A lot of the differences between ideological views boil down to differences about what does it mean to lead a "good" life. This much is pretty clear. But sometimes I feel as if we can get a lot of mileage in this direction by focusing on a surprisingly narrow set of elements.
Take consumption, for example. The ability of individuals to make their consumption choices is, as far as I can tell, one of the key elements of the libertarian (and sometimes conservative) view of what a "good" life is. If you believe that, then you value institutions that preserve the scope of choice per se, regardless of the final outcome.
Before I trash this (and, to some extent, I will), I want to pause to take it seriously. Conservatives think that socialism somehow infantilizes citizens by offering them a lot of goods and services without choice. I can see how this would be hurtful if you have to live on state-provided rations of everything including clothing and food. In that sense, yes, part of what it means to be a fully developed human being is the ability to make choices over consumption. That is an undeniable element of agency and, in a pinch, I would say that it belongs to the list of Rawlsian "bases of self-respect."
But I don't understand why this particular value ought to take precedence over everything else. All my professional life I've been working in American universities, typical big employers, which means that I don't get to choose my health plan, or have a very limited set of choices. It hasn't bothered me at all. Not that I am thrilled with my health plan (it could be better), but I don't feel demeaned in any serious way by having it handed down to me by the university's administration. In fact, I wouldn't know how to choose if they suddenly sent me out to the jungle of private competition.
From a slightly more philosophical point of view, it is hard to see why consumption should be the central locus of individual freedom. If we decided to make a list of activities that elevate us and promote human flourishing, consumption would not be on the top of the list. It would be on the list, for sure. I, for one, consider myself a decent home cook and take pride on preparing a nice meal. You can say that, for me, cooking a good meal is one of those activities that help me reach my Aristotelian excellence. (I exaggerate, of course, I don't do it all the time, but you get the point.) But it is exceedingly reductionist to consider the agency involved in consumption as paramount, above and beyond, say, the agency involved in enjoying the products of high culture.
I know the objection: I am assuming that there is one definition of what it means to lead a good life and, therefore, I am already prejudging that consumption doesn't rise to the top whereas under other definitions it might. In that sense, I am a perfectionist (in the ethical sense of the word), unsuited to live in a pluralist society with different views of what the good life is.
But not so fast. Isn't there a saying that an unexamined life is not worth living? I think people from different philosophical persuasions ought to be able to agree that, whatever else belongs to the definition of a "good" life, it would include a reflexive component whereas we not only form our own plans for a "good" life, but also can revise them and subject them to scrutiny. From that point of view, hitching our definition of a good life to a static end-product such as consumption seems too limited.
In that regard, I think that the Aristotelian-Marxist view that work is the source of the highest form of human flourishing, whereas limited, is superior. Craftmanship is an open-ended process. Intuitively, there is a deeper sense of human excellence in a work than in consumption. I now have a more jaundiced view than I used to in this regard. Probably Marx was too upbeat in considering work (non-alienated work, that is) as the ultimate manifestation of human excellence. In that sense, a doses of pluralism is a good thing. Rather than try to find exactly what is it that makes us human, and therefore, what is the most authentic form of excellence, it might be better simply to admit that human beings will form all sorts of plans and will find excellence and flourishing in the most unexpected places.
But, although this may sound libertarian, it is a specific type of libertarianism: left-wing libertarianism. If you agree with what I just said, then you should conclude that maximizing opportunities for human flourishing is not the same as maximizing opportunities for consumption because consumption is itself only one particular site of self-realization, albeit a non-trivial one. So, a society that enables individuals to pursue a "good" life will sometimes limit their choice of consumption if it is the price to be paid for other types of opportunities.
Nothing here is earth-shattering. It's been said a lot. I just think that it's nice to be able to restate all this starting from a serious consideration of what consumption is. We don't do that systematically, either from the left or from the right.
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