I think it'd be better not to, as "promotion of virtue" is likely something that most everyone in a free society would disagree upon.
Unless, perhaps, it's the somewhat technical "virtue" of the sort that perpetuates a voluntary order (and thus lessens the requirements of coercion and self-interest). (At least in my mind) virtuous behavi…
I think it'd be better not to, as "promotion of virtue" is likely something that most everyone in a free society would disagree upon.
Unless, perhaps, it's the somewhat technical "virtue" of the sort that perpetuates a voluntary order (and thus lessens the requirements of coercion and self-interest). (At least in my mind) virtuous behavior is that which eases voluntary participation and sustainment of society.
Thus, so say that a government should promote virtuous behavior doesn't mean it should act Woke (or like the Taliban or the Moral Majority) but that it should
1. Promote activity that's "sustainable" in the sense that it's a net social positive.
2. Try to reduce the benefits of activities that are clear social negatives.
"If everyone did this, what would happen".
A clear example of virtue reducing policies that should be ended are the recent policies where the government offers a benefit only to certain qualifying persons and then loudly and clearly announces that it will make no effort to verify whether people qualify for the benefit. This is the government consciously chipping away at basic social fabric.
Better not to address it or better to take virtue promotion as an aim of government? I'm just confused by the first paragraph.
I don't disagree that many people would disagree on what constitutes virtue, and some wouldn't want the government to explicitly promote virtue.
I do agree that promotion of virtue would involve discouraging non-virtue and reducing unnecessary burdens on virtue. Doesn't solve the definition problem.
I agree that lots of current policies seem to demand actions which seem outright unvirtuous, like lying, as the only pragmatic response. That would likely be an example of something to change if attempting to promote virtue.
In the end, I'd like to hear what you meant in your first paragraph and I still think Arnold should address promotion of virtue in his proposal... Or strike it from the text, though I think he really has a place for it in his thinking.
Sorry, reading it again I was pretty unclear. What I meant was that in this article, I would not address it and strike it from the text.
Reasons for that are that 1) his virtue promotion might be entirely different than the virtue promotion I was soapboxing about and 2) moreover, I think they're both an aside from the primary thrust of his argument, which is reform of the bureaucracy.
To some extent, that's true of "maintaining order" as well. It's just an editorial comment. If the focus is to be on reforming the bureaucracy, it's better to not leave tangential but debatable points hanging out there for people (like us!) to seize on to and end up discussing instead of what the author really wants discussed.
Mike, great, thank you for the clarification. I appreciate it.
I don't think you are right about your second point - I don't think it would make the text stronger and more consistent as an expression of Arnold's thinking.
If you strike the statement about virtue, which is half his statement about the core purposes of government, you may simply make virtue promotion an implicit assumption that Arnold makes otherwise but fails to express in the text; and it is most important that Arnold unearth and disclose critical assumptions. Arnold's entire thesis is based on this idea, that the main purpose of gov't is X and that it is failing to achieve X and that it must achieve X. For the purposes of most of his text, he operates as if that X is maintaining order; which is why he could strike the statement about virtue and it would not require a major rewrite.
However, I'm inclined to believe that it would require a major 'rethink.' I don't believe that Arnold could reduce his conception of gov't to 'maintains order' any more than some other people could actually reduce it to 'national defense at the borders' or some other very reductionist regime. The regulatory bureaucracy he proposes may be suitable for maintaining order (or not...), but once we nail down the additional functional requirements of government, I expect more to come out.
I don't want to tread too far into an exploration of what virtue promotion means to Arnold, or the inherent challenges of incorporating it into a vision for the well-regulated government, because I'd rather hear Arnold unfold his thinking on the topic rather than project mine onto him. And for that matter, if you have more thoughts about your soapboxed virtue promotion, and how that would be achieved, I'm happy enough to hear it expounded upon, but I don't want it buried or confused.
I appreciate what you're saying, and you are probably right, but let me try to restate my argument in a different way. My interpretation could be and probably is wrong, but what I see is that from a big picture:
1. Then entire introductory section of the paper on the reasons for having government are sort of an invocation of the muse. Arnold is obeying the form and rooting his thoughts on a widely accepted framework. His primary thoughts begin with the next section "Why we need a regulatory state" which is only implicitly tied back to either the governmental promotion of "order" or "virtue promotion".
To support this, note how this second part cites "greater urbanization, the rising importance of intangible sources of wealth, increased specialization, and the digital revolution" as reasons that the enforcement of property rights has become more complicated (and thus, requires something like an administrative state).
One could imagine Arnold writing basically the same essay, but rather than rooting the role of government as maintaining order and promoting virtue, he could have just as easily posited a stricter, more contractarian goal of government that has only the explicit role of protecting property rights. To me, at least that would still seem consistent with his stated reasons for the existence of the administrative state.
2. The reason to do this is because, as we can see in the comments here, there is actually widespread disagreement over the "generally accepted" role of government. Especially when you're writing to a conservative, liberty-oriented audience. So what happens is, a lot of virtual ink is being spilled over whether the goal is right. In practice though, I think Arnold is trying to move past this point of debate (whether there is or should be an administrative state), and get to the point of saying, "look, it's a given that there's going to be an administrative state... here's a set of suggestions for making it better"
3. Admittedly, this is me reading into what's being written, but what I see is that the macro-level political theory discussion of the role of government can serve to distract from the micro-level discussion of the immediate causes and workings of the administrative state. They're both worthy topics of discussion, but it's just my $0.02 that taking on both is probably beyond the scope of a shorter essay, and so you strengthen the main point by not going into the secondary. In this case, I think Arnold's main point was the micro-discussion of the causes and workings of the administrative state.
Don't want to leave you hanging thinking I've just wandered off. I agree that I could imagine Arnold writing from a perspective of 'government protects private property' or 'government enables large communal infrastructure investments' or 'government is there for national defense' or 'government is an expression of family dynamics and psychology at large scale.' Each of these could be coherent. Each might find an audience. I disagree with you that the underlying foundation would not alter the analysis, argument, conclusions. He's trying to bridge two or more very different communities with a common ground; I'd like his own minimal foundation to be fairly represented. Not sure how long the essay would have to be. But thank you for the thoughtful engagement.
I think it'd be better not to, as "promotion of virtue" is likely something that most everyone in a free society would disagree upon.
Unless, perhaps, it's the somewhat technical "virtue" of the sort that perpetuates a voluntary order (and thus lessens the requirements of coercion and self-interest). (At least in my mind) virtuous behavior is that which eases voluntary participation and sustainment of society.
Thus, so say that a government should promote virtuous behavior doesn't mean it should act Woke (or like the Taliban or the Moral Majority) but that it should
1. Promote activity that's "sustainable" in the sense that it's a net social positive.
2. Try to reduce the benefits of activities that are clear social negatives.
"If everyone did this, what would happen".
A clear example of virtue reducing policies that should be ended are the recent policies where the government offers a benefit only to certain qualifying persons and then loudly and clearly announces that it will make no effort to verify whether people qualify for the benefit. This is the government consciously chipping away at basic social fabric.
Virtue enhancing policies would do the opposite.
Better not to address it or better to take virtue promotion as an aim of government? I'm just confused by the first paragraph.
I don't disagree that many people would disagree on what constitutes virtue, and some wouldn't want the government to explicitly promote virtue.
I do agree that promotion of virtue would involve discouraging non-virtue and reducing unnecessary burdens on virtue. Doesn't solve the definition problem.
I agree that lots of current policies seem to demand actions which seem outright unvirtuous, like lying, as the only pragmatic response. That would likely be an example of something to change if attempting to promote virtue.
In the end, I'd like to hear what you meant in your first paragraph and I still think Arnold should address promotion of virtue in his proposal... Or strike it from the text, though I think he really has a place for it in his thinking.
Sorry, reading it again I was pretty unclear. What I meant was that in this article, I would not address it and strike it from the text.
Reasons for that are that 1) his virtue promotion might be entirely different than the virtue promotion I was soapboxing about and 2) moreover, I think they're both an aside from the primary thrust of his argument, which is reform of the bureaucracy.
To some extent, that's true of "maintaining order" as well. It's just an editorial comment. If the focus is to be on reforming the bureaucracy, it's better to not leave tangential but debatable points hanging out there for people (like us!) to seize on to and end up discussing instead of what the author really wants discussed.
Mike, great, thank you for the clarification. I appreciate it.
I don't think you are right about your second point - I don't think it would make the text stronger and more consistent as an expression of Arnold's thinking.
If you strike the statement about virtue, which is half his statement about the core purposes of government, you may simply make virtue promotion an implicit assumption that Arnold makes otherwise but fails to express in the text; and it is most important that Arnold unearth and disclose critical assumptions. Arnold's entire thesis is based on this idea, that the main purpose of gov't is X and that it is failing to achieve X and that it must achieve X. For the purposes of most of his text, he operates as if that X is maintaining order; which is why he could strike the statement about virtue and it would not require a major rewrite.
However, I'm inclined to believe that it would require a major 'rethink.' I don't believe that Arnold could reduce his conception of gov't to 'maintains order' any more than some other people could actually reduce it to 'national defense at the borders' or some other very reductionist regime. The regulatory bureaucracy he proposes may be suitable for maintaining order (or not...), but once we nail down the additional functional requirements of government, I expect more to come out.
I don't want to tread too far into an exploration of what virtue promotion means to Arnold, or the inherent challenges of incorporating it into a vision for the well-regulated government, because I'd rather hear Arnold unfold his thinking on the topic rather than project mine onto him. And for that matter, if you have more thoughts about your soapboxed virtue promotion, and how that would be achieved, I'm happy enough to hear it expounded upon, but I don't want it buried or confused.
I appreciate what you're saying, and you are probably right, but let me try to restate my argument in a different way. My interpretation could be and probably is wrong, but what I see is that from a big picture:
1. Then entire introductory section of the paper on the reasons for having government are sort of an invocation of the muse. Arnold is obeying the form and rooting his thoughts on a widely accepted framework. His primary thoughts begin with the next section "Why we need a regulatory state" which is only implicitly tied back to either the governmental promotion of "order" or "virtue promotion".
To support this, note how this second part cites "greater urbanization, the rising importance of intangible sources of wealth, increased specialization, and the digital revolution" as reasons that the enforcement of property rights has become more complicated (and thus, requires something like an administrative state).
One could imagine Arnold writing basically the same essay, but rather than rooting the role of government as maintaining order and promoting virtue, he could have just as easily posited a stricter, more contractarian goal of government that has only the explicit role of protecting property rights. To me, at least that would still seem consistent with his stated reasons for the existence of the administrative state.
2. The reason to do this is because, as we can see in the comments here, there is actually widespread disagreement over the "generally accepted" role of government. Especially when you're writing to a conservative, liberty-oriented audience. So what happens is, a lot of virtual ink is being spilled over whether the goal is right. In practice though, I think Arnold is trying to move past this point of debate (whether there is or should be an administrative state), and get to the point of saying, "look, it's a given that there's going to be an administrative state... here's a set of suggestions for making it better"
3. Admittedly, this is me reading into what's being written, but what I see is that the macro-level political theory discussion of the role of government can serve to distract from the micro-level discussion of the immediate causes and workings of the administrative state. They're both worthy topics of discussion, but it's just my $0.02 that taking on both is probably beyond the scope of a shorter essay, and so you strengthen the main point by not going into the secondary. In this case, I think Arnold's main point was the micro-discussion of the causes and workings of the administrative state.
Don't want to leave you hanging thinking I've just wandered off. I agree that I could imagine Arnold writing from a perspective of 'government protects private property' or 'government enables large communal infrastructure investments' or 'government is there for national defense' or 'government is an expression of family dynamics and psychology at large scale.' Each of these could be coherent. Each might find an audience. I disagree with you that the underlying foundation would not alter the analysis, argument, conclusions. He's trying to bridge two or more very different communities with a common ground; I'd like his own minimal foundation to be fairly represented. Not sure how long the essay would have to be. But thank you for the thoughtful engagement.