Apologies for the light-to-non-existent posting during the holiday season. Life gets in the way of all good things.
I was struck by this post from Prof. Bourdeaux, on the cost-free signaling aspects of polls and elections, and how this relates to an ongoing argument in our comments on the rationality or credibility of the electorate. Cost-free signaling should be discounted heavily; as Prof. Hanson might say, it’s an argument for ‘ought’ divorced from ‘is’.
One of the biggest reasons to advocate for market-processes and individual responsibility is the knowledge problem. We reference it in this blog’s subtitle, but it has deep epistemological implications that we glance over. Since there’s often no clear consensus on ‘is’, principled consensus on ‘ought’ is much harder to form. Instead we get political wrangling like health-care, where the argument is over who gets what, not either ‘is’ or ‘ought’.
The Austrians made the point that markets contain significant truth-determining mechanisms, and that the subjective value of a good or service was essentially a consensus, not intrinsic. Otherwise, how could we explain radical price drops like this?
When I was a philosophy student, we talked endlessly and circularly about the nature of reality, about the limits of perception, and how that should shape a consensual view of existence. Things like colors are social constructs, since we can never experience something through another set of eyes. But it’s wrong to take the next step and say that all reality is consensual.
This goes towards my central objection to centralist/liberal/neocon ideology; that we can arbitrarily decree ‘is’ from some discreet principle or emotion, and dictate ‘ought’ in politics. To put it differently, freedom and markets determine ‘ought’ through accurate and efficient signaling, and in turn tell us much about what ‘is’.
Relevant:
Tom W. Bell’s Graduated Consent Theory
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=tom_bell
Is there a reason he calls it “consent” vs “unconsent”? Wouldn’t “dissent” be appropriate? Philosophers and their damn made-up terms. Kind of like how the new term in the OED is “unfriend” to remove a facebook friend, but logically/gramitcally it should be ‘defriend’. I befriend you, I defriend you.