ȃȁȇ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophybehavior tended to serve or subvert social cooperation and so serve or sub-
vert happiness. Much scope exists for positive—objective—investigation
into the likely consequences of various kinds and precepts of behavior,
and the scope for purely subjective ethical judgments is correspondingly
narrow.
Mises, says Rothbard, was willing to make only one value judgment:
“he joined the majority of the people in favoring their common peace,
prosperity, and abundance”; he endorsed “the desirability of fulfilling the
subjectively desired goals of the bulk of the populace” (p.ȀǿȄ). Actually,
Mises’s fundamental value judgment, instead of simply favoring whatever
a majority wanted or thought it wanted, favored the actual happiness of
people in general. Nevertheless, Rothbard poses a case in which the great
majority wants to murder the redheads. “How could Mises rebut this pro-
posed policy either as a praxeologist or as a utilitarian liberal? I submit that
he could not do so”ȁ(p.Ȁǿȇ). Or someone might “desire to see an innocent
person suffer.... Yet a utilitarian must hold that [such preferences], fully
as much as the most innocuous or altruistic preferences, must be included
in the quantitative reckoning” (ȀȈȇȁ, p.ȁȀȂn.Ȅ).
Who says so? Mises supposedly “cannotquarrel with the ethical nature
of [people’s] chosen goals, for, as a utilitarian, he must confine himself to
theonevalue judgment that he favors the majority achieving their chosen
goals” (ȀȈȇȁ, p.ȁȀǿ). (Rothbard makes sweeping references to Mises; but
instead of dealing with his actual statements, he criticizes what Mises, as
a utilitarian, supposedly must believe.) Now, what even half-way sophis-
ticated utilitarian maintains that preferences and attitudes and character
traits must be immune from appraisal? Mises, to my knowledge, never
said any such thing.
A rules or indirect utilitarianism is indeed concerned with how atti-
tudes and even character traits, so far as they are amenable to encourage-
ment or discouragement, tend to affect the health of a society and so the
happiness of its members (on John Stuart Mill’s indirect utilitarianism, see
GrayȀȈȇȂ). For fear of adverse side-effects and for other reasons, a utili-
tarian does not want to enlist the state’s coercive powers in suppressing all
unfortunate preferences and attitudes and traits; but this in no way means
that he considers all of them equally worthy of respect and equally entitled
to influence public policy. Neither as a utilitarian nor as a libertarian must
ȁĻis example of the redheads turns up repeatedly in Rothbard’s writings against util-
itarianism.