who is best suited to make a decision regarding a person's future - that person, or Nancy Peloisi, Harry Reid, et. al.?

You said, "It starts with 'Neither you nor the U.S. Congress has the complete knowledge to know exactly what's best for you' and ends with but at least Congress has noble motives while your actions are based on self interest." [emphasis mine]

That's totally wrong - it doesn't end like that at all! Here is exactly what it says:
"Neither you nor the U.S. Congress has the complete knowledge to know exactly what's best for you. The difference is that when individuals make their own trade-offs, say between purchasing health insurance or investing in a business, they make wiser decisions because it is they who personally bear the costs and benefits of those decisions."

No where does Williams say or imply that Congress has noble motives, and no where does he say or imply anything derogatory about self-interest. He argues in favor of self-interest, and he specifically challenges the motives of Congress: "There is only one reason for the forcible transference of decision-making authority over important areas of our private lives to elite decision-makers in Congress and government bureaucracies. Doing so confers control, power, wealth and revenue to society's elite."

Moral skepticism says that moral knowledge isn't possible. Williams is saying that our valuation of alternatives will have uncertainties that relate to things we can't know about the future. He is saying that Congress does NOT know better which is their implied justification for what is really just an illicit power grab.

[edit: Removed a quote mark that didn't belong, as Ted pointed out in his post below.]
(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 12/02, 12:43pm)

Post 3

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 10:58am

He's basically expounding on Hayek's thesis in "The Road to Serfdom" that knowledge is diffusely spread throughout the population, and centralized command-and-control approaches tosses away most of that individual knowledge and enlightened self-interest, leading to most everyone being worse off.

Post 4

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 11:44am

You guys are making this too complex...

He is saying:

- Elites in Washington DON'T know better than the the individual what is best for him
- They imply they do, but it just an excuse to grab money and power
- The self-interest of the individual leads to better decisions

Post 5

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 12:11pm

I'm with Steve (and his Walter Williams quote says it all).

For elite decision-makers/power-brokers, socialism really is a trick, not some kind of innocent error.

There are some liberal citizen voters who are somewhat virtuous people -- but I would bet that there are no liberals in the Executive or Legislative branch of our government who are virtuous people. Instead, they know exactly what they are doing. Obama knows exactly what he is doing.

If you look at Social Security payout, it hurts black men. On average, black men pay into the system, but die before they get money out of it. In fact, they end up over $30,000 in the negative!

It is a transfer of wealth from poor black men to rich liberals in power (or the Utopian schemes of rich liberals in power) -- and the liberal power-brokers know this. It may not have been FDR's plan (to loot the blacks like this), but all of the current liberals in power now are guilty by commission.

Bush II tried to reform Social Security, but the liberal thieves fought against it. They're all pre-meditative thieves (thieves who not only know what they are doing, but plan ahead for it).

Ed

p.s. The recent scandal of the liberal global warming scientists is just further proof that the liberals who make policy know that they are wrong -- they know that they are doing more harm than good -- but still try to pretend they are right (and hope we follow them like sheep to the slaughter).

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 12/02, 12:19pm)

Post 6

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 12:20pm

Steve, are you familiar with the epistemological skepticism of the (I should have said) Austiran School and with Rand's proper and violent rejection of it?

My criticism is not that Williams' column starts with skepticism and ends with altruism. The criticism is that if you start the wider academic political argument with the premise that neither you nor government knows what is in your interest then the altruists end the argument with the conclusion that at least the government isn't selfishly motivated while you are.

I suggest you reread my original post. Note that you felt obligated to add a quote mark that wasn't there in the original when you quoted me. You were quite wrong to do so, even if you were honestly mistaken in trying to "correct" me. I did not attribute the conclusion but at least Congress has noble motives while your actions are based on self interest to Williams, that's why it is in italics, not in quotes in my original post.

The but-at-least-Congress-has-good-motives response is obviously not Williams' desired conclusion. But it is the collectivists' standard response to arguments of Williams' type. And it is one that he cannot gainsay unless he starts with an appeal to rights and with a rejection of altruism. Nothing follows from skepticism.

The skeptical argument is not the Objectivist argument. The skeptical argument doesn't challenge the false premise. Skeptical arguments lead to moral relativism in ethics, see Shermer and the New Atheists. The skeptical argument in global warming leads to the statists saying we cannot afford not to act since the risk if the global warming hypothesis is right so huge. The skeptical argument in economics ignores questions of rights and fails to defeat altruists with faith in the morality of their premises.

William's argument takes a false but tempting premise - that neither you nor the government knows any better, and tries to draw a true conclusion, that the government doesn't know any better. The problem is that if you begin with a contradiction you can logically prove anything you like, and altruists will begin with the same premise and conclude that since you can't know any better and are selfish, then we should trust the government to act on the proper selfless motives.

Maybe someone more interested in economics than I am can provide you with a link to the Objectivist literature on Austrian skepticism.

Post 7

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 1:04pm

Ted,

I knew you were talking about Austrian economics. And I don't think the limited context within which William's column is drawn is based upon that epistemological flaw that Rand rightly pointed out.

My apologies for inadvertently adding a quote mark to your sentence that didn't belong - I edited that out with a comment. I can see now that you are not attributing that conclusion to Williams, but your post easily leads one to believe that you are criticizing Williams in just that fashion. You are implying in your recent post that he takes the sceptics position, but that isn't apparent or necessary for his column.

I agree that moral skepticism would be a flawed defense, and I agree that individual rights is the best defense, because it is the strongest defense of free enterprise choices... but Williams wasn't relying on skepticism - he wasn't wrong or deserving of criticism for his defense. He threw no tidbits to collectivism - he damned collectivism - kicking the legs out from under the 'we know best' argument. That was the purpose of his column and he did it up quite nicely to my way of thinking.

Context is quite simply applied in this case as an antidote to claims of moral scepticism. We all are ignorant of what is or is not of value if the context is drawn in certain ways. Objectivism lets us understand the context and that allows us to make absolute moral judgments depending upon how we draw the context. Williams didn't foul the context line.

Here is where I think your argument went wrong: You said, "William's argument takes a false but tempting premise - that neither you nor the government knows any better..." But his argument is that neither of you know about the future (his context), HOWEVER you know better about your wants and needs. So his argument is that out of the limited knowledge available, yours will always be better than the governments. All he was saying is that they DON'T know better and their motives are NOT pure.

Post 8

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 1:35pm

The criticism is that if you start the wider academic political argument with the premise that neither you nor government knows what is in your interest then the altruists end the argument with the conclusion that at least the government isn't selfishly motivated while you are.

This seems to be misstating Williams' article. One of the points he is making is that while nobody has absolutely, incontrovertibly perfect knowledge, individuals have far better knowledge of what is in their interest than total strangers working for a distant government.

Sure, altruists will try to twist around and misstate that, but they will try to twist around and misstate ANYTHING you argue. So, starting with a palpably untrue statement, to the effect that individuals do have nearly perfect knowledge of what's in their interests, makes the job of altruists much easier.

Sure, you could cut out any statement about individuals having imperfect information, but altruists will then try to twist that omission around by implying you're falsely imputing perfect knowledge to individuals. In fact, I've seen that exact line of attack employed by altruists time and again on threads at Reason.com, so Williams is in fact striking down one of their lies by raising this point.

I agree with everything Williams said -- I don't feel there is anything to critique about this article (and a sanction to Steve for posting it!)

Post 9

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 2:14pm

Steve, if you simply want to see the best in William's essay, I understand that. (And thanks for conceding that you misquoted me.) Liking Williams as a person is similar to liking Beck or Palin. They are partial allies who mostly reach friendly conclusions but often with some bad premises. Since Palin is a politician and Beck a journalist I am less wary of their faults. Their positions are closer to the concrete, and I judge Palin by her character and Beck by his commitment to the truths he reveals, no matter what party it harms.

But Williams is a professional academic. He is indeed accepting the skeptical argument that Hayek makes in The Road to Serfdom. He is not simply saying that individuals do know better than bureaucrats. (Nor is he saying that individuals have rights that bureaucrats would not be justified in violating even if they did know better.) His literal, exact words, regardless of what we might wish he had said, are: "Neither you nor the U.S. Congress has the complete knowledge to know exactly what's best for you." That "complete knowledge" statement is pure and unadulterated Kant. Contradictory premises like this have to be identified and opposed, not glossed over, or quoted with approval.

I found a few links and quotes. I do suggest you read Objectivist economist and Capitalism Magazine writer Richard Salsman's comments on the Forum for Ayn Rand fans.

Here is Rand to Rose Wilder Lane on Hayek in her Marginalia:

"Now to your second question 'Do those almost with us do more harm than 100% enemies?' ... I think each particular case has to be judged on his particular performance, but there is one general rule to observe: those who are with us but who merely do not go far enough yet do not serve the opposite cause in any way are the ones who do us some good and who are worth educating. Those who agree with us in some respects, yet preach contradictory ideas at the same time, are definitely more harmful than 100% enemies.... As an example of the kind of 'almost' I would tolerate, I'd name Ludwig von Mises.... As an example of our most pernicious enemy, I would name Hayek. That one is real poison." [Emphasis mine.]

Finally, in response to Hayek's argument that it is

"impossible to include in our values more than a sector of the needs of the whole society"

and that

"From this the individualist concludes that the individuals should be allowed, within very defined limits, to follow their own values and values and preferences rather than somebody else's..."

Rand responds:

"Oh, God damn the total complete vicious bastard! This means that man does exist for others, but that because he does not know how to do it, the masters will give him some defined limits for himself. If that's the essence this is why individualism has failed."

That's her emphasis, not mine.

Post 10

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 3:47pm

Ted -- I have severe disagreements with Kant's philosophy, and Hayek is a socialist who reluctantly came to see the evil in what that philosophy entails without ever completely disavowing socialist thoughts and methods. I heartily disagree with some of the socialist-lite passages in "The Road to Serfdom", while still finding it to be a great book, and one that has started many people on the path to individualism.

For that matter, I find some flaws in what Ayn Rand wrote, and how she applied some parts of her philosophy to her own life -- from all accounts, she was rather tyrannical and quick to discard anyone from her circle who called her out on some of her bizarre notions, or laughed at something she said, or in any way crossed her. Yet this imperfection doesn't erase or invalidate the philosophy in "Atlas Shrugged" or "The Virtue of Selfishness".

But, the Kantian-influenced passage you quoted, in the context that it was actually used -- describing how neither one's choice of mates or housing is going to ever be absolutely, unquestionably the best possible choice you could ever make, because there is always someone or something that might be marginally better -- is in fact true.

That is, just because Kant advanced premises that Rand rightly abhorred, and that Rand bared those anti-mind, anti-life premises for what they really implied, doesn't mean that from time to time, in a limited context, something Kant might have said may comport with reality.

Or are you seriously contending that it is possible for a human being to find and pick and enter into a relationship with the one perfect mate out of the 3 billion or so people of one's chosen gender, and furthermore know with absolute certainty that that incredibly improbable event has occurred?

Likewise with the housing example.

That is, Kant took something that has a grain of truth in it, and then stretched and distorted it and overgeneralized it to imply things that aren't true.

Likewise, I feel you took a quote out of the context in which it was written. I understand that you do feel it is in context and a Kantian heresy, and that Williams has bought into some of that philosophy. I suppose we shall have to agree to disagree about that.

If I wanted to be very wry and ironic, I would say that unless we directly questioned Williams and got him to address this matter and say which of these interpretations of his article is correct, we can't have a "perfect knowledge" of whether he does accept the Kantian heresy.

Post 11

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 5:08pm

Jim, knowledge is contextual. Your picking a one-out-of-three-billion best person match for a marriage is simply nonsense. One can indeed know sufficiently well that a person is a good or bad prospect for marriage, or that one is willing to take the risk oneself. That doesn't rule out free will and the fact that a person can change over time. To speak of one-in-three-billion matches is to treat marriage as if it is not a life long effort but a matter of one-time luck. To take your challenge seriously would require that one accept a standard of omniscience and clairvoyance as a standard for human knowledge.

Peikoff on Certainty at the Ayn Rand lexicon:

“Certain” represents an assessment of the evidence for a conclusion; it is usually contrasted with two other broad types of assessment: “possible” and “probable.” . . .

Idea X is “certain” if, in a given context of knowledge, the evidence for X is conclusive. In such a context, all the evidence supports X and there is no evidence to support any alternative. . . .

You cannot challenge a claim to certainty by means of an arbitrary declaration of a counter-possibility, . . . you cannot manufacture possibilities without evidence . . . .

All the main attacks on certainty depend on evading its contextual character . . . .

The alternative is not to feign omniscience, erecting every discovery into an out-of-context absolute, or to embrace skepticism and claim that knowledge is impossible. Both these policies accept omniscience as the standard: the dogmatists pretend to have it, the skeptics bemoan their lack of it. The rational policy is to discard the very notion of omniscience. Knowledge is contextual—it is knowledge, it is valid, contextually.

The simple fact is that in most situations you can make perfectly informed and often certain decisions about your actions within context. The one-in-three-billion example is an arbitrary declaration of a counter-possibility without regard to the contextual certainty that it is a good idea or not a good idea to marry one's current lover. I know with complete certainty that a Mac is better than a PC, that Benadryl works better for me than Claritin, that I would be more happy living in the Bronx than in Boston, just as many people know with complete contextual certainty that it would be better for them to be able to buy ephedra or to gamble on line. The statement that "neither you nor the U.S. Congress has the complete knowledge to know exactly what's best for you" was not made randomly or without an implicit meaning or without cause. Williams is accepting the Austrian premise which is based on a false view of what certainty is. It is simply false, and in fact, viciously false in its implications, read Rand if you don't believe me.

Williams may indeed go on to argue for a conclusion popular with Objectivists, just as conservatives have long argued that because of original sin no one should be entrusted with too much government authority. The fact remains that his skeptical statement does not support his conclusion. Indeed, it can just as well be used to say that some expert may know better than you or Congress what is best for you, or best for the common good.

The best way to destroy an idea is to defend it poorly.

Post 12

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - 6:12pm

Ted,

We agree on Rand's position. We agree with her view of Hayek's argument.

We don't agree on what Williams said. You said, "He [Williams] is indeed accepting the skeptical argument that Hayek makes in The Road to Serfdom. He is not simply saying that individuals do know better than bureaucrats." Williams does say that the individual knows better: "...when individuals make their own trade-offs, say between purchasing health insurance or investing in a business, they make wiser decisions because it is they who personally bear the costs and benefits of those decisions." And I think you are reading far too much into the "complete knowledge" phrase. He is specific in saying that we don't know what our future situation will be, we don't know the entire set of market opportunities, and we don't have perfect knowledge at a point in time - not individuals and not government. That does not mean, and Williams doesn't say it is any justification of collectivist deciding.

And he does address individual rights: "There is absolutely no moral case, much less constitutional case, for Congress forcibly using one American to serve the purposes of another American, a practice that differs only in degree from slavery, which we all should find morally offensive."

I think you are misjudging Williams, at least in this column. Maybe if he had written more he would have revealed shared premises with Hayek in that area, but there is nothing in this text that supports your position.

Post 13

Friday, December 4, 2009 - 2:24pm

No, I am sorry, but the best you can say about this quote (assuming you take it out of the context of the article where it becomes absolutely unacceptable) is that Williams is possibly an ad hoc political ally who might vote with you in the same way that anarchists and conservatives might also vote with Objectivists. But you have to ignore the obvious and plain meaning of a prolific and careful scholar's purposefully chosen words when he says that "neither you nor the U.S. Congress has the complete knowledge to know exactly what's best for you" to do so.

And when you do look at what he said in the context of his first paragraph there is no possible way for a person who understands Objectivism to accept the skepticism for which he argues at length, consciously, intentionally and by his own considered academic opinion. To deny that you know what he meant by this is an insult to him as a careful writer and yourself as an educated reader.

Read what he said:

The ultimate constraint that we all face is knowledge — what we know and don't know. The knowledge problem is pervasive and by no means trivial as hinted at by just a few examples. You've purchased a house. Was it the best deal you could have gotten? Was there some other house you could have purchased that 10 years later would not have needed extensive repairs or was in a community with more likeable neighbors and a better environment for your children? What about the person you married? Was there another person who would have made for a more pleasing spouse? Though these are important questions, the most intelligent answer you can give to all of them is: "I don't know."

Would a person who understands Objectivism, would Ayn Rand accept his statement that "the most intelligent answer you can give to all of them is: 'I don't know.'"?

No.

This is the Austrian school's explicit epistemological skepticism which Rand rejects with profanities. The intelligent thing to say is that if you are diligent and set the right parameters and do the proper research you can indeed be fully certain that you have made the right choice within the context of your knowledge — and that there is no other rational context to consider. Arbitrary imaginary counter-examples for which no evidence is offered have no weight in science, in law, in philosophy or in ethics. The fact that one can imagine that there could be counter evidence is in itself not counter evidence. That sort of fraudulent legerdemain is what got O.J. Simpson off for murder. It was argued that in the face of numerous separate items of evidence, each of which was sufficient on its own to show his guilt, since one could imagine that "somehow" each was faked (although no evidence was ever offered of such faking) then the jurors simply weren't in a position to know his guilt. Williams would have to agree with this. This is absurd.

One cannot, no matter how hard one wishes, transition from methodological skepticism to a proper defense of individual rights. Our absolute right not to have an outside authority "forcibly make housing or marital decisions for us" is simply not based on relative ignorance. Williams is in effect conceding that if the "experts" did know better then it would not be so bad, since the reason why we let individuals make there own decisions is because they are the ones who will suffer the consequences. Wrong! If your decision to go on strike means that hundreds or thousands of people may live in the dark while you move to Galt's gulch, it is not the relative effect on people that matters, it is the question of absolute right.

Yes, Williams is an otherwise smart guy. (Although he does apparently think that Abraham Lincoln was an ill-intentioned busybody whose central motivations were statist.) Yes, he is making a pragmatic (if fatally flawed) argument that he thinks ends up defending a position which with we would like to agree. But, no, you can't just fake reality and deny the plain meaning of his words as a scholar who explicitly champions the epistemology of the Austrian school. No, interpreting him as a skeptic is not an out of context judgement, it is the undeniable and explicitly made and false heart of his argument. No, his premises do not support his conclusion. They are contradictory and they support the opposite conclusions just as well. In the mean time, he ignores entirely the only relevant premise, that a man has a right to act as he sees fit, no matter how ignorant he is, and no matter how badly his choice affects others, so long as he initiates no force against others. The word 'right' does not appear once in his essay. Statists can and do argue both that they do know better and that others will bear the effects of your actions more than you will. Having conceded the relevance of such premises Williams cannot reject such arguments.

An educated Objectivist who credits Rand's epistemology, her politics, and her profanely explicit and pages-long criticism of the precise Austrian arguments Williams uses cannot, no matter how much he might enjoy Williams' support for the desired conclusion, accept William's amoral argument from relative ignorance nor can he pretend that it is acceptable.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 12/04, 2:39pm)

Post 14

Friday, December 4, 2009 - 3:25pm

Ted, you might be right about William's position, but you can't claim that to be so based upon that column. It can easily be interpreted differently.

I purchased a house and years later realized that more research would have yielded a different decision. But one must stop doing research at some point and act. And it won't be till later that one discovers if they did enough research, or just the right research. And things can change that it was not possible or at least reasonable to know about at the time. That is a statement about the market (where outcomes are based upon choices made by others), and about the finite amount of time and energy we have to do research, and about trade-offs (how much money could I loose, how much is it costing to research, how much might I loose by not acting, etc.) That is a statement that is in the area of economics and not epistemology.

Williams said, "Though these are important questions, the most intelligent answer you can give to all of them is: 'I don't know.'" He was clear on his context where the preceding sentences set up a situation where only the passing of time will determine if you made the best decision, and where at the time you could truthfully say, 'I have done what I think is the most reasonable research and thinking that this question deserves, and I am acting upon that. But do I know if it will still be the right decision when seen 10 years from now? No. I don't know.'

Regardless of what Williams does or does not agree with in the Austrian School's epistemology, in this column, he has only said that we must make some decisions without all the information that time will bring to us. We can be reasonable, logical, objective in our approach to making that decision, but it can prove to be wrong in time. It makes sense to say, "I made the right decision at the time, but it has proven to be the wrong decision given what I know now."

Post 15

Friday, December 4, 2009 - 4:56pm

Yes, I can make my claim based on Williams' column based on the plain meaning of the words. Knowledge of Williams' intimate familiarity with Hayek, whose works he recommends and whom he quotes simply makes my interpretation of the argument in this op-ed certain. That those not familiar with Hayek, with Rand's correct opinion of him, with Hayek's skeptical epistemology, and with the fact that Williams' argument follows from Hayek might admire Williams' conclusion yet miss the fatal flaws in Williams' premises does not surprise me. Repeated insistence that Williams could not possibly be making a Hayekian argument, or that it is not most plausible to come to that conclusion given the evidence does surprise me.

The standard is "certainty beyond a reasonable doubt," not "certainty beyond an imaginable doubt." The prior standard is met in our lives daily, the later never by anyone.

That one can imagine the possibility that one might be wrong is not a refutation of knowledge or of present certainty. It is not evidence that one has reason to believe that one is wrong, or that one should not act on one's current knowledge if one has considered all the relevant evidence. To keep repeating that one might be wrong, not based on a current lack of appropriate effort or upon actual current evidence to the contrary, but based on whatever criterion is unavailable to us now by our natures — our lack of omniscient access to the future, the lack of the evidence of senses we don't have, or the lack of evidence of things in themselves from the viewpoint of nowhere — is Kantianism, and it is as good an argument for the possibility that god or the spaghetti monster might exist as anything else.

Please answer this. (1) Does or does not Williams argue from relative ignorance?

Please answer this. (2) Does or does not Williams argue from inviolable individual rights?

Please answer this. (3) I assume that you accept that he argues that since individuals know better, they should decide. If so, does this not imply that if bureaucrats did know better, it would be okay for them to decide for us?

Please answer this. (4) I assume that you accept that he argues that since individuals most directly bear the brunt of their decisions they should make them for themselves. If so, does this not imply that if your decision affects others more than yourself that they or someone speaking for them should decide for us?

(Edited by Ted Keer on 12/04, 5:21pm)

Post 16

Friday, December 4, 2009 - 6:53pm

Ted,

I don't see much value in this discussion, but I'll answer your questions and then move on...

You said:
Please answer this. (1) Does or does not Williams argue from relative ignorance?

Yes, we are all ignorant in absolute terms in the market place and the future - that is not the Kantian error Rand was talking about. It does NOT deny us certainty. Being certain that we are making the best decision the context will allow, is not the same as claiming that we can be certain about the outcome down the road.
-----------

Please answer this. (2) Does or does not Williams argue from inviolable individual rights?

Yes - he wrote about the, "...forcible transference of decision-making authority over important areas of our private lives to elite decision-makers in Congress and government bureaucracies." And to make it even clearer he said, "...it is some flesh and blood American worker who finds his earnings taken by Congress to finance the health needs of another person. There is absolutely no moral case, much less constitutional case, for Congress forcibly using one American to serve the purposes of another American, a practice that differs only in degree from slavery, which we all should find morally offensive."

"...forcibly using one American to serve the purposes of another American, a practice that differs only in degree from slavery, which we all should find morally offensive." That piece was worth repeating!
------------

Please answer this. (3) I assume that you accept that he argues that since individuals know better, they should decide. If so, does this not imply that if bureaucrats did know better, it would be okay for them to decide for us?

No, 1) there are multiple reasons for individuals deciding for themselves, 2) "...bureaucrats ...know better...", talk about putting up an impossible, irrational hypothetical as a straw-man!
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Please answer this. (4) I assume that you accept that he argues that since individuals most directly bear the brunt of their decisions they should make them for themselves. If so, does this not imply that if your decision affects others more than yourself that they or someone speaking for them should decide for us?

I don't find your argument has enough context to do anything with. Williams is merely adding a 'just world' argument. He is saying that it is more just for the person most affected to be the decider. That requires the context of 'all things remaining equal.' It is an additional argument.
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And most of these have nothing to do with your argument that Williams' column is based upon principles of moral skepticism.

Post 17

Saturday, December 5, 2009 - 11:25am

Jim, knowledge is contextual. Your picking a one-out-of-three-billion best person match for a marriage is simply nonsense. One can indeed know sufficiently well that a person is a good or bad prospect for marriage, or that one is willing to take the risk oneself.

Ted, I agree with your last sentence. But, Williams' point was not that people are incapable of making good decisions based on reasonably good data, but rather that we almost never get to make decisions based on perfect knowledge. As he put it:

"The ultimate constraint that we all face is knowledge — what we know and don't know. The knowledge problem is pervasive and by no means trivial as hinted at by just a few examples ... What about the person you married? Was there another person who would have made for a more pleasing spouse? Though these are important questions, the most intelligent answer you can give to all of them is: "I don't know."

For example, when I met my future wife when I was 29 years old, it was after 6 months of intensive dating via personal ads. She was date number 70 or 80 or so ... hard to keep track of how many, or even to pin down what constitutes a "date" in some marginal situations.

And just a month or so into the relationship, when we were just starting to get to know each other, she told me she was leaving very soon to do her residency in another state.

So, based on very imperfect information and under an unalterable deadline, I made the decision to uproot my life and move with her, because I thought she was a good prospect for a life partner. Did I know "sufficiently well", as you put it? I had enough information to make a decision, but as Williams put it, "Was there another person who would have made for a more pleasing spouse?" The answer is certainly "yes" -- thinly scattered somewhere among the billion or so marriageable women around my age in the world, there certainly were millions of women -- possibly tens of millions -- who would have made me marginally happier, but based on the imperfect information at hand, I didn't know how to find them, and I was getting older and lonelier and didn't want to let my potential future wife get in her car and drive off and never see her again.

That is the essence of Williams' article -- that we often have to make momentous decisions based on highly imperfect information, and that the individual who will be most affected by the decision almost certainly has better information than total strangers thousands of miles away making topdown command and control decisions. That individualism, not statism, is the best system for unleashing all that scattered, imperfect knowledge and making decisions based on the best information available.

Post 18

Monday, December 7, 2009 - 8:37pm

Well, it looks like Stephen Kinsella isn't all bad:

While I cannot help but admire Friedman’s general pro-free market message and work, I was struck by a passage in something he wrote in his July 1991 Liberty article, “Say “No” to Intolerance”. I don’t have a copy any more (if anyone does, please fax it to me at 281-966-6988 and I can post it) but I recall he said that he was in favor of liberty and tolerance of differing views and behavior because we cannot know that the behavior we want to outlaw is really bad. In other words, the reason we should not censor dissenting ideas is not the standard libertarian idea that holding or speaking is not aggression, but because the we can’t be sure the ideas are wrong. This implies that if we could know for sure what is right and wrong, it might be okay to legislate morality, to outlaw immoral or “bad” actions. This line of thinking has always bothered me a great deal, more so than the fact that Friedman, like most free market proponents, compromises on this or that concrete issue.

In Peikoff’s podcast, he takes a question from a listener who asks whether he should sue a tennis club who denies him entry based on his race. Peikoff says no, they should not be sued; that they have a right to form their club on whatever terms they want–even if this rule or use of their property is “irrational.” But then he says:

and who is to judge what’s irrational? It’s going to come down to the courts, the government, and then what rights or freedom do you have? Every totalitarian dictatorship will give you the rights to do what’s proper as it chooses. So the right to behave irrationally is inherent in property rights, in liberty itself.

I think he’s basically right, but the way he words this seems to imply that a problem with outlawing irrational behavior is you can’t trust the government, especially a bad government, to objectively determine what’s irrational; that if the government were an Objectivist one, there would be no problem with it outlawing “irrational” behavior. I doubt Peikoff really believes this but the way he worded this (admittedly, he was speaking in a more or less informal setting, on the fly) does remind a bit of the very problematic Friedmanesque defense of liberty.

Post 19

Sunday, December 20, 2009 - 4:05pm