Is the Market a Test of Truth and Beauty?

ȃȆȇ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophy

Rights theorists reject the approach that would take a stand on each

specific policy issue, such as deregulation of a particular industry or imposi-

tion of wage and price controls or government credit allocation, according

to the apparent merits of the individual case; they reject narrowly focused

cost-benefit calculations. Instead of being framed by case-by-case expedi-

ency, policy should conform to persons’ rights.

And those rights should not be defended on a utilitarian basis, for

doing so supposedly opens the door to all sorts of pragmatic demands

for government intervention. Ļe utilitarian, Rothbard complains (ȀȈȆȂ,

p.ȁȃ), will rarely adopt a principle as an absolute and consistent yardstick.

Instead, he regards it as a vague guideline or aspiration or tendency that

may well be overridden. Milton Friedman, for example, although devoted

to the free market as a general tendency, in practice allows many dam-

aging exceptions to freedom against state intervention (RothbardȀȈȆȂ,

p.ȁȃ). Utilitarianism—or rather, in my view, its exaggerated pragmatist

version—contrasts sharply with a pure doctrine of rights. Rights theorists

derive positions even on quite specific policy issues from a very few propo-

sitions taken as axiomatic.

Unfortunately, the door is open to interventionist demands anyway.

Libertarians cannot keep it closed by issuing methodological pronounce-

ments or by reporting their intuitions about endangered rights. A pure

rights position, untainted by utilitarian aspects, might serve for warding

off illegitimate or undesirable interventions if it enjoyed general accep-

tance. Although it might be convenient if a particular doctrine were true

and generally accepted, that convenience alone is no evidence, unfortu-

nately, that the doctrine is in fact true. To make the best of reality, which

often is inconvenient, we must face it as it is.

In reality, no doctrine will automatically protect us from bad inter-

ventions. Abuse of utilitarian arguments cannot be prevented by reject-

ing utilitarianismtout court. Instead, one must enter into discussion with

one’s pragmatist opponents, demonstrating how acting on an excessively

narrow utilitarianism violates rights as intelligibly conceived and convinc-

ingly defended and so impedes the pursuit of happiness.

ŞŕœŔŠş ōŚŐ ŢōŘšő ŖšŐœřőŚŠş

What I am rejecting is apurerights doctrine scornful of any utilitarian
underpinning. I accept a pro-rights doctrine, provided that propositions
about rights are recognized not as positive propositions of fact and logic