I’ve been arguing with many people about politics, and over time, my persuasive power has steadily decreased. This may seem paradoxical, so here is what happened.

As David Friedman says, people are generally more convinced by consequentialist arguments. Not all people are though. I was exposed to many consequentialist arguments, stemming from economics for a long time. I even was confronted with libertarians arguing this way but I never really espoused their views. And why should I have, there were also convincing arguments from other economists. When I was exposed to libertarianism as a moral theory of right, I became an ancap in a matter of days.

When I first started to argue with people on this topic, I was relying extensively on consequentialist arguments. I would generally start with a moral argument and then end up pointing out the “good” consequences brought by this position. I had some moderate success with that approach, but the more I was using it, the more I grew dissatisfied with it. I realized that all I was achieving - when I was successful - was to convince people that certain policies should be or should not be followed. While a very practical goal, I felt it was not what I was looking for. I wanted to convince people to be moral, to recognize the immorality of aggression in all its forms. When presenting a moral argument tied to a consequentialist argument, I felt I was cheating by providing the consequentialist argument as a carrot. Fiat justitia ruat caelum, but I will only reassure you about the sky once you accept justice.

I don’t want people to accept moral ideas because there are good consequences, I want them to recognize that they ought to be respected. Sadly, the only way to do that is to refrain from using any consequentialist argument, which I started doing. This is when my argumentation started becoming less and less effective. To be sure, if someone claims that anarchy couldn’t work, I feel answering the question is not cheating as one cannot claim that morality requires the impossible. The basic requirement of morality is that we can live morally. I do, however, refrain to try and convince people anarchy would be a merry happy place. This should be reserved for dessert : they have to eat the ethical meal first… only once they’re done accepting justice can I tell them the sky will not fall.

While my approach may seem a bit quixotic, I believe it is not. One of my goals for example is to encounter someone similar enough to myself so that, when exposed to the same argument, he will become an anarcho-libertarian on the spot. I am really following a very skewed strategy : low success-rate, but total success once in a while. Although these types of strategy may be depressing during long losing streaks, they are useful. There’s also an argument, from Rand, to which I agree … to a certain extent. She somewhat famously opposed Milton Friedman’s tract on rent control as it did not rely on property rights but on altruistic considerations to attack the policy. While I do believe the net effect of teaching people about the economic problem of rent control was positive, I agree with Rand that it is a dangerous path. (More powerful? No, quicker, easier, more seductive)

Consequentialist arguments are very efficient because people are generally willing to change their mind easily on those matters… but what makes them successful also makes them weak : they can be replaced with other consequentialist arguments. Moral arguments are much tougher to make because people are more reluctant to accept a new moral philosophy, but they are also much more stable, and will likely be successfully passed onto children. Every consequentialist argument however is a step away from freedom as an end instead of freedom as a means. On the long term, the fate of the new belief is unknown… it may be replaced with an economic fallacy. Its negative effect on morality will always be damaging though.

To go back to my initial problem, my rate of success has indeed considerably dropped, but I believe I am doing the right thing. While consequentialist arguments may be useful for short term political goals, as long as conquering the noosphere is concerned, I believe they should seriously be avoided.