Philosophy, Public Policy lifecycle and the farm laws
Deontology and the farm bills I blame the recent failure of the farm bills on the ignorance of the government in how different philosophical frameworks map to different stages of the policy lifecycle. Moral philosophers ponder the ethics of a situation through different philosophical frameworks. The two that are most prominently used are deontology & consequentialism. For simplicity's sake, without writing down the dictionary definitions of consequentialism and deontology , here is an operational definition of both. Deontologists say, "Principles & values matter". Consequentialists say, "Consequences matter. Ends justify the means". For instance, say you told a child their drawing is good even though it was obviously bad. In this scenario, the deontologist would tell you, "Principles matter. Lying, especially to a child, is wrong in principle. So you are ethically wrong". Meanwhile the consequentialist would say "Consider the