Re: Welfare and scientific ethics

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In a message dated 11/2/99 kwilde@magi.com writes:

> There is no doubt that “general welfare” is an ethical concept...

If I may be permitted to try to boil down your comments on this point, I 
think you are offering the caveat that in considering macroeconomic 
indicators we should not be misled into thinking these are synonymous with 
general welfare (the term I would use is "the public good," but that could be 
confused with a technical term in economics).  General welfare might include 
distributive justice, political democracy, more control by individuals over 
their lives, and other aspects.  Perhaps I should have offered point zero (to 
precede point one): Does broadened ownership improve "general welfare," on 
balance, in all its various dimensions?  Then point 1 considers the 
macroeconomic effects, principally on growth, and point 2 goes on to other 
(ethical) considerations.  Point 1 would be the purview of economists, and 
point 2 of ethicists, political philosophers, and others.

>  economics is unmistakeably a branch of ethics.  This, in
>  my view, is how it is distinguished from subject matter of business schools
>  (how to make money) on the one hand and from political science (how to
>  manipulate opinion and exert social power) on the other.

I wonder if all economists would see their field as "unmistakeably" a branch 
of ethics.  I don't see a special competence in ethics within the field, but 
rather a waffling between being "scientific" (i.e., value-free) and holding 
to undefended moral assumptions  (see my comments on the question of 
redistribution below).  Applied economics in the form of welfare economics 
seems to me to hold, uncritically and often unacknowledged, to the ethical 
theory of utilitarianism.  Finally, I strongly dissent from your 
characterization of political science.  The value of democracy is implicit in 
almost all of its manifestations (albeit uncritically and often 
unacknowledge!), and it includes the subfield of political philosophy which 
explicitly handles ethical issues.  In my own subfield of public policy 
studies, the place of ethics is controversial, but a signficant proportion of 
us regard ethical issues as impossible to segregate from empirical questions.

>  ALAN:  Why does "redistributive impact" trip warning bells...[?]
>  KEITH:  Because our moral standard is "Don't rob Peter to pay Paul."...
>  KEITH:  In principle (abstracting from individual predilections) there is
>  no bias toward minimizing redistribution.  There is simply a recognition
>  that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make a "scientific"
>  judgment that the world is a better place after Robin Hood has 
transferred...

Your two statements look contradictory to me.  First you say economists have 
a moral standard against redistribution, then you say there is no bias 
against it but only a recognition that you can't make a scientific judgment 
about it.

>  KEITH:  The triumph of Keynes was to solve the distributive problem without
>  direct redistribution.  This was accomplished by making the pie bigger,
>  through policy instruments designed to stimulate investment, employment and
>  thereby jobs and incomes. 

Don't Keyesian devices rely on redistribution, even if not "direct"?  And are 
you saying that redistribution is okay if and only if it increases aggregate 
wealth?  I don't want to flog the issue of redistribution to death, but if 
economists' distaste for it is a significant problem in advancing proposals 
to broaden capital ownership, I think we need not only to ask whether 
proposals are redistributive, but whether this distaste for redistribution is 
well-grounded.

>  KEITH: The Keynesian solution was therefore entirely
>  consistent with the economists' posture that the general welfare can only
>  be improved unequivocally if there is an increase in aggregate wealth
>  (income). 

We are back at the beginning again; equating general welfare "unequivocally" 
with growth.  If would argue that an increase in aggregate wealth accompanied 
by environmental degradation, greater income inequality, and/or reduced 
control of individuals over their lives, is a decidedly *equivocal* 
improvement in general welfare.  Is it the laypeople only, or the economists 
also who are apt to confuse the issues?

>  KEITH:  This is obviously a very important point, and I wish you would
>  develop it into a short statement, appropriately titled, to start a

I will offer a restatement of my problem with "binary economics," 
particularly the claim of greater potential for growth, a little later.

Alan Zundel
Institute for the Public Good
http://www.publicgood.org