It’s just getting comical now, but I thought of yet another nice way to explain the rhetorical technique of fake distributional indifference in bad economics in the conservative style. I know I just did two versions, but maybe I can do one more before I move on? Again, sorry to keep banging on about this one thing, but to me it’s a significant thing, rarely acknowledged, that creates a lot of confusion and conflict. It seems worthwhile to try to find ways to explain it different people may have find intuitively obvious.
Imagine, counterfactually, that neoclassical welfare economics demonstrated every (economically) “efficient” (defined with respect to “utility”) outcome was superior to every (economically) inefficient outcome, under the normative inputs endogenous to that theory. (And to simplify matters, let’s say, again counterfactually, there are no other differences between the stylized word of neoclassical welfare economics and reality relevant to applying the normative argument developed in and for the world of neoclassical welfare economics to reality.) That would mean someone working strictly within the framework of neoclassical welfare economics and applying it to reality could suggest always moving to any economically efficient outcome, although choosing the overall ethical optimum from among such outcomes would be exogenous.
Now contrast that case to the factual case in which neoclassical welfare economics demonstrates merely that particular (economically) “efficient” outcomes are normatively superior to particular (economically) inefficient outcomes under the endogenous normative inputs to that theory. In a realistic context, what could one working strictly within the normative framework of neoclassical welfare economics be able to suggest in that case? The same as before? The change is irrelevant? Again, we should just get to any economically efficient outcome? That’s odd.
It’s odd because it’s incorrect. It’s an expression of the rhetorical technique of fake distributional indifference from bad economics in the conservative style. Obviously, what one can say under the new conditions is different from what one could say before. In a realistic context, one working only with the normative inputs endogenous to neoclassical welfare economics would be unable to offer up any generalized policy prescription to move toward economically efficient outcomes. Why? Distributional indifference, of course. Any possible (economically) efficient outcome to which we might move will have (economically) inefficient outcomes to which one operating only under the normative inputs in neoclassical welfare economics will be, or anyway should be, indifferent. That fact we can show any possible (economically) efficient outcome to which we might move is superior under the normative argument in neoclassical welfare economics to some (economically) inefficient outcomes is not enough to sustain the former general policy prescription.
Correctly applying neoclassical welfare economics under realistic conditions implies indifference to (economic) efficiency unless one is also expressing exogenous normative or ethical inputs serving to eliminate distributional indifference. The rhetorical technique of fake distributional indifference in bad economics in the conservative style consists of purveyors of bad economics, often economists, supplying the requisite exogenous normative or ethical inputs themselves, but not identifying or evaluating them. That can easily lead to anti-democracy sentiment, as the ignorant view politicians responding to the normative or ethical views of voters to be “interfering” with the ostensibly more correct and well developed ethics of purveyors of bad economics in the conservative style.
Saying the exogenous normative decisions have already been delivered via existing laws relating to markets and the definition, distribution, and use of economic power, and can therefore be treated as givens for purposes of applied neoclassical welfare economics, is disingenuous. The presence and status of those exogenous normative inputs are not typically discussed in bad economics in the conservative style, and the issue of whether voters operating through democratic government should revisit, revise, amend, modify those inputs is quite often, indeed typically, the issue at hand. The normative or ethical proposition current democratic government should not revisit, revise, amend, modify the decisions of past democratic government is in some sense just as exogenous and anti-democratic as the proposition some technocrat acting as ethical arbiter should decide those issues.
Everyone, including economists, should fight bad economics in the conservative style because of the close association of that essentially rhetorical and misleading intellectual artifact with the rise of anti-democracy sentiment in the USA and elsewhere. Conservative economic ideology, policy, and anti-democracy sentiment are not simply the result of applying the few, relatively uncontroversial normative inputs of the ethical half-theory of neoclassical welfare economics to reality.
