I just had a wonderful Italian-style lunch, which made me too sleepy to read, and so I wrote this post. The post itself is a joke. Or is it?

Grant property rights on this! seems to be a remedy for all evil according to some Chicago style law&economics utilitarians. In consequence, law&economics pretending-to-be-analytic-while-actually-being-polital-activists scholars often go hand in hand with the prophets and proponents of neoliberalism. But this will soon end.

Property theories (like all normative theories) could be roughly divided into deontological and consequentialist. The previous say: there is a reason to grant property rights to people (flourishing, natural law etc.) and so they should be granted, regardless of whether this will lead to the most efficient outcome. The latter, on the other hand, claim that we should grant property rights (or not) to people, because in consequence they will be better off; or rather: the total utility will be the highest and division the fairest if we grant subjects property rights.

Proponents of l&e, often considering themselves intellectual heirs of Hume (reason! and there’s no God!), will however evenly often start with from-was-to-ought argument: radio spectrum has been distributed more efficiently since property rights were granted in place of administrative distribution; capitalist states where better off than communist, because they had clear and working property rights system; Moscow streets in 90s were ruled by gangs, because there was no such system; and so it means that property rights and market are better than their lack and/or central planing, so let’s grant them.

(This is pasta, sometimes formaggio of Hayek-and-local-knowldge and Akerlof-market-for-lemons gets added).

However, even if we derive ‘ought to’ from ‘to be’, the direction of time arrow makes a difference. Just because some social ordering was less efficient in the past, it does not mean that it will be less efficient in the future. The world is changing.

What is the problem of central planning?
1. There is super a lot of data;
2. This data in not agreeable because it’s spread everywhere, and people’s preferences happen to change;
3. Since there is so much data and we also don’t have it, we can’t really build a proper equation;
4. Even if we had such an equation, and managed to collect the data to insert, we wouldn’t have computing power to count it;
5. And even if we did, we wouldn’t be able to keep distributing the goods fast enough.

Oh, wait: that was the problem of central planning in 70s. Or maybe even late 90s. Or maybe it still is one, hard to tell, quite a while since some government really tried for the last time.

So let’s jump to the future: 2050, everyone has a Google (or whatever will replace it) account, info about all our preferences, purchases, searches and actions is collected, BigData and stuff; we also have some chips in our veins scanning our blood, DNA and sending the data to the super computer, which will be 262144 times faster than current one (Moore’s law; and even if not, way faster); and drones fly around bringing you stuff. So our problems are solved by:
1. Google&BigData
2. Google&BigData
3. Google people
4. Super-supercomputer (probably owned by Google)
5. Drones (Amazon, I guess)

Suddenly it will turn out that having all this property, contracts, bargaining, market and stuff leads to a less efficient outcome, both for you and society; and it will be Google algorithm, knowing your skills and talents, telling you what work to do and giving you the best possible stuff in exchange. (‘Wow, I didn’t even know that I really wanted to have salmon for dinner, thx Google and Amazon!’). Or taking it away, when someone will have more fun with it.
In short.
Public/private; government/corporations and other details are insignificant here.

What matters is: if you believe in freedom and you think it’s cool that you can buy sth and it’s yours, stop being a consequentialist-utilitarian neoliberal, or otherwise your grandchildren will live in a Google dystopia.
So what should you be?
Repent and believe in Gospel!
(joking)
(not really, but I sort have to pretend I am)
(so: joking! haha..)
So: read some Locke or Kant or this third guy, what’s his name…? The one who ruined all meaningful moral philosophy..? The one who invented veil of ignorance, google him.

 

Ah, digested. Now I feel much better, can get back to work. And you should do the same!