John [Tomasi]’s project is laudable — rediscover and synthesize common ethical ground between the two dominant branches of classical liberal thought. Roughly speaking, the bifurcation into what John labels “libertarianism” and “high liberalism” arose out of John Stuart Mill’s argument for the treatment of economic liberty as less essential than other civil liberties.
Thus the two branches of thought bifurcate from the classical liberalism tree trunk: modern libertarianism, which prioritizes property rights and economic liberty as foundational to all other civil liberties (e.g., Rothbard), and high liberalism, which picks up Mill’s moral demotion of economic liberty and builds upon it to justify a substantial government apparatus for regulation and intervention in the private economic decisions of individuals, with the stated objective of designing a social system that will generate benefit particularly for the least advantaged in society (Rawls’ operationalization of the maximin principle).Read it at Knowledge Problem | Commentary on Economics, Information, and Human Action
“Free Market Fairness” and self-authorship
Lynne Kiesling | Distinguished Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at Northwestern University. At Northwestern she is also a Faculty Member in the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) and a Faculty Affiliate in the Center for the Study of Industrial Organization (CSIO)
Ironically, actually, one justification often offered for this regulatory system is to maintain uniform treatment of residential customers in a way that will ensure that prices stay low and stable for “vulnerable” consumers such as elderly and low-income consumers; this justification sounds Rawlsian. But it also does constrain the self-authorship of other consumers, producers, and innovators in ways that may make them worse off, and moreover, if those others were allowed choice and freedom of expression through their technology and energy consumption decisions, they may bring about a world in which new products and services actually drive down costs or create unanticipated value that could benefit those vulnerable consumers. Is that tradeoff worth it, ethically or economically?What is questionable here is the "may." Evidence seems to point in the direction of the most vulnerable becoming worse off through deregulation initially with out some countervailing action like a subsidy.
What is the evidence that they "may" be benefited in the long run. What does that mean exactly? What are the social costs in the meanwhile even if it does transpire some time out? Is there a realistic estimate of a time frame? What evidence is it based on?
The basic contention between Libertarianism and Liberalism revolves around this issue. Libertarians claim that government intervention is less efficient than "economic freedom" and that given a chance laissez-faire will also be more effective at meeting social goals. Liberals are skeptical of the claim based the objection that they see little evidence for it, and much more evidence of abuse, so they suspect it is based more on ideological preference stemming from norms than on factual analysis.
1 comment:
Tom, I think left-libertarians have a good point on this.
There are certain considerations that every regulation has unintended consequences. Put on top of that the bad intentions of the electric companies taking over(via lobbying and other methods) the government agencies that are supposed to be regulating them and they get to now write their own rules to the detriment of their customers who have no choice.
As for protecting the vulnerable, putting the money from regulation into a stronger safety-net is always a possibility.
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