I know I’ve made reference to what I call “roadblock” arguments in the context of the rhetoric of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style before, but I don’t recall doing a proper storm on them, at least recently. How about that this week?
I discuss “fake (distributional) indifference” often enough, which involves conceits like economists ostensibly as a matter of proper professional conduct applying neoclassical welfare economic arguments to reality without accounting for relevant differences between reality and the Fairy Land. Just to clarify, the Fairy Land here is the Fairy Land of Economic Theory, an odd place in which interpersonal ethics have been banished, the inhabitants are not real people but cyphers who have preferences over only a restricted range of issues, have perfect information, are perfectly rational. “Roadblock arguments” use the fact any set of interpersonal ethics will theoretically have some associated “economically efficient,” that is, “Pareto optimal” outcome, to propose one should go to any Pareto optimal outcome, or if at one maintain it, then go to whichever such outcome one prefers. The “roadblock” refers to the arbitrary restriction of getting to some ethically irrelevant Pareto optimal outcome first, which may be theoretically impossible except as an approximation of some undefined degree, and then going to another in only particular, difficult, impossible ways. Roadblock arguments have similar effect to fake indifference because one can never be at a close enough approximation to a Pareto optimal outcome of a theoretical purely competitive market to consider pursuing another and if close enough, one finds it difficult to move from it.
There is nothing in real neoclassical welfare economics to support roadblock arguments. Others are not closer to their preferred Pareto optimal outcome if they go to any other random Pareto optimal outcome rather than a non-Pareto optimal outcome that better reflects those ethics. Not is it easier, more practical or feasible, less costly to go from one Pareto optimal outcome to another, never going through a non-Pareto optimal outcome. Indeed, given typically expansive definitions of the markets involved, it’s not entirely clear that’s logically possible. In ethical arguments relating to the Fairy Land, one may take one’s little pen and change “initial endowments,” which allows one to arrive at any Pareto optimal outcome one likes. There is no counterpart in reality. Anything one does in reality will have certain effects. Specifically, anything one does may be cast as interfering with whatever market is producing the Pareto optimal outcome, so changing anything to go to another without leaving Pareto optimality may be basically cast as logically impossible. Even if one concedes that let’s say taxes or other (re)distributional policy are consistent with a “free market” (an approximation of a perfectly competitive market?) meant to generate a Pareto optimal outcome, they’re not necessarily the easiest or least costly approach to change. Those issues seem to depend on the form the relevant interpersonal ethics take. Are they about people one can identify, verify, and so on? Or also about contexts, particular goods, say housing, food, education? What policies do voters think makes sense, support? How costly are they to implement? Again, there’s no justification in real neoclassical welfare economics to throw up random roadblocks to addressing equity concerns. If others prefer some non-Pareto optimal outcome to some Pareto-optimal one based on interpersonal ethics, economists have no business trying to block them.
Do typically philosophically clueless economists not understand the issues associated with their own peculiar, idiosyncratic ethical half-theory? Or do they understand them but cynically try to use that theory rhetorically to mislead and manipulate others? I don't know. Some of both? You tell me. Don’t know what any of that means? Never heard of “economic efficiency” or “Pareto optimality” or maybe even models of “perfectly competitive” markets? Well, then I suppose one is in no fit state to address the rhetoric of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style. Maybe if one resolutely ignores it others will too? Or maybe one might take a few moments to learn enough about the normative argument in neoclassical welfare economics to make sense of the rhetoric of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style and be able to address it?
