(Most forms of) Consequentialism and politics

Consequentialism is the view that right actions are those that maximise the amount of value in the world (or: "do most good"). Normally, consequentialists will define value, or good, in some fairly predictable manner, namely, largely concerning the welfare of humans and (probably) non-human animals.

One interesting consequence of such a view is that consequentialists have very little to offer on politics. Our response ought to be something like: "Go ask the economists, political scientists, or social scientists". These are the people who work out the exact effects of various policies.

It is only in other non-consequentialist camps that one finds views that treat certain prima facie relevant factual information as irrelevant. Some libertarians may hold that the effects of progressive taxation are irrelevant given the injustice of state-sponsored theft, some left-wing liberals may hold that the justifiability of positive-discrimination may be independent of its non-symbolic value, and so on. Consequentialists, on the other hand, take the social sciences to be the key to politics.

This isn't necessarily a reason to be consequentialist! But it is interesting to note that one of consequentialism's main implications may be a negative one: That ethics has little to contribute to politics beyond the obvious - "people's welfare matters".