Assuming something that is not necessarily believed by oneself or by one's audience or by either is a regular practice in various intellectual pursuits.

In discussion of policy, appropriateness of the set objectives of a real or imagined audience will often be assumed by economists who are either attempting to proceed in a wertfrei[1] manner or to argue for or against some ostensible means of accomplishing that set of objectives because of how those means would affect other matters about which the economist has a normative position. Thus, an economist who does not believe that an objective is right and proper may none-the-less assume that it is, to explain

• that some policy will not accomplish the objective; or
• that some policy will be most effective at accomplishing the objective; or
• that some policy might be very effective at accomplishing the objective, but would, will, or does come at unacknowledged costs of importance to some in the audience; or
• that some policy will be very effective in accomplishing the objective, and would, will, or does bring unrecognized benefits of importance to some in the audience.

One of the various things that I find uncomfortable about engaging in discussion of policy is that some people lose or never catch sight of the point that my assumption of objectives is not an endorsement of those objectives. However, I think that repeatedly assuming objectives in the context of being socially surrounded by people with those objectives will indeed lead some analysts to fall into the habit of presuming those objectives — of implicitly embracing those objectives — and may eventually lead them to endorsing those objectives overtly.

Unhappiness prevails amongst various libertarians and near-libertarians, concerning the comportment of what are called beltway libertarians, who are scholars, intellectuals, and professional political operatives located in or near the District of Columbia, and who self-identify with libertarian yet who have been silent about some of the most illiberal[2] policies of our day, or contort themselves to argue that these policies are actually libertarian, or even assert that circumstances warrant policies that they acknowledge to be illiberal. For the most part, the liberal community elsewhere simply takes it that the beltway libertarians have been corrupted by their context; I am here suggesting part of the mechanism of corruption.

[1]  Normatively neutral.

[2] I use liberal and illiberal in their original and proper senses.

Confronted with a real or imagined social problem, most people first grab for an ostensible solution that appeals to their prejudices, and then for an argument (in favor of this policy) that seems plausible to them. That approach is not ideal, but might still result in good policy if people would poke at each such argument, to see whether it were actually logical, and move away from proposed solutions in cases in which none of the arguments withstood examination. Unfortunately, people don't generally test their arguments; words strung together in emotionally satisfying ways are embraced as if any reasonable person would accept them.

I came upon an epitomal example of this behavior, in the wake of a recent mass shooting at a school. Someone posted a graphic macro suggesting how guns might be treated analogously to motor vehicles and and declared

Let’s go through this one more time…maybe they will get it. And yes, people will obtain guns illegally. And yes, people kill people. But doing nothing means more die.

(Underscore mine.) Now, there are various problems with the suggestion that guns should be treated analogously to motor vehicles, and perhaps someday I'll labor all that occur to me. But here I want to focus on that assertion doing nothing means more die. To the poster, it apparently seems that any reasonable person would accept that this assertion is an argument for the policy that he favors. Let's poke at this use, to see whether it is actually logical.

It is surely true that if we do nothing different, then people who have not yet died will die, and in this sense more will die. But, as a matter of logic, that doesn't mean that there is something that we can do such that people would not die, or even that fewer would die. If we somehow had an optimal social policy, and found that people died, we could still say that if we did nothing different then people would die. So, one question that we might ask is of whether a change in social policy would cause fewer or more people to die.

And I'm not simply talking about whether a change in social policy would cause fewer or more people to die at the hands of shooters who are not state officials, or even about the more general question of whether a change in policy would cause fewer or more people to to die at the hands of shooters of all sorts, but about the question of whether the change in policy would result in fewer or in more deaths across all causes. For example, a policy change might lead to greater use of IEDs. (The deadliest mass murder at a school in American history was effected by a bomb.) The answer is not known a priori.

There is also the issue of other costs. For example, some jurisdictions have a lower rate per capita of homicide, but a higher rate of rape. One doesn't want to switch from one set of policies to another simply on the basis that if we do nothing then more will be raped, and likewise one doesn't want to switch from one set of policies to another simply on the basis that if we do nothing then more will die. I don't think that any utilitarian calculus is actually reasonable, but one that simply counts lives is plainly inhumane. And it would be childlike to think and childish to insist that, with some set of policies, the global minimum for each costs could be achieved simultaneous to that for every other, let alone that such a fantastic minimum could be found by first finding the local minimum for one cost and then seeking the local minimum for another.

The poster has presented an example from just one class of policies, and declared doing nothing means more die. Plainly, there are other possible policy responses, so that the relevant comparison is not simply between adopting the policy that he favors and maintaining the status quo.

Moreover, if his argument were adapted to the defense of other policies, he and others might be provoked to examine that argument more carefully. His words might be left essentially unchanged, but the macro replaced with one discussing a policy of a different sort. For example, someone might propose that each person above the age of 10 years old be interned in a mental-health camp, until and unless experts appointed by the state certified that he or she was not a danger to society. I'd like to think that, if the original poster had earlier seen the very same words used in defense of an internment policy, then he would have immediately poked at the argument to find the illogic. I'm quite sure that most people who applauded or would have applauded his words in the context in which he did use them would have found their illogic in the context of an argument for rounding-up American youth and throwing them into camps. Well, they should have poked at the argument where they actually found it.

I'm engaged in a fight with a corporation[1] in which I note its agents practice two, somewhat intertangled behaviors which are common to large or corporate enterprises, but which should be opposed whenever encountered.

The first of these is for the agent of the enterprise to confuse his or her rôle. For example: I gave agents of this corporation the same information repeatedly in the course of one phone call. In a later phone call, I told another agent that I'd given that information to you repeatedly, to which the agent replied, as if I were delusional, that she had never spoken with me before. This might be read as deliberate or incompetent misunderstanding of the word you (which of course must serve as a plural as well as a singular[2]), but it fits another pattern, in which the agent speaks as representative when it suits his or her immediate purpose, but instead as just an individual when that immediate purpose changes, and in which the agent doesn't announce changes in the entity for whom he or she speaks. I immediately told the agent in this case that, since she was representing the corporation in the conversation, you are the corporation, and that since I'd repeatedly given the information to the corporation, I had repeatedly given it to you.

The second behavior is to confuse endogenous policy with necessity, to represent the association as unable to do something simply because they have made a deliberate habit of not doing it. Actually, one sees people in general, in or out of a corporate frame-work, doing attempting this confusion. But the misrepresentation is more likely to be effective in the context of a formal, multi-personal institution, and the word policy is more likely to be invoked as if it represents something endogenous and fixed. (Does one often hear a neighbor insist that keeping his dog out of one's garden would be against policy?) And the misrepresentation is even more effective when the agent of the institution confuses the issue of whether he or she is speaking for the corporation or for his- or herself. Speaking for myself, I don't let an individual or association pretend that its chosen policy is not a choice, and I don't let the agents of an association off the hook of being its representatives when they try to claim that something cannot be done because it is against policy.

[1] Sprint Nextel Corporation.

[2] In standard English. And I'm not about to adopt y'all or youse or even you guys to humor a corporate agent.