I was recently asked about my opinion on various schools of Political Philosophy (vg. classical liberalism, neoliberalism and Ayn Rand's Objectivism). I refused to engage with any of them in detail, because my position is that there is no room for different schools of “Political Philosophy”. Ethics and Science (mainly Social Science) are enough to completely determine the best public action.
To develop this idea, I am going to divide the field of political science in three layers: i) Social Welfare definition: what is the ethical objective for political choice, ii) Policy Making: how Science (mainly Social Science) and Ethics combine to generate optimal policies, and iii) Institutional Design: which institutional mechanisms consistently generate the best flow of policies.
Although at individual level there is a trade-off between our personal preferences and the general interest, when we talk about “political philosophy”, we have to abstract (in the Rawlsian way) from our particular interests: the legislator is expected to impartially represent the demos. The formal translation of that demand requires building a social utility function that describes the collective preferences for each possible "state of the world". This function must be individualistic and impartial. Individualism means that collective well-being is the aggregation of individual well-being, and impartiality means equally aggregating the well-being of the equals (of course, “moral weights” that distinguish those who are substantially different are part of the utilitarian framework).
Once the social objectives have been established (what we “want”), we need to know what can be done. We call the descriptive map of reality “Science”. It is Science that allows the legislator to distinguish on which variables he can act (on legislative power as a Nash equilibrium focal point, see “Republic of Beliefs”), and what are the consequences of any complete set of policies. Given the control variables, the social utility function, and the real constraints, the selection of optimal policies can be abstracted as a constrained optimization problem (with its Lagrangian, or more precisely its Karush -Kuhn-Tucker conditions).
If the reader is the advisor of an absolute monarch who has no other objectives than the well-being of the governed, once the optimal policies portfolio has been selected, her work is completed.
If the reader rather thinks that this kind of ruler is impossible (or at least that after Antoninus Pius no other will be ever found), then political philosophy needs a constitutional meta layer over the object level policy layer. Institutional design finds the voting/elite selection mechanisms that achieve the flow of policies closer to be optimal. The construction of this kind of institutional system is the object of the so-called “Mechanism Design”.
In the specific area of the production and distribution of baskets of private consumption goods, the complete process of optimal institutional design is tractable, and the canonical result is that a competitive market with lump-sum income transfers is capable of optimizing well-being for all possible degrees of inequality aversion (the so-called two theorems of welfare economics). In politics, the state spaces are more difficult to define (there are not nice continuity and smoothness properties), and therefore such definitive results are not available (the classical result is the Arrow Impossibility Theorem, that implies that the “best possible” political system cannot be as perfect as market plus redistribution is in Economics).
Let’s summarize now: different sentient beings with preferences on states of the world share a common world and interfere each other’s pursuit of happiness. That leads to conflicts of interest. To provide the algorithmic system that allows for the maximum level of collective welfare is the “political problem”. Rights or property are useful social devices, but there is nothing fundamental about them. They shall be justified (by the philosopher and the economist) before they are used as a justification (by the jurist). Jesus and Rabbi Ishmael taught us that Sabbath is for man, and that principle invites us to trace all moral obligation to its root, which is the welfare of some conscious beings.
Of course, in the real world there is some legitimate room for disagreement about the interpersonal comparison of utility (although I am delighted to have Raj Chetty’s estimate on the relationship between the marginal utility of consumption and the level of income), and a much wider margin of legitimate discrepancy on the objective causal laws describing the dynamics of human society.
Cause-effect relationships in the social realm (a complex adaptive system in which we, the aspiring policymakers, are also embedded) are very difficult to discover or even validate, and it is inevitable that in the absence of clear cut scientific knowledge, personal assessments and emotional manipulation influence the political sphere. But these discrepancies, sometimes legitimate and often unavoidable, do not deserve to be considered philosophical.
The technocratic and post-political vision has a long tradition. The framers of the United States Constitution had an openly mechanical idea of the State (“checks and balances”, “A Government of Laws, not of Men”). David Ricardo bought his seat in the House of Commons to defend optimal policy beyond party or class allegiances. That same line of liberalism encouraged the campaigns to reject the Corn Laws. However, to my knowledge, among technocratic-individualist movements, Effective Altruism is the most self-aware due to its direct relation with utilitarianism and modern (epistemic conscientious) rationalism.
[Posted on Effective Altruism Forum, Progress Forum and Less Wrong]
I agree that to the extent that EA engages in policy evaluation or political/economic evaluation more generally, it should use a sentient-experience maximization framework, while discarding the labels of particular political theories, in the way that you described. And I think that so far every discussion I've seen of those matters in EA follows that framework, which is great.
With regard to specific arguments about post-politics:
I thought you made a strong case for post-politics in general, but arguing that a specific economic strategy is the best possible beyond all doubt is much more difficult to defend, and besides, does not seem very post-political. In general, a post-political person might argue for any economic strategy under the sun as optimal for sentient beings, though of course some arguments will be stronger than others.
Also, regardless of the systems they believe to be optimal, post-political people should be sure to entertain the possibility that they, others, or a given group or polity are actually too post-political--not having the optimal amount or type of cultural orthodoxy/dogma and being unwilling to address that issue.
This may come into play when an individual or group's conviction in rights and other deontological tools becomes too weak, or the deontological rules and norms they follow are worse than competing options.
After all, an orthodoxy or political culture beyond post-politics is necessary for "tie-breaking" or producing decisions in situations where calculation is inconclusive. Some political culture beyond post-politics will inevitably sway people in such situations, and it is worth making sure that that political culture is a good one.
An individual post-political thinker therefore may embrace advocacy of a certain political culture because they think it is so valuable and under-utilized that advocating for it is a more efficient use of their resources than advocating for post-politics.
Generally I would say most people and institutions could stand to be more post-political, but I am not sure whether post-politics is currently a better advocacy target than other cultural/political movements.
If one was to advocate for such a movement, I'd guess the best way would be to create a political forum based on those principles and try to attract the people who like participating in political forums. Then the goal would be to make sure the discourse is focused on doing the most good for the most people, with rigorous evidence-based breakdowns for particular policies. This might be a decent use of time given that this post-political approach could improve thousands of people's decisions as they relate to systems change.
If something like this was created, I would recommend adding a system for users to catalogue, quantify, and compare their political positions, including their degree of confidence in each position. The capability to quickly and easily compare political positions between individuals seems like a very fast way to advance the accuracy of individuals' beliefs, especially in a community dedicated to strong beliefs lightly held and finding the policies that do the most good.
First of all thank you for your comment. What I describe here is not about Effective Altruism, but about utilitarianism. And it is more about how to rule a country that about how to allocate charitable funds.
In my view this is the only possible political framework for an utilitarian, but disagreements on interpersonal utility comparisons, and in “Science” can lead to substantial differences on optimal policies that can escalate into differences on the optimal decision making procedures.
This is quite theoretical, but in my view this is the way to think about the “general interest” and the Government.
Right, I was just looking for some ways to apply it to EA. I figured you were recommending that post-political-ness become a more explicit part of EA or more frequently used by EAs in their public or private evaluation of policy.
I agree this sort of loose framework of sentence maxing should be used by EAs when evaluating policy interventions, and it seems to be used, so I agree it should continue. And then on top of that, if someone EA-aligned wanted a potentially high-impact way to spend time advocating for post-political views, I would recommend the forum project.
When you say this is the only possible political framework for a utilitarian--if you're referring to sentience maxing with whatever tools available, I agree. If you're saying utilitarians should ignore the tools of political culture entirely and their instrumental uses, including supporting the rights and other deontological rules that utilitarians sometimes find justified, then I would disagree for the reasons stated.
For example, assuming democracy is the most effective government form, I would want some amount of pro-democracy emotional content in K-12 schools and a broader social penalty for advancing anti-democratic ideas like reducing voter eligibility/access, in order to safeguard it against short-term cultural shifts and meddling. I think hard-coding things that we are pretty sure are good or bad into culture is wise, so that we avoid having to rehash the same issues generation to generation. In this case "dogma" is basically just "accepting a moral conviction that has been baked into your culture through historical experience," which is often quite useful.
If you're saying that the economic system you outlined (which if I understand correctly is limited to a private market and wealth transfers, implying no public goods) is the only defensible one, then that's also a separate debate we could have. I'm not sure if this is what you're referring to when you say this is the only possible political framework.
Oh, of course en the real world, political action is unfortunately based on expectations manipulation, mood affiliation, and any utilitarian shall understand the logic of activism.
But it is important to have an idea of what we want, and in the difference between value and fact, and between policy and institutional mechanism.
This kind of idealization is in my view for utilitarians what “class struggle” is for marxists, or “property” is for libertarians.
Unlike them, our ideal construction is truly fundamental.
An interesting side effect is that “deontology” can be utilitarian: often objective rules are the best device to obtain maximum welfare.
In fact, good rules are the main product a good utilitarian framework!
Agreed on all counts.
Well, of course, “my opinion” is not really mine. This is textbook political economy , I hope well summarized…