Neil Sinhababu calls for the Revolt of the Moral Philosophers:Well.......He is responding to Matthew Yglesias:
In any event, this is the kind of thing we ought to be concerned about, both as citizens and as philosophers. While ideas from other parts of academia can't get out to the public, economists are convincing people of ridiculous theses in moral and political philosophy that their research doesn't even support. (It probably helps that widespread social acceptance of these theses is favorable to the interests of very wealthy people.) I'm not really sure what we can do about the spread of bad political philosophy through economics 101, but there's got to be something.[A]s Brad DeLong pointed out yesterday, economists’ protestations that they’re doing value-free social science actually embeds an implicit idea that “that shifts in distribution are of no account–which can be true only if the social welfare function gives everybody a weight inversely proportional to their marginal utility of wealth.” In other words, under guise of eschewing values, economics has adopted a philosophical value system which says that the well-being of rich people is more important than the well-being of poor people. ...If any of those fighting on the anti-economist side of this disciplinary war want to contact me to ask me to serve as a spy reporting to them the plans of the inmost secret counsels of the economist, the password is "swordfish"...
I do think that these big ideas matter.... They’re enormously important in terms of setting the terms of political debate, in terms of influence what’s considered “possible” and what kinds of people have standing to have their views taken seriously. Building a better world ultimately requires getting people to understand that both the empirical and philosophical underpinnings of America’s free market society are much weaker than is generally understood. That doesn’t mean these questions will ever be debated by politicians at a live town hall. But it does mean trying to press a better understanding of these issues on the mass elite who set the tone for much of American political life.
[ cf This Means Interdisciplinary War! ]
Who knows, we might have some fun studies while we await the complete collapse of western civilization!
Clearly as long as we allow people to espouse unpopular ideas that are not moving Units, there is clearly no truth to their position, since without moving units, there are none who own them, and thus can be in a position to sincerely truly believe the positions that they were sold as Truthier because the sellor is a well known personality who moves units! And therefore is not one of those failed academics who has been sucked into the mind Numbing HORRORS of the Evil Acadmic so called reality based community that does not understand the clear and clarion calling compelling arguments that ONLY as we free the DOD to be the True Battle Bastion Of all Mothers of Profit Centers can we move the sorts of units that will help everyone support the true freedom that can only come from the Profitability Of the DOD as the One True And ONLY Profit Center!
Anything less and the terrorists rebrand...
{ you remember back in the evil dark days when merely engaging in Crazy Talk would get you tossed into Belvue, but now if it moves units, it gets you a Talk Show.... }