Let’s discuss two types of indifference or neutrality that sometimes get muddled, one supposes not entirely by accident, in anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style and neoclassical welfare economics.
First, we have indifference or neutrality with respect to resolving interpersonal conflicts of preferences. This is the indifference or neutrality relevant to real neoclassical welfare economics and is based on way “utility” is defined only in terms of a given individual's preference ranks.
Second, we have indifference or neutrality defined as accepting, defending, supporting, favoring, defaulting to whatever resolution of interpersonal conflicts of preferences is implied by current laws, and thus government, so a sort of neutrality to the ethical basis of those laws. That latter sort of indifference or neutrality is the one often featured in dodgy normative arguments from anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style.
Note that these two expressions of indifference or neutrality are not equivalent. If one accepts, supports, promotes, favors, defaults to existing resolutions of interpersonal conflicts of preferences due to indifference or neutrality with respect to the ethical basis of the resolution, one is no longer indifferent or neutral with respect to resolving those conflicts. I generally call the version or form of indifference inappropriate to real welfare economics that often features in normative arguments from bad economics in the conservative style as “fake indifference.” It’s not literally “fake,” of course. It’s one form of indifference, just not the form relevant to neoclassical welfare economics. When the term “indifference” is equivocated upon in bad economics in the conservative stye it becomes “fake” relative to the relevant form. It’s the sort of false, misleading rhetoric one associates with conservative discourse in general. It’s basically a rhetorical way for bad economists to support exogenous existing laws relating to the definition, distribution, use of economic power in markets without theoretical justification.
Now of course it would be perfectly acceptable for conservative economists to declare themselves supporters of the status quo, explicitly add a proposition to that effect, unrelated to “utility,” to the normative argument in neoclassical welfare economics. Normative or ethical argument is fine. What makes it objectionable, as with the rest of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style, is that it’s not done explicitly, openly, honestly. It’s done in a clever, indirect way obviously meant to deflect consideration, evaluation, criticism, debate. It’s intellectually dishonest. But as I’ve noted before, intellectual honesty is not what conservatives are about, even conservatives in academia who have a professional and social responsibility in that area. Conservatives are sly tricksters, grifters, rhetoricians; they’re not serious or sincere interlocutors.
