Politician and professor Michael Munger wants to “build a bridge between philosophers and economists.” To do so, he's coined a term, "euvoluntary exhange," which means a "truly voluntary" exchange, as opposed to an exchange which is voluntary only in the sense that no individual is coercing any other. Professor Munger's formulation allows that coercion can be circumstantial rather than personal, in that one party to a transaction is so disadvantaged by circumstance that his choice is not truly (eu-) voluntary.
This might be a useful distinction, and perhaps the impetus for an interesting discussion, if bridge-building were truly Professor Munger's goal.
Mike Munger, 4 February 2013:
This is a trick to draw my friends on the left into a discussion of voluntary choice. Euvoluntary choice is a warm and fuzzy idea that we can all agree on, but what I'm really arguing is that nearly all choices are welfare-enhancing regardless of whether they are euvoluntary or not.
Michael Munger's
papers on
euvoluntary exchange.
If I understand your point, Jonas, you write to highlight an apparent contradiction in Mike Munger’s aims. This contradiction being:
ReplyDelete• On one hand Munger says he is trying to build a bridge. You might think he is open to compromise.
• On the other hand Munger says he is using a trick to draw others into discussion — while holding on nonetheless to belief that nearly all choices are welfare-enhancing. So it sounds like Munger may not be open to compromise after all.
Have I represented your point?
Anyhow, I want to add something about the larger setting, about exchange between libertarians and leftists. Libertarians are always trying to build bridges to the left. (And also to the right. But to many libertarians the right in America looks simply like the nearer side of the left.)
When we libertarians meet and talk among ourselves, the most usual topic of conversation is the difficulty we share in communicating with non-libertarians. We have tried all the obvious ways to communicate, including simple candor and honesty. These ways fail almost universally. So we are forever looking for the “silver bullet”, the thing we can say, or the way we can approach a subject, that will finally get our opposites to start listening to us and start seeing the things we see.
In this context Mike Munger is trying something new. Even though it can seem like we libertarians have tried everything, and nothing works, still our hopes spring up again as life goes on. In this context we need rhetorical innovations, such as Mike Munger’s.