@Matt: If any change from SQ is social engineering, then I’m happy for libertarians to be called social engineers.

“Nobody is forced to take drugs with the removal of drug prohibition”

If drug taking choices are strategic complements, then the criminalisation of drugs could be seen as a co-ordination policy on the behalf of society.

“the shift from targeted benefits to either a demigrant or a negative income tax increases poor peoples’ freedom of choice”

Negative income taxes are still a form of redistribution, what type of redistribution is preferable should be determined by society not necessarily by technocratic views of efficiency. Of course you have already mentioned this in your comment.

“nobody is forced to migrate here”

Agreed.

“Moreover, individuals can still form voluntary collectives for any purpose they like”

However, collective agreements formed through government may be cheaper and/or easier to enforce. By forcing individuals to co-operate in other ways this seems to place a binding cost on society.

“If the status quo is socially engineered, does any change in the status quo count as social engineering?”

That is also a good point. I was thinking about going down that path when discussing this, but decided to go with the whole social contract = government line instead.

Overall I agree with the policies you’ve put down myself, I am just trying to come up with a social engineering line for kicks. After all, pretty much anything can be defined as social engineering insofar as all policies impact on the incentives, and thereby choices of, individuals in society.

I presume there are plenty of valid arguments to make on this point and I’d be curious to hear them, but the superficial appearance of hypocrisy is what I was referring to.

That is the point though – if libertarians break up collectives that individual want to form, because they believe that the organisation is coercive for some reason, then they are actually betraying individual freedom.

If this is the case in a certain situation I guess you could claim that some libertarian actions could be seen as social engineering.

I suppose that if we viewed government as an organisation that evolved from the will of the people, then interest groups saying that we should remove or reduce government involvement could be seen as a type of social engineering right.

People want solutions to their co-ordination problems which they know they can’t apply at an individual level, yet libertarians are forcing them to act as individuals – social engineering right there.

@Rauparaha: Re radically prescriptive social engineering: I’m curious what policy proposals from libertarians you’d count in this category. Drug legalization? Shifting from welfare to a negative income tax? Easier immigration? They’d all of course affect social outcomes, but I’m not sure they count as social engineering. I’d always thought of social engineering as trying to get folks to do stuff they really don’t want to be doing: nudge controls and stronger.