Rather, I pose the question so that we might begin to answer the question in our own lives. Let me remind folks, however, that answers proper to an individual may actually apply to other individuals. The relativism found in the Libertarianism of this thread is one of its key weaknesses in the response to Sunstein. To defend liberty requires a moral argument for its value, both as something individuals have by right but also something individuals must exercise responsibly. But liberty to do what exactly? And why is that liberty morally prior to any infringements Sunstein justifies as a way of directing the pigs into their troughs?

As an alternative, we should consider redefining ultimate ends as a way of redefining power. We take for granted that material ends, especially consumer goods of a higher (iPads) or lower (Hungry Man Dinners) orders are sufficient to satisfy our ends. However, we should recognize that this understanding of material ends actually is the result of a centuries-long debate among Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Algernon Sydney, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, etc. We must recognize that the consumer culture we take for granted is new, temporary, and suffers from serious drawbacks.

Some of these drawbacks were actually "not a bug but a feature," such as the scaling down of human aspirations toward ultimate ends. Locke argued for a government that defended civil society and property rights so individuals may live in "safety, ease, and plenty." Montesquieu appreciated that commercial republics seemed less likely to go to war because their citizens feared losing their wealth more than longed for martial glory on the battlefield. We, as late modern American consumers, are their heirs. But should we be?

Again, I do not pose the question to answer it as if I were some absolute political authority. That "Franco" fears me is ironic.

These ends are then defined by the material capacity to pursue them, which means they are translated into questions of power. "Power" can refer to money or political access. Sunstein wants both redistributed to those who demonstrate less capacity to pursue their own ends, meaning the economically disadvantaged. Libertarians object, believing that individuals should reserve as much power as they can to work their way through limitations.

As I said before, Sunstein always wins this debate, since government assistance lowers risk for those most exposed to it, that is, the economically disadvantaged. Because the debate had redefined ultimate ends into power (that is, the means to pursue those ends individually), a lower amount of more certain power seems like a better trade that a possibly higher amount of less certain power. If individuals can be assured of greater police protection if they must pay a $.10 tax on every Slurpee, most will.

I argue to reintroduce questions of ultimate ends to challenge that individuals should not define the good in this nation as merely power. As I demonstrated before, those who embrace only power to secure material means end up with either a city of pigs or the fevered city.

Errors mount. My argument is the attempt to explain Beckett's argument by touching on the best of the Western tradition on the matter. My appeals to that tradition are not meant to diminish the intellects of those posting here; on the contrary, I mean to meet them in debate. We remember and continue to study Plato because he was at one of the birthplaces of the Western tradition. To reject him in favor of our own biases illustrates precisely the tendency that Plato lamented through Socrates--that the democratic man prefers an unexamined life, or what we call in more technical terms today, "status quo bias."

Anyway, I raise posed questions of ultimate ends, or telos, earlier in this thread. I did so not to answer them but to demonstrate how the Libertarian positions taken in this thread seem unable to answer them. Indeed, the refusal to answer them is the lynchpin of Libertarianism, and it shares with Cass Sunstein precisely this refusal. The difference is that Libertarians attribute to individuals the authority to answer questions of ultimate ends. Sunstein believes many in the state can do better than unaided individuals.

Precisely my point. And Beckett's. If Libertarians abdicate the question of the proper ends for humanity, then progressives like Sunstein will come in--embracing the subjectivist position of Libertarians--and start setting those ends for all of us on the grounds that people have greater opportunities to make decisions and make decisions that contribute to the public welfare. Libertarians try to answer Sunstein's something with nothing, like you just did with me.

Go back and read what I said more closely. I think, judging from your initial response, that you thought you knew what I was arguing (the Catholic position) and just ran into conversation guns blazing.

Also, why do you think you are unable to proclaim what human beings should or should not do? I thought you disagreed with Sunstein. You already make these proclamations by rejecting his position. When confronted with the purpose of human life, the answer is in the word of The Dude, "I don't know, man. Like, whatever." That's answer. It's also not a very good one.

Oh? Then, to what end should all human beings strive, according to any libertarian philosopher or economist you choose?

And notice that I did not use a religious thinker. I used a classical philosopher, specifically because I have seen debates on this site descend into battles over God and mammon too many times to count.

If we do not, then I suspect we'll end up with Sunstein's city of pigs or the libertarian fevered city. Neither is acceptable, and neither was accepted until political philosophy reduced the conception of humanity to a species of consumers, to catamites eternally scratching itches.

So Beckett's point was deeper than he implied, and Mr. Bildo's rejoinder was more problematic than he thought. A dip into political philosophy is very much worth making, despite the desire to reduce it, as well, into a consumer good crammed into MOOCs and sold on the internet.

Mill (and other English utilitarians) understood human life as the pursuit of pleasures and the avoidance of pain. Mill hoped that these pursuits would eventually ascend into more respectable kinds, away from gambling and harlots and toward the theater and philosophy, but the underlying thought always reduced human beings to individual consumers--pleasure seekers of a lower of higher order. Arendt referred to this vision of a person as, "animal laborans" or the man as merely a laboring animal.

Plato agreed centuries before her, as Glaucon rejected a "city of pigs" or a city of low pleasures more equally distributed and the "fevered city" of inequality and, as a result, of internal strife. Think of how Socrates argues against Callicles that the life of pursuing pleasure is nothing more than glorifying the "happy catamite" or "eternal scratcher of iches."

Instead, Plato offered the question of to what ends should human beings strive? Glorious deaths in battle? Reputation among citizens? What of these ends that both libertarians and Sunstein do not want disputed? Are they not what ennoble us? Should we not discuss them first and foremost?

Second, often the general public accepts lower growth in favor of greater certainty, especially those who are lower income. Why is that? Lower income folks consume differently than middle and upper; they often do not delay gratification either for investing or for contingencies. Indeed, many lower income folks do not even have bank accounts Rather, they move from paycheck to paycheck.

The reasons are complicated, since many explanations rely on those very empirical explanations that can be so hard to understand. However, suffice to say that those who use 100% of their paycheck from month to month prefer to have government security for contingencies, since they themselves are not planning for them. Because higher growth is provisional and depends on institutions foreign to them, they would rather take the mop rather than see what's behind Door #3.

Third, the debate between libertarians and Sunstein (who's just a progressive) ignores much of political though prior to J. S. Mill. Even Adam Smith conceived of human beings as having some inherent set of sympathies toward one another, which affected how they interacted.

Neither Beckett nor Mr.Bildo go far back enough in political philosophy to explain their points. Had they, Beckett could have made his argument stronger, and Mr.Bildo may have learned something rather than take offense.

The paradigm Beckett outlined is this: libertarians lack atelos (final good) to which they order the liberty they defend. Instead, they offer only individual freedom to pursue whatevertelos the individual would like. 

The trouble with this position is that not everyone has equal opportunity to pursue that telos and not everyone pursues a telos that contributes to the public welfare. Sunstein, then, intervenes with his nudges to provide greater equality of opportunity and provide better individual choices for the public welfare.

The libertarian critique is not to dispute the moral basis for Sunstein's intervention. Indeed, theyshare a materialist view of the human life. Instead, libertarians offer empirical models that show individual choices aremore efficient,effect more growth, orproduce greater variety of goods.

There are serious problems with the libertarian response. First, empirical models require a great deal of mathematical skill to understand, let alone produce. In a debate, audiences may not understand them.

Gramsci, W. E. B. DuBois, Sklar'sAmerican Citizenship, James Morone'sDemocratic Wish (a little dated now).

A good criticism of the topics you listed above is Patrick Deneen's Democratic Faith. One of my all time favorite books.

"You rang?"

My favorite podcast except when you guys dump on Game of Thrones. I loved this episode.

But graduate school put me in some debt. The real problem is that these sky-high tuitions don't go into faculty. They go into administrations, amenities, and the like.

I hate this 200 word limit business.

Higher education isn't about earning more money. If you bought that line, then you have the debt to show for it. Higher education is about learning about recurring questions in literature, complicated problems of political and social orders, and patterns measured through quantitative data. To know these things costs money, which is why only aristocrats attended colleges in the past. At least, however, these are things worth knowing. As the Douthat piece explains, contemporary aristocrats are not even learning that much. Instead, they're seeking out privilege, protecting it, and passing it on to their one precious child they will plan very carefully.

If people spent six figures on an elite education, they were taking a gamble, at best. If they didn't know they were taking a gamble, then they were suckers. That's part of Poulos is explaining. Only the elite already knew what to do with the six figure tuition bill, and only they have the remaining resources to put their credential to use. The rest believed that they had learned what they needed to do to succeed. It was never true. I knew enough to know not to take the gamble and attended modest schools.