Earlier today I wrote about a particular factual error that Oren Cass continually makes. But his errors don’t end there. He’s also wrong, for example, to assert that libertarians do not hold human flourishing to be an end. Cass mistakes libertarians’ rejection of his description of the way that markets work for libertarians not sharing his undoubtedly genuine belief in the importance of human flourishing.
Perhaps we libertarians are mistaken, and Cass is correct, about how markets work. But we libertarians, no less than Oren Cass, nevertheless cherish human flourishing. Cass leaps from his disagreement with libertarians’ description of markets as the best means to ensure human flourishing to the conclusion that libertarians aren’t as committed as he is to human flourishing. In so leaping, Cass commits a logical fallacy. Equally fallacious would be me (a libertarian) leaping from my disagreement with the means that Cass proposes as being best to promote human flourishing to the conclusion that Cass cares less about human flourishing than I do.
In fact, I believe that Cass is profoundly mistaken in his underestimation of the ability of free markets to promote human flourishing and in his overestimation of government to promote it. (Were he to learn more economics, he might not make what I regard as these errors.) But I do not doubt for a moment that he cherishes human flourishing as sincerely and as much as I do. I do not suppose, for example, that because he wants to further empower the state to obstruct people’s commerce that Cass believes that, to paraphrase him, the exercise of state power is the end unto itself – an end worth pursuing even if doing so degrades humanity.
I do not and will not question the goodness and genuineness of Oren Cass’s ultimate goal; this goal is, I’m certain, ultimately one that I and other libertarians share in full. And an excellent summary statement of this goal is maximum possible human flourishing .
It would be a pleasant surprise if Oren Cass – and many other NatCons and progressives – would stop questioning libertarians’ motives and values and came to understand that even very profound differences over means do not imply differences over ends.
