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Does it imply that if we interfere in another society, that we become responsible for the welfare of the people whose way of life we have disrupted?

I actually though the comparison was less novel than that and could well be drawn from a common law example of duty of care (given Hayek was such a fan of the common law I wouldn’t be surprised). Nsmely the argument is analogous to the argument that if you save someone from drowning, pulling him out of the river but place him in a situation where he is basically for all intents and purposes in your hands, you can’t then just leave him on some isolated river bank to freeze to death but have subsequent responsibility of taking him in and feeding him soup at least if you’ve decided not to call an ambulance.

This statement of yours strikes me as silly “the conservative approach is to treat every piece of timber as sacred and untouchable”.

Which conservatives did you have in mind? Not very interesting ones.

On another point, as you say Hayek “He never explained how we should draw the line between enforcement and tolerance.” Hayek is the master of drawing crucial distinctions and then not really making it clear how you make them.

Exactly. Andrew, your ‘classical liberal’ position is a standard, enlightened, liberal position on culture and ethics. The only real difference I can think of regards the ethics of collective action, as revealed in the attitudes of classical liberals and social democrats toward ‘union thugs’ and ‘scabs’ respectively. But as far as cannibalism and wife-stoning are concerned, let’s do away with the stereotyping and rejoice in our agreement. Then we can concentrate on quarreling about the benefits of public health and education.

Technological change is constantly improving productivity and allowing society to support increasing numbers of people in conditions of material affluence. If we were to revert to the old morality of the pre-industrial West, our economies would collapse and much of the population would starve to death. It is too late to reinstate a ban on usury or demand that factory managers to look after their workers as if they were medieval serfs.

To allow adaptation, Hayek argued that dynamic societies like ours need to allow a certain amount of moral experimentation.

A non utilitarian would be arguing instead about how there was an inherent ‘right’ to private property because of your mixing labour with land, etc.

What Hayek objected to was a more micromanaged form of utilitarianism – he thought it was more prudent to worry about broad outlines as above (e.g. rising material progress) in assessing forms of governance than aiming for some element of false precision (e.g. maximising utility by ensuring everyone’s happiness level at any time was always high) – and his objections to this form of utilitarianism were themselves utilitarian.

There is no conflict between moralising within one’s own society as a utilitarian like the Benthamites and Millians did and moral relativism of the form that Don roightly notes Hayek adheres to – this form of moral relativism only prohibits by logic immanent criticism. Within your own society, you may take certain outlines of preexisting norms as given and then work from there in a piecemeal direction.

Why do you assume that conservatives would be impressed with Hayek?

I wonder whether it’s necessary to couple radical with utopian. The philosophical radicals of James Mill’s circle, with whom I imagine Hayek would identify to a large extent, were not utopian. Indeed, if your starting point is utilitarianism, that would seem to imply simulatneously a radical appraisal of morals and a repudiation of utopian blueprints. You didn’t mention Hayek’s attitude to utilitarianism (though you may have done so elsewhere), but that would be an obvious point of departure for an analysis of his ethics.

I’m sure Jason or Andrew Norton could should some light on that, too.