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Assuming that you are super rational and you know the prior probabilities of the possible uses of money, then yes, you could calculate that e.g. a 42% taxation brings the highest expected utility.

I just don't expect a human to do this correctly, or even approximately correctly. So even if a group of humans will use the same reasoning, they will get widely different results (because their prior probability distributions will be different, their knowledge imperfect, and their calculations incorrect).

What should I have said instead is that only those kinds of reasoning which always give you result 0% or 100% (such as saying that any tax is unacceptably evil theft; or that humans are unable to live without a society, so they owe everything to society) will cause a group of humans that use the same reasoning to consistently produce the same numbers. Also, that kind of reasoning is more simple, and more attractive, so more people will do it. Though, there are also other attractive kinds of reasoning, such as: the same as yesterday; a little more than yesterday; a little less than yesterday.

See in context

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Seeking links for the best arguments for economic libertarianism

by Bart119

3rd May 2012

1 min read

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[see 'Update' below]

I know discussions of actual applied politics are to be avoided. I don't want to start one.

But I thought LessWrong people might be a source for where the best arguments have been made for libertarianism in the economic sense (not why you should stay out of people's bedrooms). Even better, arguments for some degree of socialism in the same place would be nice. It seems there is a natural continuum. To pick one specific realm: anywhere from 0% to 100% of a person's income could be allocated for redistribution to even things out. Where to put that number will inevitably be a matter of grubby politics (won't it?). But still, arguments for why we should have a low number or a high number must involve some basic disagreements which could be (hopefully) separated into different values, different estimated probabilities, and different attempts to apply a rational analysis.

The world is dripping with partisan analyses along these lines (with "warfare" rules). Where are the best ones that avoid that failing?

I considered posting this under "dumb questions" but I judged that it's not really a question about LessWrong per se.

Update: Thank you to all who took the time to reply. Perhaps I'm learning about how some would start applying consequentialism to a real-life problem. I expected people to point me to discussions about what's right and what's fair -- which is what I'd expect in most other forums. But I guess here my responders so far are taking this to be a sort of question for technocrats who can work out the utility. So my next question will be about consequentialism once I've thought about it a little more.

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[-]prase13y220

Confirmation bias warning: Shouldn't you seek the best arguments both for and against?

Edit: although you say

Even better, arguments for some degree of socialism in the same place would be nice.

the phrasing of the question is still biased towards libertarianism.

[-]Bart11913y170

Good point. The truth is, my starting point is much less libertarian than most LWers, if I recall survey results correctly. I'm trying to understand the other side, which is I gather virtuous within a rationality framework. I wasn't trying to bias what answers I would get, but you're right that it could in some fashion or other.

[-]prase13y20

If you already know the best arguments against X, then it is entirely reasonable to ask for the best arguments for X, of course. Since I didn't know whether this was the case, I had phrased my warning as a question.

[-]BlazeOrangeDeer13y00

The survey had very few options for political ideology and was phrased like "what is the closest to your view". So the survey just means that people mostly prefer libertarianism to the short list of ideologies mentioned, not that they believe or advocate it.

[-]bryjnar13y80

I got the impression you're also looking for arguments against libertarianism, in which case I would recommend Yvain's excellent Non-Libertarianism FAQ.

[-]CronoDAS13y30

An argument based more on practicality than principle can be found at Government Is Good.

[-]buybuydandavis13y70

Naturally, it will depend on what you mean by Libertarianism and Socialism.

To take just the issue of "redistribution", Milton Friedman was for a negative income tax and guaranteed minimum, apparently Hayek was as well, Thomas Paine had his Agrarian Justice. According to your terminology, are these guys Libertarians, Socialists, or neither? Libertarians with "some degree of Socialism"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee

Tabooing the terms may get you farther, as then you may identify the particular policies you're concerned with.

UPDATE: Friedman's support of a negative income tax and vouchers were intended by him as a temporary measure, a way to wean people off of government support. Saw him talk about it on a video recently, but haven't been able to dig up the link.

[-]Oligopsony13y70

I think it would be helpful to be more specific about what you're trying to determine.

For instance, "what percentage of income should go to the government (assuming a social context where that even makes sense)" is, from a consequentialist perspective, a question that ought be decomposed. Any given program might or might not produce additional value over the marginal cost of raising the money for it, depending on the details. So maybe you want to ask questions like "what is the marginal elasticity of labor [at various incomes and social contexts]" and "what is the marginal effect of income on [happiness or whatever you care about] [at various incomes and social contexts, blah blah blah]" so that you're better-equipped to make cost-benefit analyses of various programs, and so on. As it happens those questions are of course totally politicized, but it's better to know that they're the actual questions you're looking for (if they are.)

You might be asking something quite different from this, but if you are, it should be decomposable, or at least made more precise, as well.

[-]RobertLumley13y70

Be wary of prewriting your bottom line.

[-]Amanojack13y60

Short: I, Pencil by Leonard E. Reed

Long: Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

Very long: Socialism by Ludwig von Mises, or any of F.A. Hayek's work on spontaneous order

(All available in pdf form by googling, though some may be copyrighted)

For specific questions, the Mises forums will happily supply you with arguments and tailored links for any economic questions. Just be sure to ask for arguments on consequentialist grounds since the forum is idealogically extremely libertarian (but friendly).

If you're looking for something more mild of the John Stossel or Milton Friedman variety, try anything by Friedman himself, or Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy - though these may not align with libertarian arguments on monetary policy.

[-]Swimmy13y60

I wouldn't look for Grand Arguments about why every sphere of the economy should adopt libertarian policies. Most of these are based on bad philosophy. Look instead at individual policy issues and see what libertarians say.

For example: Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom is split into individual chapters on policy issues. Few parts of the book take a big picture view of things. This is probably what you're looking for, but you also have to remember that it's a popular rather than a technical book, so if you find yourself wary of any individual empirical assertion you'll have to go hunting for the relevant literature on your own. The best arguments are buried in economics journals, along with the best arguments for significant government intervention, etc.

You'll also have to go digging from many different angles. That X policy works doesn't mean that X policy's benefits outweigh its costs, so you'll also have to dig through the empirical literature in Law and Econ and Public Choice to measure the cost of carrying out any individual policy.

Capitalism and Freedom is also outdated in many of its empirical assertions, though many have held up. Again, you'll have to go digging one-by-one.

I can help more if you narrow your question down to individual policy summaries. Asking for all the best arguments on antitrust regulation, free trade, the optimal level of taxation, the optimal type of tax, the optimal level of spending on education, anti-discrimination laws, the optimal level of spending on public goods, the optimal level of taxation on negative externalities, the optimal level of fiscal stimulus in a recession, the relative merits of monetary vs. fiscal stimulus, the net effects of redistribution, the net effects of occupational licensing, the net effects of each individual government regulation--to name just a few policy issues!--is way too tall an order.

[-]satt13y10

Related: avoiding affective death spirals by cutting up a potential Great Idea into component parts.

[-]pragmatist13y40

If you're looking for a non-consequentialist, rights-based defense of libertarianism, the locus classicus is Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia. It's a big, sprawling and dense book, so perhaps you'd be better served reading a summary on the internet (like this IEP article), although if you're up for tackling the book, I think you'd find it rewarding. To get a quick sense of the way Nozick argues, here's a famous thought experiment from the book.

A good, up-to-date, consequentialist argument is Allan Meltzer's Why Capitalism?. It's short, engaging and available for the Kindle.

Neither of these books give much time to arguments for socialism, so you'll have to look elsewhere for that. G. A. Cohen's Why Not Socialism? is a good counterpoint to Nozick, and Paul Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal complements Meltzer. Krugman has a reputation for prioritizing partisanship over dispassionate analysis, but this book is not nearly as polemical as many of his NYT columns.

[-]FeepingCreature13y20

To get a quick sense of the way Nozick argues, here's a famous thought experiment from the book.

Curious. My first thought was "Since the author seems to be abusing emotional connotations to make his point, what is the most subversive position about this thought experiment that I can still defend? " And my answer is, it is possible to frame the very first situation in terms of non-slavery, simply because the master is so far above the slave that it's borderline meaningless to attribute him agency. You might as well call humans slaves of chance.

[-]Viliam_Bur13y40

To pick one specific realm: anywhere from 0% to 100% of a person's income could be allocated for redistribution to even things out.

For me, it is also important to know how exactly that money will be used. I wouldn't mind paying 50% or more of my income if I believed that they will be used for causes I consider good (if their use resembled my extrapolated volition). In a perfect situation, it would be equivalent to me and every other member of society giving half of their income to the best causes, except that each of us does not have to do the related research alone.

On the other hand, if I believe that the money is wasted, then even 10% of my income would be too much. Money can be wasted by stealing, by spending on projects that rationally don't make sense, and even worse, by spending on actively harmful projects. In my opinion my country is probably more close to this end of the scale, so paying 50% of my income (tax + mandatory insurance) is rather painful.

So the position from 0% to 100% does not reflect the most important parts. In a rational society I would be willing to give up more, and on the other hand I think a rational society would either cost less, or it would accomplish much better projects.

Without information how exactly the money will be use, one can consistently argue only for 0% or 100%, because those extremes do not depend on details. But for me, those details are very important.

[-]satt13y10

Without information how exactly the money will be use, one can consistently argue only for 0% or 100%, because those extremes do not depend on details.

Even if I'm uncertain about how the money would be used, my expected utility as a function of redistribution could still peak somewhere between 0% and 100%.

[-]Viliam_Bur13y10

Assuming that you are super rational and you know the prior probabilities of the possible uses of money, then yes, you could calculate that e.g. a 42% taxation brings the highest expected utility.

[-]RomeoStevens13y20

http://www.freetochoose.tv/

well worth watching, especially for the debates.

[-]James_Miller13y20

Find links to GDP of capitalist vs socialist nations. For the extreme case see here.

[-]Bart11913y10

Maybe setting the bounds of the problem would help some. I'm assuming:

Some form of representative democracy as political context, in the absence of any better systems.
A system of law protecting most property rights -- no arbitrary expropriations.
Socialism no more extreme than in (say) postwar Scandinavian countries.
Libertarianism no more extreme than (say) late 19th century USA.
Regulated capitalism. The question is how much regulation or taxation.

Given those parameters, I don't need the Communist Manifesto or any radical anarchist works. North Korea, the USSR, pre-1980 China aren't so relevant.

If people disagree with any of those limits on the problem, I suppose just stating that would be of interest, perhaps with a link or two. I realize getting into arguments about such things could be counterproductive, but knowing of the existence of views outside of those bounds would be helpful.

[-]Amanojack13y20

I think you'll find the extreme cases (totalitarian economic controls vs. complete laissez faire) to be helpful to look at so as to challenge the way you're framing the spectrum.

Also, politics and economics go hand in hand, economics being - in terms of what it is usually actually used for - the study of how political actions affect the economy. For example, David Friedman argues that courts would produce better rulings if they were not run as a monopoly, and that the same is true with laws and regulations themselves. So at the limit it is not easy to separate them.

Another example is the libertarian argument that pollution is largely enable by weakened property rights due to laws passed in the 19th century (in the US case) preventing torts against polluters, and from the basic fact that the government essentially owns the waters and airways. These types of arguments tend to undercut the whole divide between economics and politics.

[-]Thomas13y-30

Many find the dark sky over the North Korea as something good, no light pollution there.

Libertarians don't like the Red or the Green ideology much.

[-]buybuydandavis13y00

Your observation in your update is interesting. There is a large swath of libertopia which starts their argument from the Non Coercion Principle. But I didn't notice any of that here.

This is yet another case where I find the aversion to political discussion unfortunate. Political discussions with people who you disagree with but can still communicate with until you find the point of disagreement are interesting, if rare. This is one of the few groups where I think there'd be a decent chance of success.

[-]MinibearRex13y00

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[-][anonymous]13y00

My immediate thought is that you are looking for this.

If whatever you are doing is not rationalization, good luck.

Even so, I can't imagine what utility such an analysis could have unless you are some kind of economic advisor to the president of some place.

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