Don’t let your mom post under the name “Jeff Lilly”- I’m sure she really does love you stuff but that’s a bit much.

Don’t let your mom post under the name “Jeff Lilly”- I’m sure she really does love you stuff but that’s a bit much.

Your basic point, which those of us who are devoted readers of flybottle are familiar with by now, is both inarguable and smartifying: we need to compare non-ideal reasoning in a private choice setting with non-ideal reasoning in a public choice setting, and not with ideal reasoning anywhere.

A mixed economy type might reply that there are systematic reasons to think we will think better about certain things in a public setting than in a private one. Sensible people won’t buy a full-scale Habermasian idealization (not that Habermas would) of political deliberation. OTOH, look at mid-century American attempts to think better about race. The same people spoke in public and revealed their preferences in private. But, arguably, the very act of public justification made white people think twice about what they took for granted.

Arguably, these changes could have occurred consistently with a libertarian respect for private preference — with the continued legality of racially restrictive covenants, explicit restrictions on black employment and so on, but with their becoming progressively culturally unaccpetable. But we can’t say for sure that it would have happened, because we can’t say for sure that people will think the same way in private as in public.

I fully accept that there are a lot of ways in which private choice is superior — basically, public choice tempts us to get benefits by getting other people to pay the costs. But in a democracy, there are some limits to how far any of us can push this temptation without splintering the coalition we are in.

Your basic point, which those of us who are devoted readers of flybottle are familiar with by now, is both inarguable and smartifying: we need to compare non-ideal reasoning in a private choice setting with non-ideal reasoning in a public choice setting, and not with ideal reasoning anywhere.

A mixed economy type might reply that there are systematic reasons to think we will think better about certain things in a public setting than in a private one. Sensible people won’t buy a full-scale Habermasian idealization (not that Habermas would) of political deliberation. OTOH, look at mid-century American attempts to think better about race. The same people spoke in public and revealed their preferences in private. But, arguably, the very act of public justification made white people think twice about what they took for granted.

Arguably, these changes could have occurred consistently with a libertarian respect for private preference — with the continued legality of racially restrictive covenants, explicit restrictions on black employment and so on, but with their becoming progressively culturally unaccpetable. But we can’t say for sure that it would have happened, because we can’t say for sure that people will think the same way in private as in public.

I fully accept that there are a lot of ways in which private choice is superior — basically, public choice tempts us to get benefits by getting other people to pay the costs. But in a democracy, there are some limits to how far any of us can push this temptation without splintering the coalition we are in.

I’ve been reading the Cato blog faithfully, and it’s very nice. But this recent post of yours is, to my mind at least, so much clearer, sharper, funnier, and convincing than anything else that has appeared there. You’ve got a serious heavy talent for this. Are you writing a book? I’d like to buy it. Whatever it’s about. Even if it’s, like, “My Favorite Iowa Mormon Recipes” or something.

Seriously. I mean it.

I’ve been reading the Cato blog faithfully, and it’s very nice. But this recent post of yours is, to my mind at least, so much clearer, sharper, funnier, and convincing than anything else that has appeared there. You’ve got a serious heavy talent for this. Are you writing a book? I’d like to buy it. Whatever it’s about. Even if it’s, like, “My Favorite Iowa Mormon Recipes” or something.

Seriously. I mean it.