{"id":11714,"date":"2021-05-03T23:38:32","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T06:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=11714"},"modified":"2021-05-03T23:38:32","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T06:38:32","slug":"as-a-man-thinketh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=11714","title":{"rendered":"<q><span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">As a man thinketh<\/span><\/q>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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.<\/p> <p>In discussion of policy, appropriateness of the set objectives of a real or imagined audience will often be <em>assumed<\/em> by economists who are either attempting to proceed in a <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">wertfrei<\/span><span style=\"vertical-align: top ; font-size: smaller ;\">&#91;1&#93;<\/span> manner or to argue for or against some ostensible means of accomplishing that set of objectives because of how those means would affect <em>other<\/em> matters about which the economist has a normative position.  Thus, an economist who <em>does not believe that an objective is right and proper<\/em> may none-the-less <em>assume<\/em> that it is, to explain<\/p> <ul><li>that some policy will <em>not<\/em> accomplish the objective; or<\/li> <li>that some policy will be most effective at accomplishing the objective; or<\/li> <li>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<\/li> <li>that some policy will be very effective in accomplishing the objective, <em>and<\/em> would, will, or does bring unrecognized benefits of importance to some in the audience.<\/li><\/ul> <p>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 <em>assumption<\/em> of objectives is <em>not<\/em> an <em>endorsement<\/em> of those objectives.  <em>However<\/em>, I think that repeatedly <em>assuming<\/em> objectives in the context of being <em>socially surrounded<\/em> by people with those objectives will indeed lead some analysts to fall into the habit of <em>presuming<\/em> those objectives &mdash; of implicitly <em>embracing<\/em> those objectives &mdash; and may eventually lead them to <em>endorsing<\/em> those objectives overtly.<\/p> <p>Unhappiness prevails amongst various libertarians and near-libertarians, concerning the comportment of what are called <q>beltway libertarians<\/q>, who are scholars, intellectuals, and professional political operatives located in or near the District of Columbia, and who self-identify with <q>libertarian<\/q> yet who have been silent about some of the most illiberal<span style=\"vertical-align: top ; font-size: smaller ;\">&#91;2&#93;<\/span> 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 <q>beltway libertarians<\/q> have been corrupted by their context; I am here suggesting part of the <em>mechanism<\/em> of corruption.<\/p> <hr width=\"50%\" align=\"left\" style=\"width: 50% ; margin-left: 0 ; margin-right: auto ; text-align: left ;\"\/> <p><span style=\"vertical-align: top ; font-size: smaller ;\">&#91;1&#93;<\/span>&nbsp; Normatively neutral.<\/p> <p><span style=\"vertical-align: top ; font-size: smaller ;\">&#91;2&#93;<\/span>&nbsp;I use <q>liberal<\/q> and <q>illiberal<\/q> in their original and proper senses.<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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&#91;1&#93; manner [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,36,318,4],"tags":[1582,18,1583,22,137,1126],"class_list":["post-11714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-economics","category-ethics-philosophy","category-public","tag-beltway-libertarians","tag-classical-liberalism","tag-corruption","tag-liberalism","tag-libertarianism","tag-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11714"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11717,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11714\/revisions\/11717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}