NEGATIVE:
Consequentialism Is
Mostly Imaginary
JASON KUZNICKI
I LOVE GOOD consequences, but I am against consequentialism.
Freiman writes that “economic and political freedom helps
us feed the hungry, heal the sick, and enrich the poor.” I agree. I
welcome these “fringe benefits” of liberty. I just don’t think they
lead to a workable ethical system.
Most consequentialists will say relieving suffering is good
because it makes people happier. And the good, they usually
add, is really just the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
But I find that happiness is not a reliable guide to judging what’s
right or wrong.
Morally good things can make people happier. But I have
often noticed that morally bad things can make people happier
too: A petty thief steals a tomato from a neighbor’s garden. The
neighbor thinks an animal ate it. The thief loves to steal, and the
neighbor is only mildly disappointed. Aggregate happiness has
increased, yet we find the thief ’s action despicable.
The mismatch between the emotions and the moral sense
gets worse as more people are involved. Sometimes a whole soci-
ety grows happier when someone behaves badly: The thief, clad
in a ski mask, makes a video of his act and posts it to YouTube.
Millions laugh, which they often do about milder forms of bad
behavior. The neighbor remains ignorant.
Again, how could a consequentialist object? One might turn
to rule utilitarianism, which holds that we should craft rules
of behavior that, if followed, would lead to the greatest good.
But this doesn’t solve the problem. Can’t I just say the rule is
“Respect property rights, except when breaking them is hilari-
ous and when copycats will be few”? What’s wrong with that? If
we only value happiness, then I’m afraid it has to stand.
Or consider Prohibition. It seemed to make people happier
at the time; after all, they voted for it through their represen-
tatives after a long period of deliberation. A consequentialist
might want to say that the pains imposed on the opponents were
weightier. But that assertion would require an ad hoc rejiggering
of our beliefs about the emotional states of millions of people,
simply to make the math work out.
A more sophisticated consequentialist might invoke the sum,
suitably discounted, of a whole set of pleasures and pains felt
across the lifetime of the law, however long that may be. To
which I’d say: Good luck with that. And can’t I always reply that
repeal would make the prohibitionists sufficiently sad that we
shouldn’t do it?
As Christopher Hitchens used to say, that which is asserted
without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Even
within my own mind—that is, in the territory I know the best—
I’m still not always sure I can do the necessary calculations for
what will make me happiest. The problem looks less and less like
actual math the longer we look at it. If I’m often unsure about
how to maximize my own utility, how can I do the same for an
entire society?
Herbert Spencer wrote of utilitarianism that “we find our-
selves involved in complicated estimates of pleasures and pains,
to the obvious peril of our conclusions...trustworthy inferences
are attainable in but a minority of cases.” And Hayek wrote
that utilitarians “failed to take seriously this crucial fact of our
necessary ignorance...and...have proposed a theory which pre-
supposes a knowledge of the particular effects of our individual
actions.” Yet almost no such knowledge is possible.
A deontologist avoids these problems by starting elsewhere.
As Robert Nozick wrote, “individuals are ends and not merely
means; they may not be sacrificed or used for the achieving of
other ends without their consent.” Respect for others means we
must refrain from treating people as tools for our use.
We may therefore ethically constrain even the pursuit of hap-
piness when someone engaged in it starts using others merely as
a means to an end. That’s why the coercive dentist in Freiman’s
example behaved wrongly, and it’s also why the coercive dentist
who worked without anesthesia was even worse: Of course it
shows greater disrespect to people when, keeping other things
exactly equal, you also gratuitously inflict pain on them against
their will.
Nozick also believed that “no moral balancing act can take
place among us; there is no moral outweighing of one of our
lives by others so as to lead to a greater overall social good.” I
agree with this view. It is not merely that the math is too hard.
It’s that there is something wrong about undertaking that math
in pursuit of a “social good” that does not exist. What makes our
actions good or bad is not their effects, but whether in acting we
abide by our duties to others—including above all a presump-
tive duty to let them pursue their happiness as they think best.
I believe that a society based on individual liberty and prop-
erty ownership is the most likely one to curb all of the worst
aspects of treating people as tools. A person with socially recog-
nized individual rights and with the refuge of private property
is very difficult to use as a tool. We who think that people have
an inherent dignity and moral worth should band together and
form this type of society, or else join one that already exists.
As a matter of law, we may also prohibit many, though clearly
not all, violations of individual autonomy. (Even Nozick admit-
ted that prohibiting every violation would be impossible.) Pace
some objectors—including some libertarians—deontological22 OCTOBER 2018