Talk:The Machinery of Freedom
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This article reads like a publisher's blurb. It needs to be edited for NPOV by someone who's read the book. Thalia/Karen 20:44, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)
After having been edited by Finlay McWalter, POV looks fine to me now, although it would be nice if someone who's read it would expand the article. Thalia/Karen 22:09, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)
This happens to be my favorite book and I've read it about 3 times. What specifically do you think needs to be added?Atripodi 09:59, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Utilitarian?
Hmm... in anarcho-capitalism Friedman is a consequentialist, and now suddenly he "employs" utilitarianism. This suggests, even if it doesn't quit state, that he is a utilitarian. This is what I wrote on the other talk page:
- I don't have The Machinery of Freedom on hand right now, but I'm pretty sure there is a passage where David D. Friedman not only very explicitly denies being a consequentalist, but in fact expresses his amusement about the idea. Instead, he puts up philosophical arguments to show that both naïve consequentialism and naïve deontological/natural-rights ethics can lead to absurdities when taken to their logical extremes. In general, Friedman seems not to worry about this too much. Unlike staunch everything-from-first-principle rationalists like Rothbard, but notably very much in the spirit of Popper and Hayek, he doesn't seem particularly committed to an all-ecompassing grand axiomatic System Of Ethics And Law, but prefers to show how his ideas make sense under a variety of reasonable assumptions, and analyze them more from the perspective of a social scientist than that of a moral philosopher. I think this derives from a relative lack of interest in actual politics. Friedman does not seem to be worried that having subtler ideas or a more mess-with-your-mind writing style would make it harder to attract a political following than a more Randian "I'm always right and this is how the world works" style.
Consequentialism "poops out" when it needs to justify the criterion for judging consequences, and deontology often gets eerily consequentialist again when the philosopher almost inevitably attempts to justify his/her axiomatic rights. I have the impression that Friedman understands this mess pretty well, and just refuses to panic about it very hard. This may throw off people who are used to more rigid modes of thought, but it does not mean that Friedman is a shallow or confused thinker; to the contrary. It just means that he is willing to make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.Sjeng 21:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Friedman states that as far as economics goes he is a consequentialist. That is, his goal in that capacity is to find out how the most wealth for the most people can be procured. He feels these pragmatic arguments to have more rhetorical appeal and sees a lot of holes in the Rothbardian natural rights argument. This does not mean that he is an ethical consequentialist- see the chapter on GK Chesterton for more on his ethical views, which he describes as "Catholicism without God". I don't think his ethics are particularly unique or important within the context of his work (which may be unique of itself for an an-cap writer). "Social scientist rather than moral philosopher" sounds correct to me too. He approaches politics as a social planner would, utilizing his gift for thought experiments and abstract thinking, but comes to a solution that rejects social planning entirely. This led Rothbard to call him a "weak anarchist", one who doesn't hate the state on principle, but happens to think it doesn't work very well. I don't think anyone can believe that the complete inviability of government to be coincidental (not based on human nature) and I think Friedman agrees. He just recognizes his own limitations and the limitations of the field of ethics well enough not to breech the subject.Atripodi 06:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
