Henry B. Veatch’s Neo-Aristotelian Defense of Reality, Reason, and Rights

 

This is a guest essay by Dr Edward W. Younkins, Professor of Accountancy and Business at Wheeling University, and Executive Director of its Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality. Ed is author of a trilogy of important books on freedom and flourishing: “Capitalism and Commerce”, “Champions of a Free Society”, and “Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society”. He also has numerous other publications, including several published on this site. (Please see the list after the end of this essay.) 

In an age of philosophical fragmentation, the voice of Henry B. Veatch stands as an indispensable corrective. Recognized as one of the leading neo-Aristotelian thinkers of the twentieth century, Veatch devoted his long and distinguished career to defending a vision of philosophy rooted in realism, teleology, and the conviction that ethics and politics must be grounded in the nature of things. His many articles and books represent a sustained and powerful argument against the dominant trends of modern and postmodern thought.

Veatch revised and reinterpreted Aristotle’s ethical framework at a time when utilitarianism, subjectivism, skepticism, existentialism, emotivism, and positivism dominated philosophical discourse. During that period, contemporary ethics had fragmented into relativism, nihilism, and reductionist theories that failed to account for the richness of moral experience. 

He disagreed with prevailing trends in modern philosophy such as the anti-foundationalism of postmodern thought, the persistence of Kantian and neo-Kantian ethical theory, nominalism, and the dominance of linguistic analysis. Veatch argues that contemporary moral philosophy often attempts to evade individual responsibility, either by reducing morality to subjective preferences or by attaching morality to social institutions via collectivist ethical theories.

This essay will explore Veatch's contributions to metaphysics, his account of human nature and teleology, his conception of practical wisdom (phronesis), his critique of Kantianism and postmodernism, and his defense of natural law and human rights. It will then examine his influence on contemporary philosophers Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, comparing and contrasting their views with Veatch's own.

Metaphysics and the Defense of Realism

At the heart of Veatch's philosophical project lies a commitment to metaphysical realism. This commitment is nowhere more evident than in Intentional Logic (1952), where Veatch argues that "logic necessarily presupposes a metaphysics". He insists that logic cannot be understood as a mere formal calculus or as a set of rules for manipulating symbols. Rather, logic must be grounded in the nature of things themselves—in the way the world actually is.

Veatch's realism is thoroughly Aristotelian. He maintains that the world consists of substances with natures or essences, and that our concepts and judgments are true insofar as they correspond to these real structures. The cognitive relation between knower and known is, in his view, a relation of identity—not in the sense that the knower becomes the object known, but in the sense that the mind grasps the essence of the thing. Predication, similarly, involves the relation of identity between the abstracted essence and the individuals that instantiate it.

This metaphysical realism has profound implications for every other area of philosophy. If there are real natures and essences, then there are real facts about what things are and what they are for. And if there are real facts about what things are for, then there are real standards of goodness and badness, right and wrong. Veatch's metaphysics thus provides the foundation for his entire ethical and political philosophy.

Veatch's realism also leads him to reject the nominalism that pervades much modern philosophy. He argues that the denial of universals and essences leads inevitably to skepticism and relativism. If there are no real natures, then there is no basis for making objective claims about what anything is or ought to be. The only alternative, he insists, is to recover the Aristotelian understanding of the world as a realm of intelligible structures that we can come to know through reason.

Human Nature and Teleology 

Veatch's account of human nature is inseparable from his teleological view of the world. For Aristotle, as for Veatch, every natural thing has a telos. Human beings are no exception. We are rational animals, and our distinctive end is to live in accordance with reason.

In Rational Man (1962), Veatch takes aim at the modern denial of teleology. Against this view, he argues that ethical knowledge is possible and that it is "grounded in human nature". Human beings have a nature, and that nature determines what is good for them.

Veatch's teleology is not, however, a simplistic or reductive one. He does not believe that human well-being is something simple or that the moral life consists merely in following rules or recipes. Rather, he presents a "pluralistic understanding of human well-being without lapsing into moral relativism". There are many goods that contribute to human flourishing, and they must be integrated and balanced in the course of a well-lived life.

 This pluralistic teleology is crucial for understanding Veatch's ethics. Unlike utilitarians, who reduce the good to pleasure or happiness, Veatch recognizes a diversity of goods—knowledge, friendship, virtue, excellence in various activities, and so on. Unlike Kantians, who separate the right from the good and insist on duty for duty's sake, he insists that moral obligations are ultimately grounded in what is good for human beings. The good is prior to the right--we have duties because there are things that are truly good for us and for others. 

Veatch explains that ethics must be grounded in metaphysics. He provides an objective foundation for morality rooted in human nature and the rational pursuit of human flourishing. His Aristotelian realism holds that all beings have a natural end (or telos) and that each individual is responsible for his own moral development. This responsibility is the foundational existential fact from which ethics begins. He defends a teleological account of morality in which good is determined by the fulfillment of one’s human nature. Unlike Ayn Rand, for Veatch, an individual’s obligation to act to fulfill his human nature does not depend upon a pre-moral “choice to live”.

Veatch challenges the naturalistic fallacy by addressing the fact-value distinction through which many philosophers contend that moral choices are merely expressions of subjective preferences rather than statements of fact. Calling the fact-value dichotomy untenable, he explains that human nature contains normative implications and that moral claims cannot be divorced from human nature. 

Practical Wisdom (Phronesis) and the Moral Life

 Rationality is the defining characteristic of humanity guiding individuals toward a flourishing life. A person’s nature as a rational being shapes his ethical obligations. Veatch recognizes that moral decision making is contextual and requires the exercise of reason in concrete situations.

 Central to Veatch’s ethics is phronesis (practical wisdom) which discerns the contextual, particular, and contingent circumstances to determine what is morally required at the time of action. Practical wisdom is concerned with applying general moral principles to particular circumstances. Viewing rationality as the sole arbiter of action, his ethics includes the ability to reason and act including the ability to discern and correct errors.

Veatch's conception of the moral life is centrally organized around the Aristotelian virtue of practical wisdom. For Veatch, the moral life is not merely one of following rules or recipes, nor is human well-being something simple. Rather, the moral life, which Veatch calls "rational or intelligent living," is "the life of practical wisdom where individual judgment of the particular and the contingent is paramount". 

This emphasis on practical wisdom reflects Veatch's conviction that ethics cannot be reduced to a set of general principles or algorithms. The situations we face in life are always particular and contingent, and they require the exercise of judgment—the ability to see what is called for in this situation, with these people, under these circumstances. Practical wisdom is the virtue that enables us to make these judgments well.

At the same time, practical wisdom is not a form of intuition or feeling. It is a form of reason—practical reason. The practically wise person does not feel his way through moral situations; he sees them clearly, understands what is at stake, and discerns what the relevant goods and virtues require. Practical wisdom is thus both intellectual and moral. It  involves knowledge of the good and the ability to apply that knowledge in concrete situations. 

Veatch's account of practical wisdom also has important implications for his view of moral education and character formation. Virtues are not innate. They must be acquired through practice and habituation. The moral life requires learning, discipline, and experience. But it is not merely an art, for it deals with what is truly good and bad for human beings, not merely with what is useful or pleasant.

Critique of Kantianism and neo-Kantianism 

Veatch was a critic of Kantian and neo-Kantian philosophy. In For an Ontology of Morals (1971) he critiques contemporary trends in ethical theory, "including the deontological tradition dating back to Kant". His fundamental objection to Kantianism is that it severs morality from any grounding in human nature and human goods.

Kantian ethics, in Veatch's view, makes the fundamental mistake of supposing "that moral imperatives can be derived independently of consideration of human ends". Kantian moral theories "generally argue that moral duties are duties to perform certain actions 'without' reference to any end to be achieved".

Veatch also objects to the Kantian separation of the phenomenal and noumenal realms, which he sees as a form of idealism that undermines realism. Kant's "transcendental turn" represents a fateful departure from the Aristotelian understanding of knowledge as the grasp of an independently existing reality. By restricting knowledge to the phenomenal realm and relegating things-in-themselves to the noumenal, Kant makes it impossible to know the real natures of things—including human nature. Without knowledge of human nature, there can be no objective ethics.

Veatch's critique extends to neo-Kantianism as well. He argues that "moral and ethical distinctions cannot be rightly or adequately understood if they are regarded simply as matters of linguistic use but are grounded in the very being and nature of things". The linguistic turn in philosophy is, in Veatch's view, merely another form of the Kantian error. It treats morality as a matter of language or convention rather than as a matter of objective truth about human flourishing.

Postmodernism and the Linguistic Turn 

Veatch was equally critical of postmodernism, which he saw as the culmination of the modern trajectory away from realism and toward various forms of skepticism, relativism, and constructivism. He opposed the "linguistic turn" in philosophy, which treats language as the primary or exclusive subject of philosophical inquiry.

Veatch's objections to postmodernism are rooted in his realism. If there are no real natures or essences—if everything is a social construction or a product of language—then there is no basis for objective knowledge or moral truth. Postmodernism leads inevitably to a kind of nihilism in which all claims are equally valid (or equally invalid) and there is no way to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong. Against this, Veatch insists that "our rules of language are determined by real necessities in the world". Language is not a self-contained system that creates reality. It is a tool for referring to and describing a reality that exists independently of us.

Veatch's opposition to postmodernism is thus not merely a matter of intellectual preference. It is a matter of philosophical necessity. If we abandon realism, we abandon the possibility of philosophy itself as a quest for truth. If we abandon the possibility of truth, we abandon the possibility of any meaningful ethics or politics.

Human Rights and Natural Law

Veatch's most sustained treatment of political philosophy appears in Human Rights: Fact or Fancy? (1985). In this work, Veatch "finds the basis for human rights in natural law". He "builds his argument step by step, carefully laying the foundation for his central assertion that our basic rights are discoverable directly in the facts of nature".

His theory of natural rights is grounded in an account of human nature that recognizes the connection between moral duty and human flourishing. He sees these rights as derived from duties that a person owes to himself to flourish as an individual human being. Each of us is bound by nature to fulfill that obligation. A person’s duty to self-perfection creates the right not to have that pursuit interfered with. It follows that, if one expects to hold these rights, then he must accord them to all other persons, as well. These natural rights are conditioned by the reciprocal duties of other rational being. Because the rights are grounded in reality, their validity does not depend upon social agreement or legal codification. 

Veatch's natural law theory is thoroughly Aristotelian. Just as every natural thing has a telos that determines what is good for it, so too human beings have a nature and a telos that determine what is good for them and what they have a right to. Rights are not arbitrary conventions or creations of the state; they are grounded in the very being and nature of human persons.

Veatch insists that "law must be based on ethics" and that "ethics in turn must be grounded in fact and therefore must have a basis in nature". This is a direct challenge to the positivist view that law is merely a matter of social convention or sovereign command. It is also a challenge to the view that rights are merely creations of the state—a view that leaves individuals vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority or the state.

Veatch's defense of natural law is also a defense of what Aristotle called "a natural justice"—a justice that is not merely conventional but is grounded in the nature of things. This natural justice provides a standard by which positive laws can be judged and, if necessary, resisted. It is the foundation of any genuine theory of human rights. 

Influence on Rasmussen and Den Uyl

Veatch's influence on contemporary philosophy has been considerable, particularly on the work of Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl. These two philosophers have acknowledged Veatch as a major influence on their thinking. Indeed, Rasmussen and Den Uyl's The Perfectionist Turn  (2016) opens with a quotation from Veatch's Rational Man: "In Aristotle's eyes, ethics does not begin with thinking of others; it begins with oneself".

Rasmussen and Den Uyl share with Veatch a commitment to Aristotelian realism, teleology, and natural law. They defend "a version of Aristotelian ethics" and argue that "the Aristotelian approach to ethics supports the natural rights which form the most secure basis for liberal principles". Like Veatch, they hold that "human flourishing is the ultimate moral standard".

Moreover, Rasmussen and Den Uyl have been instrumental in bringing Veatch's work to a new generation of readers. The Liberty Fund edition of Rational Man contains an introduction by  Rasmussen, and both philosophers have written appreciatively of Veatch's contributions. They have also described Veatch as seeing "human beings as part of a natural order that is not ultimately constructed by humans but is nonetheless knowable and open to human flourishing".

Points of Agreement

The agreement between Veatch and Rasmussen and Den Uyl is substantial. First, all three are committed to metaphysical realism—the view that there is a real world independent of our minds and that we can know it. Second, all three embrace teleology—the view that natural things, including human beings, have ends or purposes that determine what is good for them. Third, they all regard human nature as philosophically relevant, holding that moral obligations and rights are grounded in human nature and human flourishing. Fourth, all three are critical of Kantianism, which they see as separating morality from any grounding in human goods, and of postmodernism, which they see as leading to skepticism, subjectivism, and relativism. Fifth, all three emphasize the importance of rationality, practical wisdom, and practical agency in the moral life. Sixth, they all are defenders of individual liberty and human flourishing. Rasmussen and Den Uyl describe themselves as advocating individualistic perfectionism and Veatch's defense of natural rights provides a foundation for liberal principles. Indeed, Rasmussen and Den Uyl have argued that a realist turn—namely, one in which the natural order is the basis for individual rights—is needed to bring about a proper understanding and defense of liberty.

Points of Disagreement

Despite this deep agreement, there are also differences between Veatch and Rasmussen and Den Uyl. The most important disagreement concerns how natural rights are conceptualized and grounded.

Veatch holds that "natural rights are derived from duties one naturally owes to oneself". According to Veatch, each individual "has eudaimonic obligations of self-perfection to himself, and, in virtue of these obligations to self, all other persons are obligated not to prevent that person’s self-perfecting activity". In other words, rights are grounded in duties—specifically, the duty that each person owes to himself to pursue his own flourishing.

Rasmussen and Den Uyl, however, see flaws in Veatch's view. Their main criticism is that his argument cannot provide a person with any right protective of non-self-perfecting behavior. An individual will, at best, have rights vindicating his rightful (i.e., dutiful) actions. In other words, if rights are grounded in duties to oneself, then one has rights only insofar as one is fulfilling those duties. This would leave no room for rights that protect actions that are not directly aimed at self-perfection—including, perhaps, many of the ordinary activities of daily life.

Rasmussen and Den Uyl offer a different account of rights. For them, what a person owes himself for the sake of his own flourishing includes his support for and adherence to a system of rights universally protective of self-directedness. Rights are not derived from duties to oneself in a simple, linear way. Rather, the system of rights is a necessary condition for human flourishing. One has an obligation to support a system of rights because such a system is essential for flourishing—not because one has a direct duty to perform specific self-perfecting actions.

 Veatch viewed natural rights as a direct extension of natural law ethics. For Veatch, rights are normative claims derived from an individual's moral obligations to fulfill their natural end. The political order is tasked with fostering an environment where natural law and moral virtue can be pursued. Rasmussen and Den Uyl argue that Veatch’s direct derivation creates a structural tension when applied to a modern, pluralistic society containing diverse individual lives. They propose a fundamental distinction between normative ethics and metanormative principles. 

 Normative Ethics addresses the question, "How should I live a flourishing, virtuous life?" This is personal, highly individualized, and teleological).  Metanormative principles (rights) address the political/legal question, "How can diverse, individual moral agents coexist peacefully without compromising the self-directed nature of their respective pursuits of flourishing?" For Rasmussen and Den Uyl, natural rights) are not meant to compel personal virtue directly. Rather, rights are metanormative framework rules whose sole purpose is to protect the possibility of self-directed action for all individuals alike. Rights establish a political structure of non-interference.

Another difference concerns the relationship between the universal and the individual. Rasmussen and Den Uyl claim that universal and individual orders are separate. While Veatch emphasized the universal aspects of human nature and human perfection, Rasmussen and Den Uyl introduce a radical emphasis on the individualized and agent-relative character of eudaimonia. Rasmussen and Den Uyl argue that while human nature provides universal forms of goodness (e.g., health, knowledge, friendship, virtue), actual human flourishing is always particular, individual, and context-dependent. What constitutes flourishing for a specific person depends on his unique talents, circumstances, choices, and personal history. Because flourishing is inherently self-directed and individualized, it cannot be standardized, centrally planned, or forced upon an individual by a political authority. Veatch, while recognizing individual responsibility, remained closer to classical and Thomistic traditions that emphasize a more uniform, shared human good realized within a cohesive moral community.

Conclusion

 Veatch stands as one of the most important neo-Aristotelian philosophers of the twentieth century. His defense of metaphysical realism, teleology, and natural law represents a powerful alternative to the dominant trends of modern and postmodern philosophy. His account of human nature and practical wisdom offers a rich and nuanced vision of the moral life, one that avoids both the abstractions of Kantianism and the relativism of postmodernism.

Veatch's influence on contemporary philosophers such as Rasmussen and Den Uyl is a testament to the enduring power of his ideas. While Rasmussen and Den Uyl share Veatch's commitment to Aristotelian realism, teleology, and natural law, they have developed his views in important ways—particularly in their account of the grounding of natural rights. Their disagreements with Veatch are not rejections of his project but rather refinements and developments of it. 

In an age of philosophical confusion and moral uncertainty, Veatch's voice remains as relevant as ever. His insistence that philosophy must be grounded in reality, that ethics must be grounded in human nature, and that rights must be grounded in natural law offers a path forward for those who refuse to accept the skeptical and relativistic conclusions of so much modern thought. As Veatch himself might have said, swimming against the current is never easy—but it is sometimes the only way to reach the truth.

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References

 Den Uyl, Douglas J., and Rasmussen, Douglas B. 2016. The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

 Rasmussen, Douglas B., and Den Uyl, Douglas J. 1991. Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order. La Salle, IL: Open Court.

 Rasmussen, Douglas B. and Den Uyl, Douglas J.  2005. Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics. Pennsylvania State University Press.

 Rasmussen, Douglas B., and Den Uyl, Douglas J.  2018. "Remembering an Aristotelian Radical: Henry Veatch and Rational Man." Law & Liberty, September 19.

 Rasmussen, Douglas B. and Den Uyl, Douglas J. 2020. The Realist Turn: Repositioning Liberalism. Palgrave MacMillan.

 Veatch, Henry B. 1952. Intentional Logic: A Logic Based on Philosophical Realism. New Haven: Yale University Press.

 Veatch, Henry B. Rational Man 1962. A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

 Veatch, Henry B. 1971. For an Ontology of Morals: A Critique of Contemporary Ethical Theory. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

 Veatch, Henry B. 1985. Human Rights: Fact or Fancy? Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

 Veatch, Henry B. 1990 Swimming Against the Current in Contemporary Philosophy. Occasional Essays and Papers. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.

 Veatch, Henry B. 1978.  "Natural Law: Dead or Alive?" Literature of Liberty 1, no. 4 (October–December).

 Veatch, Henry B. 1954.  Realism and Nominalism Revisited. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Other essays by Ed Younkins on this site:

Younkins, Edward W. “What Contribution did David L. Norton Make to our Understanding of Ethical Individualism?” Freedom and Flourishing. January 18, 2025.

----------------------------“How can dialectics help us to defend liberty?” Freedom and Flourishing. July 8, 2025.

---------------------------“How can Austrian Economics be reconciled with the Neo-Aristotelian philosophy of Freedom and Flourishing?” Freedom and Flourishing. October 2, 2025.

----------------------------- “Can Polarized Moral Politics be Bridged by a Neo-Aristotelian Philosophy of Freedom and Flourishing?” Freedom and Flourishing. December 13, 2025.

----------------------------- “Does Humanomics Need a Moral Anchor?” Freedom and Flourishing. January 22, 2026.

----------------------------- “Is Character Education Compatible With Individualistic Perfectionism?” Freedom and Flourishing. February 27, 2026.

 ----------------------------- “Are Spontaneous Order and neo-Aristotelian Arguments for a Free Society Compatible?” Freedom and Flourishing. March 19, 2026.

----------------------------- “Are Spinoza’s Philosophy and Neo-Aristotelian Philosophies of Freedom and Flourishing Compatible?” Freedom and Flourishing. June 4, 2026. 

----------------------------- “The Architecture of Freedom: Randy Barnett’s Natural Law Case for a Free Society” Freedom and Flourishing. June 26, 2026.

----------------------------- “Robust Political Economy and Neo-Aristotelianism: Complementary Visions of Freedom and Flourishing” Freedom and Flourishing. July 10, 2026.

------------------------------ “Is Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Consistent with Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics?” Freedom and Flourishing. July 26, 2026.

Will AI Replace Human Labour? Revisiting a Question I First Asked in 2015

 

In 2015, I wrote an essay entitled, “Will robots replace human labour and reduce real wage levels?” That essay still seems to attract quite a lot of attention even though some of the thoughts in it are now out of date. I did not anticipate the impact of Large Language Models (LLMs).

One of the things I like about my previous essay is the use of down-to-earth examples to illustrate processes. So, I will try to continue in that vein.

Horses, tractors and robots

My previous essay included some paragraphs, quoted from Nick Rowe, illustrating how the replacement of human labour by non-human labour is an ongoing process rather than a new phenomenon:

“Horses were once like robots. Horses could do a lot of the same work that humans could do. Humans and horses can pull things, if you feed them. But then mechanical horses, called tractors, were invented, that could pull heavier things with cheaper food. Tractors pushed horses' wages below subsistence, so the horse population declined.

The robot horse displaced horses, just as horses displaced humans from all the jobs where humans pulled things. But humans, unlike horses, can do lots of other jobs beside pulling things. Humans are very versatile. Horses can't really do anything except pull things. So humans switched to doing other jobs, while horses couldn't. And the marginal product of labour, and hence wages in those other jobs, increased. Horses and tractors were complementary factors to human labour in those other jobs.

But that won't happen if robots are invented that really are just like humans, and can do all the jobs that humans can do. Robots that are just like humans would be just like slaves, rather than like tractors and horses.”

My comment in 2015:

What we are seeing now is robots that are displacing humans from a range of activities and freeing them to do things that robots can’t do - just as horses did. There are adjustment problems for people in the affected industries, but the impact on average real wages is likely to be positive. Over time, superior robots are likely to be invented that will replace the initial series of robots, just as tractors displaced horses. If robots can eventually reproduce like crazy, their capacity to live off “the smell of an oily rag” might mean that wages in many industries in which humans are currently employed will be driven below human subsistence levels.

However, it seems unlikely that robots will ever be viewed by humans as close substitutes for human labour with respect to all attributes relevant to all economic activities. My guess is that many humans will show a strong preference for some goods with a high human labour input e.g. home produced food, restaurant meals and beverages that are served by humans, live music by local musicians, handicrafts and works of art produced by humans, and some manufactured goods that individual humans have designed specifically for themselves or friends and relatives.

My bottom line is that over the next few decades the impact of robots in replacing human labour is likely to be a relatively small part of the total impact of technological change on the quality of life. Rather than worrying about robots replacing human labour perhaps we should be more concerned that the rate of technological progress may be slowing down.

Why do my thoughts of 2015 need revisiting?

In 2015 I was thinking mainly about robots as physical substitutes for human labour, and I posed the choice as one between two models: robots as something close to slave labour (a pure increase in labour supply, competing directly with humans) or robots as something more like horses and tractors (displacing humans from some tasks while freeing them, and raising their marginal productivity, in others). I concluded that robots were unlikely to be close substitutes for humans across all the attributes relevant to production, and that the wage effects of automation would therefore be a comparatively minor part of the overall story over the following few decades.

Large language models (LLMs) were not on my radar in 2015. They change the shape of the question, because they are far closer to general-purpose cognitive substitutes than any robot arm or self-driving vehicle. An LLM does not just replace one narrow task; it can draft, summarise, code, translate, analyse and advise across an enormous range of activities that previously required a trained human. In that sense, the "close substitute" horn of my original dilemma is more relevant to cognitive and creative work than I gave it credit for. I now think the economic impact of LLMs will be massive - considerably larger than the impact of robots in physical production that I was focused on a decade ago.

State plainly, LLMs are closer to general-purpose cognitive substitutes than anything I had in view a decade ago. The AI revolution is very much like an influx of low-cost labour that will replace human labour.

However, it is premature to jump to the conclusion that most of the human population is about to become unemployed and will need to find some source of income other than wages and salaries if they are to survive. In what follows I discuss a range of factors that impinge on the speed and unevenness of dispersion of the new technology before turning my attention to the profound issues associated with checking and validation of AI output.

Human interaction

As argued in my original essay, some activities that depend on human interaction may remain largely immune. People want to be served, taught, cared for, negotiated with and entertained by other people.

Yet, this point should not be overstated. A lot of "human interaction" jobs are information-transfer jobs with a human face on them - for example, customer service, a lot of teaching, first-line medical triage, even therapy. People are apparently willing to accept an AI substitute when it's cheaper, faster, or less judgmental. AI companions, tutoring bots, and mental-health chatbots are already being adopted.

Human advantages

Trades that depend on physical presence and situational judgement - builders, plumbers, electricians, nurses - are unlikely to face serious robotic competition over the next decade or two, whatever progress is made in software.

Diffusion lags

Use of AI in physical production processes is usually a costly and slow process. Diffusion into actual production processes can take many years. Restructuring enterprises – investing capital, redesigning workflows, retraining staff - is likely to take considerably longer than development of the knowhow and systems design which makes automation feasible.

By contrast, however, adoption of AI can occur rapidly in many service sector industries. Individual employees began using AI on their laptops last year, with no capital expenditure and no sign-off from anyone. That is arguably why uptake has already been faster than any prior general-purpose technology. In service sector industries, the labour-market effect may arrive informally and quietly, well ahead of any restructuring.

Costly inputs

The relevance of the "smell of an oily rag" idea in my original piece - the thought that machines might reproduce and operate so cheaply that they would drive human wages toward subsistence – depends on the time period we are considering. During the next few years, electric power and compute will be costly; the marginal cost of running systems at scale is real and substantial.

In the longer term, however, the situation will look different. Computational and financial expense of generating outputs from trained models is falling rapidly. Within a few decades, what looks now like an unusually capable but costly input is likely to look more like a flood of costless labour.

Potential for entrepreneurship

We should take account of the potential for enterprising individuals, rather than large incumbent firms, to exploit these tools quickly - using AI to launch new products and services. That will create new employment opportunities, but not necessarily for the same people who lost the old ones, at anything like the same wage, on anything like the same timescale.

The more important point is that the new technology may have potential to help large numbers of people to find hidden entrepreneurial capabilities. As I noted in a recent essay, entrepreneurs may market new products to satisfy needs that consumers previously didn’t know they had. For the most part, those innovations are likely to be relatively minor and only of local or regional significance, but they could add substantially to the incomes of the new entrepreneurs and, in aggregate, make a substantial contribution to national income.

Complementarity

The "horses and tractors" story is still relevant because humans are using AI as a tool to raise their personal productivity. Adding an LLM app to a personal computer is like adding a hydraulic arm to a tractor – the hydraulic arm enables the driver to become more productive because he can use the tractor to lift things rather than just pull things.

Nevertheless, general-purpose AI has potential to displace humans in a wide range of routine cognitive tasks over the next decade or so. And, over the longer term, the market adjustment mechanism can be expected to have progressively less scope to switch humans to other jobs.

Arguably, like most of the other points discussed above, the complementarity point seems more relevant to considering the impact of AI over the next few years than to considering what is likely to happen in the decades ahead.

It is now time to introduce a more profound consideration – verification.

Who will be responsible for checking what AI does?

Imagine that vast numbers of aliens suddenly arrive from outer space and are willing and able to do nearly all the cognitive and physical work that humans do at much lower cost than humans. However, even though these alien agents are friendly to humans, they cannot always be trusted to produce outcomes that meet appropriate quality standards and respect individual rights (of humans). Adverse outcomes will sometimes occur because the agents are fallible or because they may be willing to “cut corners” in pursuit of goals. (Those are traits they share with humans.) At other times, adverse outcomes will arise because some humans will instruct the agents to cut corners or infringe the rights of others. The use of agents does not remove the need for principals to check and validate outputs.

That scenario is similar to the one explored in a paper entitled, “Some Simple Economics of AGI” by Christian Catalini, Xiang Hui and Jane Wu, published by SSRN, February 24, 2026. The authors’ core thesis is that artificial general intelligence (AGI) makes output cheap and abundant; human verification becomes the scarce factor; and the economy’s bottleneck shifts from doing to checking.

Catalini et al describe a dynamic process leading to adverse outcomes because the availability of humans with necessary oversight skills doesn’t expand sufficiently as the cost to automate collapses:

“The current "human-in-the-loop" equilibrium is unstable. It is eroded from below as apprenticeship pathways collapse (the Missing Junior Loop), shrinking human expertise precisely when oversight becomes most valuable. It is eroded from within as experts codify their own obsolescence (the Codifier's Curse), converting experience into training data. As capabilities outpace oversight, deploying unverified systems becomes privately rational -introducing a "Trojan Horse" externality of misaligned output. Using AI to verify AI only manufactures false confidence as correlated blind spots propagate. Left unmanaged, these forces pull toward a Hollow Economy of explosive nominal output but decaying human agency.”

The authors also present a more optimistic scenario:

“Yet this outcome is not inevitable. The answer is not a retreat into obsolescence, but a radical elevation of human purpose. By scaling verification infrastructure alongside agentic capabilities, the forces that threaten collapse become the catalyst for unbounded discovery, experimentation, and execution - powering an Augmented Economy.”

Nevertheless, after I had finished reading the article, I was left with the impression that that authors think we are heading rapidly towards a Hollow Economy. In their Conclusion they write:

“Autonomy is fundamentally outpacing oversight. Open-source agent swarms are already operating autonomously at scale—integrated with payments, infrastructure provisioning, and live user data—producing the first visible instances of unverified agentic output in the wild. The same infrastructure that enables accidental harm presents the ultimate attack surface for deliberate abuse, granting malicious actors the leverage to scale catastrophic harm at the marginal cost of compute. Inside major software firms, AI produces a material share of new code, a share executives openly project rising toward a majority in the near future.” (The authors cite references that have been omitted from this quote.)

Catalini et al have provided an important warning about what might happen, but it seems to me that a more nuanced view might be appropriate, taking account of the potential for a diversity of responses by individual firms and the incentives of the legal framework.

Expect diverse responses

I don’t think Catalini et al have suggested explicitly that intense competition will cause firms to engage in “a race to the bottom”. However, that idea surfaces frequently in public discussion of competition and may underlie fears about the emergence of a Hollow Economy. A problem with race to the bottom theory is that it assumes that all firms will make the same assessments about the strategies most likely to enhance their profitability. The theory ignores the possibility that while some firms will see advantages in reducing standards, others will see reputational advantages in maintaining high standards.

It seems likely that while some firms will seek to profit by cutting corners on validation of output, others will focus on enhancing longer term profitability by seeking to build inhouse expertise in checking and validation of output. Interestingly, by drawing attention to the potential for a widespread validation problem to emerge, the paper by Catalini et al may encourage more firms to pursue an inhouse training strategy.

It should also be noted that even though AI is likely to evolve rapidly to become more efficient at verification, the existence of a technically perfect verifier does not solve the accountability problem. As one paper explains, high-stakes domains require a human who understands the content and accepts responsibility for its use, even if the AI's check is flawless.

Having introduced the concept of accountability, we now need to consider how the choices which firms make are likely to be influenced by the incentives provided by the legal and political environment in which they operate.

Legal liability

There is a good reason why I have chosen the Roman legal maxim, “He who acts through another does the act himself” as the epigraph for this essay. That maxim has modern legal application in laws which establish that principals are legally responsible for the authorized acts and contracts performed by their agents.

Existing tort and regulatory frameworks already hold humans responsible when AI-assisted outcomes go wrong. This complicates claims that unverified deployment of AI is likely to be highly profitable. In any context where firms currently adopt rigorous checking practices to reduce potential legal liability for damage to others, they will continue to have an incentive to maintain rigorous checking practices. Insurance companies offering cover for legal liability may refuse cover to firms which cut corners.

Regulation

Government regulation impinges on a wide range of activities in modern economies. Firms using AI will still incur penalties if they fail to meet regulatory requirements. For good or ill, that places an increased burden on firms to have checking mechanisms in place to ensure that compliance occurs.

In respect of some industries, e.g. medicine, law and education, government regulation typically determines who may supply services. For example, if an individual uses AI to diagnose the nature of an illness they suffer from, they are likely to be required to consult a human doctor to check that diagnosis before they can obtain pharmaceuticals to treat the illness.

In recent years, the concept of "meaningful human control" has entered legal-political discussion in response to worries that autonomous systems create a "responsibility gap" where lethal or harmful outcomes occur but no human can properly be held morally responsible for them. In a paper published in 2018, Filippo Santoni de Sio and Jeroen van den Hoven presented a philosophical account of conditions that need to apply for humans to remain ultimately in control of autonomous weapons and other autonomous systems. The authors suggest systems should be able to respond to a “tracking” condition (relating to relevant moral reasons of the humans designing and deploying the system and relevant facts in the environment in which the system operates) and a “tracing” condition (to enable the outcome of its operations to be traced back to at least one human along the chain of design and operation). The authors also suggest that meaningful human control requires training systems to improve users’ understandings of the risks and responsibilities associated with operating them.

For present purposes, the important point is that meaningful human control requires substantial human inputs.

It is unfortunately also necessary to note that advances in AI have added to the capability of predatory individuals and organizations (including authoritarian governments) to purposefully cause financial and physical harm. In that context, humans may need to focus more attention on protecting themselves from predation.

So, will AI replace humans?

After all that I have written above, perhaps the most appropriate conclusion would be that I am not a prophet, so I don’t claim to know whether AI will replace humans. That is certainly the case if we are talking about what might happen in the 22^nd century or beyond.

However, if we are talking about the next few decades, it is possible to make some relevant points:

• ·       The economic impact of LLMs is likely to be massive. This is a major step in the ongoing process of replacement of human labour by non-human labour.
• ·        The impact of LLMs will be uneven. In the services sector, there is likely to be substantial displacement of human labour engaged in routine cognitive activities; trades that depend on the physical presence of humans will be less affected, and some activities involving human interaction will be largely immune. Automation is likely to continue to proceed at a moderate pace in manufacturing and agriculture.
• ·        A major human input will still be required to verify AI output. Firms will need verification to protect their reputations.
• ·        Existing legal and regulatory frameworks hold humans responsible when AI assisted outcomes go wrong –  providing additional incentives for human verification.  

Even after taking account of the human labour required to verify output, we are obviously still talking about substantial displacement of human labour. However, that doesn’t necessarily translate into a situation where there will be growing numbers of intelligent humans either enjoying a life of leisure (or sitting in their homes twiddling their thumbs).

This brings me back to the bottom line of my 2015 essay - that the wage impact of automation would be a relatively small part of the total impact of technological change on the quality of life. For the next decade or two, I think that claim still holds, for the reasons set out above: uneven diffusion, the persistence of human-interaction and physical-presence work, and the ongoing need for human verification. Over a longer horizon, as compute costs continue to fall and verification itself becomes easier to scale, I am considerably less confident the claim will hold - which only means my 2015 self was answering a shorter-run question than he realised.

A massive growth of productivity offers potential for a massive expansion in human leisure, but that outcome isn’t inevitable. It is worth remembering in that amid the Great Depression of the 1930s John Maynard Keynes predicted (in an essay entitled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”) that by now we would be able to satisfy our needs without having to work more than three hours a day. Average incomes rose more than Keynes predicted and working hours fell much more gradually. Keynes had no way to predict the emergence of new products to satisfy needs that consumers didn’t know they had.

It remains an open question of whether humans will use the growth of productivity resulting from AI for increased leisure, or whether they will continue to work long hours to earn the income required to satisfy needs that they don’t yet know they have.

What can Libertarians Learn from Foucault?

 

Before reading Mark Pennington’s recent book, Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom, it would not have occurred to me that libertarians could learn anything from the social theories of Michel Foucault. Pennington has persuaded me that some beliefs associated with Foucault, and postmodernism more generally, are not devoid of merit. As will be discussed below, however, the beliefs that he identifies as postmodern differ somewhat from the collection of beliefs that I have hitherto associated with postmodernism.

Pennington claims that liberals who are concerned about over-government can learn from Foucault about “multiple sources and potential forms of this ‘over-government’ in modern societies and how these threats to freedom have been neglected by, and in some cases resulted from, the dominant strands in liberal thought”.

The author aims “to enunciate the elements of a postmodern liberalism, and to show how this perspective might engage in a productive conversation with Foucault in ways that expose the illiberalism of contemporary societies and the dominant forms of social science and political philosophy that contribute to this state of affairs”.

Before considering Pennington’s claims about what liberals can learn from Foucault and the potential for liberals to engage productively with his ideas, I need to clarify how Pennington is able to argue that some of Foucault’s views are worthy of consideration and what Pennington means by “postmodern liberalism”.

Foucault’s views

 The main problem I have with the postmodernist movement is its disrespect for reason, truth and knowledge. Stephen Hicks suggests that Foucault’s views illustrate the direction and tone of the postmodern intellectual world:

“Michel Foucault has identified the major targets: “All my analyses are against the idea of universal necessities in human existence.” Such necessities must be swept aside as baggage from the past: “It is meaningless to speak in the name of—or against—Reason, Truth, or Knowledge”.” (The sources of the quoted passages are cited in Hicks, 2004.)

Hicks explains that Foucault reduces knowledge to an expression of social power and urges that we play the brutal power politics game on behalf of the traditionally disempowered.

Pennington recognizes that Foucault has often been accused of undercutting the basis of his own critical analysis:

“If all knowledge is reflective of an arbitrary ‘will to truth’, then what of Foucault’s own truth claims?” 

More specifically:

“If all truth claims are understood as merely a way of exercising power over others, then how are people to know which if any of the ‘intolerable’ practices they find themselves in are worth challenging or resisting, let alone what might replace them.”

However, Pennington observes that there are many Foucaults, “reflected in the shifting emphases, styles of analysis and reinterpretations of his own words”:    

“Towards the end of his life … notably in essays such as ‘What Is Enlightenment?’, Foucault softened the power/knowledge coupling, adopting a stance that does not deny that there are better and worse forms of argument or that there are some more or less valid forms of knowledge; rather, he emphasises the importance of uncertainty, of keeping all truth claims under scrutiny, and of being aware of the routinised social processes that might block that very scrutiny.”

If postmodernism is characterized by the idea that truth claims merely reflect the exercise of social power, perhaps it could be said that towards the end of his life, Foucault’s views became somewhat less postmodern.

 Postmodern liberalism

In outlining the elements of “postmodern liberalism” Pennington notes:

“This ‘postmodern’ liberalism has not previously been coherently articulated, but strands of it are detectable in the writings of F. A Hayek, those of Deirdre McCloskey, and elements of the contemporary Austrian school of economics, as well as in the context of political philosophy apart from Hayek in the works of Michael Oakeshott, Gerald Gaus, and Chandran Kukathas.”

I have considerable knowledge of the views of some of those authors and great respect for all of them. I am not comfortable with their views being labelled as postmodern, even though some of them might not object to that label.

Pennington seems to me to be distancing “postmodern liberalism” from postmodernism when he acknowledges that it is possible to assess “the comparative plausibility of competing narrative explanations” and “social scientific truth claims”.

In his concluding chapter Pennington notes that the elements of “postmodern liberalism” include, among other things, a “philosophy of social science sceptical of socio-economic positivism and the efforts of conscious control it fosters”.

It seems to me that Pennington’s philosophy of social science could appropriately be labelled “unpretentious liberalism”. It stands apart from the pretence of knowledge and scientism associated with socio-economic positivism, without endorsing postmodernism’s disrespect for reason, truth and knowledge.

I hope the book will attract many readers who identify as postmodernists and that they will be captivated by the concept of postmodern liberalism. However, those who (like me) are allergic to postmodernism, may find the book easier to read if they substitute the words “unpretentious liberalism” whenever they see “postmodernism liberalism”.

Should libertarians attempt to influence culture?

Before considering what libertarians can learn from Foucault, it seems appropriate to acknowledge that there is nothing new about the idea that libertarians should take an interest in culture.

That is apparent in the consideration of interactions between culture and political institutions in a discussion between Chris Matthew Sciabarra and me entitled, “Should Libertarians be Attempting to Influence Culture?” which published on this blog in September 2024. The discussion began by considering John Stuart Mill’s concerns about the “tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling” and moved from there to considering Sciabarra’s interpretation of Ayn Rand’s view of power relationships. Sciabarra presented a Tri-level Model of Power Relations which was first derived from his reconstruction of Ayn Rand’s critical analyses of social problems, outlined in Part Three of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (Sciabarra, 2013).

In introducing his discussion of Rand’s view of power relationships, Chris Sciabarra commented:

“Winton suggests that Enlightenment humanism has been preoccupied with reason and reality, while postmodernism has been preoccupied with the use of power. Hence, it is startling that Rand, who most certainly placed herself in the reason and reality camp, also emerged with a critique of power relations.”

The question under discussion provoked responses from several libertarians and classical liberals. The response of Douglass Rasmussen, joint author of Norms of Liberty (Rasmussen and Den Uyl, 2005) is pertinent to this essay:

“Is there not a difference between saying libertarianism qua political philosophy should attempt to change culture and saying that a libertarian concerned in advancing libertarianism should attempt to change culture? The former concerns what the political/legal order should do, and the latter concerns what individuals should do.”

As I see it, attempting to understand the consequences for liberty and individual flourishing of interactions between culture, markets, social movements and government regulation does not obviate or preclude attempts to define the nature of a political/legal order that can ensure that individuals can flourish in different ways without colliding.

Foucault’s liberalism

 From my perspective, one of the most interesting aspects of Foucault’s philosophy, as discussed by Pennington, is his account of discourses as a kind of spontaneous order phenomenon.  Foucault challenges the role of individual or collective agency in the operation of power regimes. Power works through chainlike or network effects. As people adopt certain discourses they influence the actions of others.

Power does not emanate from a single point in a network. It emerges from diverse and at time contradictory attempts by actors to assert their place in society. There is no identifiable author of power relations. As Pennington puts it:

“The discourses and disciplines producing people’s patterns of thought, positionality and interests are largely unintended consequences of the multiple attempts to affect the conduct of others.”

 Thus, while power relations may appear to have a coherent structure, there is no single purpose, intention, or meaning that underlies that structure.

States of domination arise when a set of discourses align or crystalize with each other and with the juridical power of the state. Scientific discourses can pose a problem where people come to be classified relative to various norms (e.g. as deviant, perverted, insane) and subjected to discipline (which may include social punishments). In addition, bio-power operates through interventions to change social, economic or environmental conditions in the name of improving population health or providing security.

Pennington suggests that “it is with Foucault’s concept of bio-power and especially its economic manifestations where the most significant possibilities for a dialogue between the Foucauldian and postmodern liberal perspectives lies”. Late in Foucault’s career he “seems to favour an environment that preserves a ‘pluralism of rationalities’ so that people might remain alert to the possibility of multiple ways of their being governed and not being frozen into a particular classificatory grid and the roles and positions it creates”.

In my view, Foucault’s decentred account of power relations is often more plausible than theories which reduce the exercise of power to holding of positions in political office. A decentred account is consistent with the conclusion of my recent series of essays on political entrepreneurship. Even though it is possible to identify the policies adopted in some countries with the ideologies of authoritarian political leaders, I suggest:

“The problem of ensuring adoption of government policies that more consistently advance economic and personal freedom cannot be reduced to the question of how to elect better political entrepreneurs to national leadership positions. Institutional change is a complex process involving social movements, media organizations, and interactions between individual citizens, as well as local and national politics.”

I concur with Pennington that Foucault’s view of power relations provides support for an unpretentious liberalism which is deeply skeptical of economic and philosophical approaches which presuppose that the welfare of the population can be secured by a form of expert rule.

In Part II of his book, Pennington uses his theoretical lens to examine complex networks of institutional, physical, and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures associated with social justice, public health, ecological sustainability, and crime and punishment. He critically examines various overlapping systems of power - some focused on managing populations and others focused on guiding individuals. (In this paragraph I have relied on Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, to help translate the technical Foucauldian phrasing in Pennington’s summary – words including “dispositifs”, “bio-political” and “pastoral” - into plainer English.)

These systems share three features: (1) an excessive faith that social and economic life can be understood and controlled with scientific precision, (2) a belief that some central “steering” intelligence can identify and fix deviations from expected patterns, and (3) a bureaucratic, top-down way of handling risk. The author demonstrates that these features tend to shrink the space in which individuals can act freely.

Conclusion

So, what can libertarians learn from Foucault? Pennington's answer, as I read it, is not that libertarians should adopt postmodernism's skepticism of reason and truth - that skepticism, taken to its logical end, undercuts the very possibility of arguing for freedom over domination. Rather, what is valuable in Foucault is his decentred account of power: the recognition that domination need not flow from a single source or a deliberate design, but can emerge from the unintended convergence of discourses, institutions, and expert classifications. This is a lesson that liberals have sometimes neglected, having focused their concern about over-government on the formal power of the state while overlooking the more diffuse mechanisms in social justice, public health, ecological policy, and criminal justice that narrow the space for individuals to govern their own lives.

What Pennington calls postmodern liberalism – I prefer to call it "unpretentious liberalism" - captures what is worth taking from this encounter: a liberalism skeptical of the pretence of expert knowledge and socio-economic positivism, without embracing postmodernism's disrespect for reason and truth. Pennington's Foucault, particularly the later Foucault of "What Is Enlightenment?", is compatible with this project because he does not deny that some truth claims are better than others - he simply insists that we remain alert to the ways power can masquerade as expertise, and that we preserve a plurality of ways of being governed rather than being frozen into a single classificatory grid. That, it seems to me, is a genuinely liberal insight, however unfamiliar its Foucauldian packaging may be to libertarians who have, like me, generally kept their distance from postmodern thought.

References

Hicks, Stephen R. C., Explaining Postmodernism (Scholargy Publishing, 2004).

Pennington, Mark, Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Rasmussen, Douglas B., and Den Uyl, Douglas J, Norms of Liberty (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005).

Sciabarra, Chris Matthew, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, Second Edition (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013).