That’s All Well and Good in Practice, But How Does it Work in Theory: Deontology vs practicality

There are two main branches of moral decision-making according to Gad Saad. One is consequentialist and the other is deontological. Consequentialism is judging a moral action from the consequences of those actions.

For example, a man might feel the need to lie to his wife about how he feels about her favorite movie because it would lead to a huge and unproductive fight otherwise. That’s consequentialism. Immanuel Kant and Brother Zosima would say never to lie, no matter what, because they are deontological. (I note that neither of them married.) Deontology derived from the Greek word deon, which means “duty.” Go and fight the Spartans and don’t care whether or not you die. You have a duty to Athens.

Another example of a person using a deontological mindset would be a Christian objecting to using God’s name in vain even if it didn’t lead to any bad consequences. Conversely, Chinese often strictly adhere to funerary rules because they feel that they have a strong sense of duty to their ancestors even if they don’t believe in an afterlife.

Much of hard leftism is about what is deontologically correct, rather than what is consequentially helpful, and its morality has a religious overtone.

I began thinking about this philosophical conflict after Rufus Jones wrote a short comment about his brother-in-law. In many ways, his brother-in-law lives like a conservative, but he always votes for leftists.

It’s strange because he has a PhD in a practical subject and he genuinely helps people. Conservative lifestyle. Kids turned out perfect. Good marriage. Plenty of money. Blah blah blah.

I knew a guy like that. Successful businessman. Family man. The whole conservative traditionalist nine yards. Besides being an atheist, his day-to-day life is completely at odds with his political alignment. He focused on making money, taking care of his family and living like he was in the American 1950s, minus the constant smoking.

It always confused me until economic growth in Mexico came up. How odd that such a specific topic revealed so much and how I still remember it. Someone said how tragic it was that Mexico was poor and that it should be a prosperous country. I agreed, but I pivoted to how Mexico at that time had changed their laws to allow for foreign investment in their oil industry. Because of that, their oil industry was booming and cheap oil could help make other things cheaper.

You would think that I had gone into a black-American church in a klan outfit singing Confederate songs in Japanese from their response. Apparently, Mexico should only be allowed to benefit from their oil if they have a Norwegian-style socialized system where the oil is immediately put into a wealth fund for the public.

Now Norway’s system is really more fascist than socialist. A corporation adheres to strict government rules and in essence works for the government while not being directly controlled by Norwegian government officials. I doubt that Mexico can pull that off. I suspect they would do a Venezuela, and Mexico would become even poorer. I did not say this, but if I did, I doubt that it would have mattered. Escaping poverty doesn’t count if it comes about through free market reforms that let international corporations invest in fossil fuels. At the time I was in China, the only reason we could work there was because of international investment made possible by free market reforms. Funny old world.

In more recent times, Nayib Bukele has reduced crime perhaps more than anyone in human history. But he didn’t do it in the right way. This one New York Times article is emblematic of this idea.

The crackdown Mr. Bukele has led on organized crime has all but dismantled the infamous street gangs that terrorized the population for decades. It also exacted a tremendous price on Salvadorans’ human rights, civil liberties and democracy. Since March 2022, when Mr. Bukele declared a state of emergency that suspended basic civil liberties, security forces have locked up roughly 75,000 people. A staggering one in 45 adults is now in prison. (Emboldened text mine.)

If everyone in jail is guilty of serious crimes, would that ratio still be too ‘staggering’? Bukele may have one of the highest approval ratings in the world, but he didn’t save regular El Salvadorian citizens in the right way. The consequences be damned.

Now I could go on: failed democratic cities, California, every instance of Communism ever. My point with all of them is that what creates human prosperity, safety and happiness isn’t relevant if it isn’t morally correct by the standards of the left.

Don’t underestimate how appealing impractical ideas can be. Look at how DEI was so powerful not too long ago. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion sound nicer than competitive meritocracy, so it dominated for a long while despite no evidence of it ever working.

The most recent example is the left’s objections to DOGE cutting USAID. Like many things, it is basically an argument over ideology rather than practicality. Possibly, there are a few programs, like landmine removal in Cambodia, that shouldn’t be cut. It would be fine if the left said to keep the programs that effectively serve the poorest of the world. But the argument at its core is that the idea of those programs is good.

What I notice about leftists who live like conservatives is how powerful their abstractions are and how separate they are from their own personal experiences. Economist and philosopher Arthur M. Diamond Jr. tells one of my favorite stories about this.

When I was a child and young adult, my optometrist was Dr. Bernard Vodnoy. I remember his energy, curiosity, and exuberance. He had contracted polio a few months before the vaccine was available, and he was confined to a wheelchair—except it did not seem like confinement. He had rigged ramps through his office and the speed with which he moved with his wheelchair left the impression that it was his version of a skateboard. He was entrepreneurial in attitude and action, founding a small firm to make visual therapy equipment.

I remember him being conventionally liberal, wanting the government to protect us from a host of evils. But I also remember one conversation in which he became quite animated about the ignorance and stupidity of government regulations related to optometry.

Government regulations sound plausible in areas where we know little and have thought less. But usually those who know an area well can tell us of the unexpected harmful consequences of seemingly plausible and well-intentioned regulations. As a result, the same person often advocates government regulations in areas in which they are ignorant and opposes them in areas where they have knowledge. I call this the “Vodnoy Paradox.”

In defense of Dr. Vodnoy, we need to see the world through abstractions and some kind of ideology. And the world is so complicated that we have to interpret it in some way. Things outside of ourselves necessarily require more abstraction and more ideology. It isn’t surprising that we humans get the world wrong quite often. There is more in the world than is dreamt of in our philosophy, after all.

Still, I suspect that some folks are genetically wired to gravitate towards abstractions that appeal to their moral and aesthetic sense rather than their lived reality. That is why some people respond to Trump like they are shot with a bullet containing rabies and meth, as Elon Musk has recently said. They aren’t thinking about what Trump will do in terms of policy. It’s not really about policy. It’s about the Trump in their head which represents cosmic badness. Elon is an autistic businessman, so he is thinking about how to maximize efficiency and effectiveness in the real world.

If I could talk to him and try to help him understand the left, I would say that they aren’t thinking about the policy that leads to the best result. To them it doesn’t matter if something is well and good in practice, but how moral it is in theory. I sympathize with his frustration. (NSFW link here)