Autodidact: The Unnecessary Leper

Well, the standard I use is whether I feel like my education has enabled me to pursue my long term objectives in a way that I probably wouldn've have been able to myself.  I mean, in the absence of state funding of education, it's possible that private universities would make education better, and so my standard is unfairly low.  But at the same time, state funding likely results in much greater incentive for smart people to become professors instead of something else, and allows for higher concentrations of the best professors in particular places (I haven't counted, but I'd guess that most of the top philosophy programs are public).  So it's very possible that at the University of Wisconsin, I'm able to get an education in philosophy that simply wouldn't exist without state funding, which would make my standard unfairly high.

As for what economics is taught in public schools, I'd point out that it's the same as the economics that's taught in private schools.  It's not Austrian economics, for sure; the Austrian research program doesn't focus on developing the tools that most economists use in their professional pursuits.  But the fact that universities focus on paradigms which facilitate predictions and measurements doesn't say anything about the universities, I don't think.  Rather, it speaks more to the kind of economist that's demanded in today's marketplace.  Most organizations looking to employ economists simply aren't interested in the social scientific issues which concern most Austrians.  If universities were training economics students for lives in acadamia, and not giving them the tools that are demanded by other employers, I think they'd be doing their students a profound disservice.  I would point out, though, that 90% of economics professors are most certainly not keynesian social democrat fascists.  Perhaps your "etc." captures "Monetarist," "Neoclassical," "Chicago School" and "Public Choice," but if it does, then I don't see the problem.  I'd suggest that you stop parroting what you've heard others say about different schools of economic thought if you haven't actually looked into the work that non-Austrian economists do.

 As for the issue of whether the majority of teachers are libertarians, I honestly don't see how it matters unless they're teaching courses related to political theory.  If you were talking about economics, then most economics professors would tell you that their subject matter certainly presupposes certain market structures, allotments of rights, and institutional arrangements.  But because those presuppositions are made to reflect the actual state of the world, their students are likely not being significantly misled.  That's especially true of students at the graduate level, where the foundations of economic theory are examined more closely as part of the program.  To be honest, I'd say that if there's a bias anywhere, it's in favor of controversial libertarian views; a disproportionate number of economists are libertarians themselves.

But if you were talking about philosophy professors, then I'd say you're wrong if you think that a non-libertarian philosopher is somehow incompetent or doesn't understand what libertarianism is.  The reality is that the libertarian viewpoint is controversial for a lot of very good reasons, and with its current level of development, there's no good way to tell a non-libertarian philosopher that her views are obviously wrong because of libertarian ideas.  The libertarian paradigm is simply not equipped for that kind of battle.  My non-libertarian professors have read Nozick, Locke, and Mill.  There are just a lot of questions that need to be answered before libertarianism can be considered a mature, coherent position.  I come down on the side of optimism; I wouldn't blame someone for going the other way though.

Donny, when you say "There are just a lot of questions that need to be answered before libertarianism can be considered a mature, coherent position," what do you mean? Could you expand some here? Coherent compared to what? Libertarianism is not "new" by any means and classical liberalism in general has a deep, rich intellectual history.

Also, I would agree with you that there is a lot of blind hatred of academics in the libertarian movement, to the point where many libertarians can't even imagine that there are worthwhile, intelligent people within the university system. But you seem to be quite a bit over-optimistic in your praise in regards to this subject. Could there perhaps be a bit of situational bias tinting your view of your current surroundings?

If you believe, as I do, that ideas rule the world, then you can not deny that much of what comes out of modern academia is complete drivel at best, and blood-soaked nonsense at worst. Much, if not all, of the evil transpired in the world today is rationalized or legitimized by academics and intellectuals of one color or another.

Donny with an A:

The reality is that the libertarian viewpoint is controversial for a lot of very good reasons, and with its current level of development, there's no good way to tell a non-libertarian philosopher that her views are obviously wrong because of libertarian ideas.  The libertarian paradigm is simply not equipped for that kind of battle.  My non-libertarian professors have read Nozick, Locke, and Mill.  There are just a lot of questions that need to be answered before libertarianism can be considered a mature, coherent position.  I come down on the side of optimism; I wouldn't blame someone for going the other way though.

 

Well, libertarianism is primarily an emergent phenomenon. Most of the libertarian political movement likely arose from the exceptional success of the libertarian ethic in normal, every-day relationships and interactions. I don't mean to insult your chosen profession (though I will anyway), but I don't think its very common for successful ethical system to be dreamed up by philosophers alone (has that ever occurred?). The limits of human reason are such that I think any successful ethic is going to be a combination of philosophizing and more emergent evolution.

I know it won't make philosophers like it, but I think libertarianism's lack of "coherent-ness" is as much of a strength as a weakness. Any time one person can describe a means of organizing society which he himself understands in full, you can surely bet that it would be a terrific disaster.

Donny with an A:

I'd suggest that you stop parroting what you've heard others say about different schools of economic thought if you haven't actually looked into the work that non-Austrian economists do.

I think this bears repeating... The public choice school effectively occupies the other half of the argument against government intervention. The Austrian school explains why government cannot manage the economy well because of lack of information, while the public choice school explains why government doesn't even have the incentives to govern well at all.

In addition, many of the mainstream critiques of market performance aren't wrong-headed. Markets do suffer from imperfections, and under libertarianism, its up to entrepreneurs to correct those imperfections. But you can't do that unless you acknowledge them first; sticking one's head in the sand doesn't help.

Donny with an A:

My non-libertarian professors have read Nozick, Locke, and Mill.

 

Not exactly our most sterling spokesmen. If that is all your professors have read, then they haven't even put a dent in the tip of the iceberg.

 

Donny with an A:

There are just a lot of questions that need to be answered before libertarianism can be considered a mature, coherent position.

 Perhaps they should read more than Nozick, Locke, and Mill. There is a vast libertarian literature on myriad issues, probably more than any one person could read in a lifetime.

 

Donny with an A:

I'd say you're wrong if you think that a non-libertarian philosopher is somehow incompetent or doesn't understand what libertarianism is.

Most of the ones I have met don't understand it. That's not to say that the're incompetent necessarily.

 

Donny with an A:

Well, the standard I use is whether I feel like my education has enabled me to pursue my long term objectives in a way that I probably wouldn've have been able to myself.  I mean, in the absence of state funding of education, it's possible that private universities would make education better, and so my standard is unfairly low.  But at the same time, state funding likely results in much greater incentive for smart people to become professors instead of something else, and allows for higher concentrations of the best professors in particular places (I haven't counted, but I'd guess that most of the top philosophy programs are public).  So it's very possible that at the University of Wisconsin, I'm able to get an education in philosophy that simply wouldn't exist without state funding, which would make my standard unfairly high.

 So I take it you are a cosnequentialist or a utilitarian rather than a natural rights libertarian. These are all primarily consequentialist reasons I see you giving for state-run public education. They seem to be primarily what you think would benefit you the most, or what you think would benefit society the most. Should your preferences be imposed on others? Would it really be such a bad thing if most of the people who teach and do philosophy (and any number of other social science/humanities disciplines) couldn't find a job in this field on a free market? A lot of it is drivel anyway. Is the current estimation of what counts as a "top philosophy program" really all it's cracked up to be? Might it not be a product of our current statist-bureaucratic-corporatist society, one we would be better off without? Should we be forced to subsidize your education in one of these "top programs" that we consider to be highly overrated?

 

Donny:

I'd suggest that you stop parroting what you've heard others say about different schools of economic thought if you haven't actually looked into the work that non-Austrian economists do.

My favourite political economists/moral philosophers are Bastiat, Spencer and de Molinari - have you read them ? None of these names sound very Austrian...I suggest you stop parroting propaganda that supports a criminal activity like 'public education'.

Grant:

I think this bears repeating... The public choice school effectively occupies the other half of the argument against government intervention.

Well, the whole body of classical liberal doctrine is an argument against government.

Juan:

Well, the whole body of classical liberal doctrine is an argument against government.

Classical liberalism also isn't a science. Economics tries to be one, even if it fails sometimes.

Also, I don't see where Danny has supported public education in his posts. 

Donny:

Well sure, it[the state] can provide quality education. I'd seriously doubt that it provides it efficiently, but as far as the product itself goes, I'm pretty satisfied.

Donny:

Actually, I haven't read Gatto's work. But I was talking about university level education when I said I thought the state was doing a pretty good job;

Donny:

Again, the claim that a university education is useful and of high quality doesn't imply anything about whether it should be publicly provided

Donny:

But at the same time, state funding likely results in much greater incentive for smart people to become professors instead of something else, and allows for higher concentrations of the best professors in particular places (I haven't counted, but I'd guess that most of the top philosophy programs are public).

So public education is fine, although perhaps a bit expensive.

Grant:

Any time one person can describe a means of organizing society which he himself understands in full, you can surely bet that it would be a terrific disaster.

This line of reasoning indicts your own position. Who is it that assumes they can fully comprehend the market and determine what needs to be produced and consumed? It's the socialist. It is the socialist that has this 'fatal vision' (see Thomas Sowell). The socialists are the social engineers, engineering 'terrific disasters."

F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society” http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=92&layout=html :

"The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate “given” resources—if “given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these “data.” It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality."

-end quote

Talented persons existing within imperfect systems means very little. Also. it quite anecdotal. Your sample is of one that is biased toward the socialist system. These talented professors are beneficiaries of the philosophy you're espousing AT THE EXPENSE OF the severally coerced. It's like committing armed robbery and then proving the good of it by showing how it benefited the robber.

Good genetics can thrive in adverse environments, but even bad genetics can thrive in favorable ones.

Donny with an A:

But at the same time, state funding likely results in much greater incentive for smart people to become professors instead of something else, and allows for higher concentrations of the best professors in particular places (I haven't counted, but I'd guess that most of the top philosophy programs are public).  So it's very possible that at the University of Wisconsin, I'm able to get an education in philosophy that simply wouldn't exist without state funding, which would make my standard unfairly high.

Those would-be-professors would be richer if the government does not confiscate from people to provide education. They can use that extra money to go to private universities and fund their own research instead. Private universities can compete against each other to fund scientists.

State funding for artificial intelligence is a failure in all countries and wasted of billions of dollars. Research scientists would be selfish and get state funds for doing some very trivial research. Since the government does not know what their scientists are doing, it is easy for them to cheat. The research scientists are selected by the government, not by other scientists. Imagine our government choosing an economist to control our central bank. It would be a failure because our government does not know anything about economics so they choosed a Keynesian economist. The government must know everything about and related to philosophy in order to efficiently fund a philosopher. You cannot effectively fund anything without knowing everything.

Juan:

So public education is fine, although perhaps a bit expensive.

I don't see any claims of the desirability of state education there, just comments on its result to the consumer (student). I don't doubt that the state can, in theory, produce good education. I think it will tend not to, but mostly tend to produce extremely inefficient education because it cannot economize.

pairunoyd:

This line of reasoning indicts your own position.

 

Yes, I know, I've read Hayek...

 Sheesh...okay, I'll start from the top.

Jimbojr, libertarianism is certainly rooted in classical liberalism, but most of its competitors within the world of political philosophy are also rooted in liberalism.  The contractualist movement which has probably played the biggest role in recent academic discussion was set into motion by John Rawls, who was unquestionably a liberal himself.  Even egalitarianism and socialism find their roots in the liberal tradition; they just come down in different places on certain issues.  What's important to see is that liberalism is about freedom.  Socialists and egalitarians believe that freedom is fostered by certain institutions and patterns which prevent unjust inequality, exploitation, wage slavery, and alienation.  Contractualist liberals also believe that freedom is critically important, but believe that certain limits on freedom make sense and are just in the name of fostering a society that's better than the state of nature.  Libertarians focus on freedom as well, but tend to feel like less limitation is more desirable, either because of people's natural right to not be interfered with when they aren't harming anyone, or because a very broad freedom would bring about the best kind of society.

Questions facing libertarians span over a wide range of issues, including abortion and children's rights, the justice of doing what is necessary to survive, the proper reaction to conflict and rights infringements, the nature and stringency of property rights, justice in appropriation and dispossession, the nature of the right to self defense, the justice of paternalistic restraint, the justification (if any) for a state or state-like entity, whether there is really no just way to provide for those in critical need through coercion of any form, whether a social order with no state-like governance would produce better results, the rights of future generations, the rights of dead people, the justice of harming animals, etc.  (The list surely goes much longer, but you get the point).  I don't mean to suggest that libertarians can't provide answers to these questions, but I will say that those answers aren't generally decisive, and people who disagree often have good reasons for their views.

Grant, I don't pretend that social changes can be orchestrated by academics.  The role of the professional philosopher is to explore the ideas that people are relying on, in order to see what kinds of implications they have, and whether there are other views which are equally or more plausible.  The average libertarian certainly won't read everything that academics write about the things that matter to her.  But I think it's important that as people start looking for a new way to organize society, there should be an attempt to understand the nature of the ideas that underpin the changes.  If there are serious problems, or areas in need of work, it's likely that philosophers would be among the best suited for untangling them coherently (just look at the messy and ad hoc evolution of the common law in comparison to the course of philosophical discourse).

You make an interesting point when you say that libertarianism might be aided by its vagueness.  But I think that's true from a rhetorical standpoint only.  The "sustainable" movement also relies on vague foundations, and that has helped it survive through changes in message, direction, and focus.  But just like people who advocate "sustainable practices" don't actually understand the nature of what they're talking about (because they're not actually talking about anything in particular), it's not very comforting to think that libertarians are relying on vague half-notions rather than a coherent philosophical paradigm.  Maybe that's just the academic in me talking, but if libertarianism can't actually be spelled out without destroying it, then I don't want to be a libertarian.

Geoffery, at no point did I, in this entire thread, say that the state should run education.  I said that the fact that my education was paid for in part by the government doesn't entail that it is of low quality, and in fact, state funding could potentially have made it a lot better than it would have otherwise been.  The former is a normative statement, while the latter is a positive one.  I really don't see what's so difficult about the distinction.  Take this illustration: America's air force has some really great fighter jets.  In the absence of public funding, there probably wouldn't be as many fighter jets of the level of sophistication as those currently populating USAF hangers around the world.  So if you wanted to fly a really great fighter jet, and the Air Force was willing to let you fly one of theirs, you'd probably get to fly a better fighter jet than you ever would have been able to in the absence of government funding.  And it's probably also true that more people would get to fly fighter jets given Air Force subsidization than would ever have been able to otherwise.  That doesn't mean that it's a good thing that the Air Force has a whole lot of fighter jets, or that it steals money from people to pay for them.  It just means that if you wanted to fly a really great fighter jet, government subsidy wouldn't likely result in you flying a worse fighter jet.  Okay?

As for the rest of your post, I'm really not sure how to respond.  I was referring to Locke, Mill, and Nozick as being the most basic proponents of libertarian ideas, who almost everyone has read and studied.  I'm not sure exactly who these more "sterling" proponents are, but I really hope you don't say Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, Block, Hoppe, etc.  It would really hurt me inside.

Juan, if you honestly think that Austrian economics is limited to people from Austria, then I'm really just not sure what to say to you.  And if you really believe that classical liberalism was aimed at disputing the justice of government in general, then you'd better get back to those books.

As for the posts you referenced in support of your assertion that I've been defending government provision of education...  Compare the first quotation to the following statement: "Sure, Army-trained Green Berets are good killers.  Perhaps a private company could have trained them more cheaply, but the soldiers themselves still perform the job that's asked of them pretty well."  Compare the second quotation to the following statement: "I'm not sure that regular army training produces very good soldiers; it seems like other methods could produce much better results.  However, I do think that the Green Berets are very well trained."  Compare the third quotation to the following statement: "The statement that Green Berets are well trained doesn't imply that we ought to be training Green Berets, or that the state ought to be paying for it."  Compare the fourth quotation to the following statement: "The fact that the army offers funding for Green Beret training and employment probably leads a lot more people to decide to become Green Berets than there would have otherwise been, and once they're trained, state funding of jobs for Green Berets as soldiers likely brings about the consequence that Green Beret-caliber soldiers are concentrated in certain places, rather than spread out more evenly among security companies and the like.  Accordingly, it might be possible that there are individual squads of soldiers that are better in a state-funded scenario than there would be anywhere in a purely private scenario."   How does any of that reflect me holding an opinion that Green Berets should be trained by the state, and that it's perfectly acceptable that the state tax people to do that?

Libertarian, the state doesn't hire individual professors.  Universities and philosophy departments do.  If you're going to talk about what would happen if the government didn't interfere, I'd suggest that you look into what does happen now that the government does.  I assure you that it results in a lot more philosophers being employed, and much higher wages than would prevail if the same number of philosophers were competing for purely private funds.