Montana’s general claim—that “military spending offers trade-offs rather than simply regressive effects”—seems uncontroversial. Nearly everything offers trade-offs. What I hope to show is that accepting Montana’s view commits us, as many formal arguments do, to absolutely nothing about concrete decision-making.

Let’s see what happens when we tweak the substance of Montana’s argument while leaving intact its form.

  1. The earth is perpetually at risk of being colonized by an extraterrestrial military, and nothing but anti-alien ballistics research will reduce this risk.
  2. Anti-alien ballistics research cannot guarantee our safety, but the earth’s safety is much more likely if we do spend on anti-alien ballistics research than if we don’t.
  3. Alien colonization would be the worst thing possible for the poor in this world (or at least it would be disproportionately very bad for the poor).

From which it follows…

  1. Every dollar spent on anti-alien ballistics research will make alien colonization less likely, which is good for the poor insofar as it reduces the likelihood of inter-planetary cataclysm.

Montana’s argument will probably strike the reader as more reasonable than mine. But further reflection should quash this discrepancy. In fact, our arguments are equally reasonable. Once you accept Disaster Scenario in question as “really bad for poor people,” you must conclude that the spending in question—defense spending, on the one hand, and anti-alien ballistics, on the other—yields a contingent benefit for the poor. (“Contingent,” because the benefit is a hedge against Disaster Scenarios that may or may not transpire.) And once you accept the (contingent) reality of this benefit, the types of spending in question become by definition “trade-offs,” notwithstanding their more overtly regressive effects. Because the existence of a trade-off is all that you are supposed to be convinced of, the arguments do not turn, whatsoever, on the likelihood of the Disaster Scenario. They turn only on (a) the effect of the Disaster Scenario on poor people (bad!), and (b) the mitigating effect of the particular type of defense spending on the particular Disaster Scenario.

Now, for the important question. Does my argument convince you that progressives should be happy dedicating resources to anti-alien ballistics? I hope not, but not because that’s necessarily a bad things for progressives to advocate. I hope not because my argument doesn’t address the question of practical policy at all. My argument, like Montana’s argument, was aimed only to help you appreciate the extent to which progressive people’s community of concern—the poor—contingently benefits from an outwardly non-progressive type of spending. This tells you exactly nothing, though, about whether that type of spending is the one that we should actually pursue.

Here’s how I imagine Montana responding to this: “Brennan-Marquez has missed the point of my argument. Progressives tend to see military spending as categorically regressive. My point was simply to show that, even if military spending is regressive on balance, it is not categorically regressive.” This is a reasonable response.[1] But I’m still left wondering what Montana’s argument accomplishes, if its aim is, in fact, so modest. Is it supposed to steer progressives more in favor of military spending as a practical matter? I don’t think so, because, once again, the argument entails nothing about spending in a practical sense. All government spending takes place in a matrix of trade-offs. To point out that the matrix exists does not tell us how to actually spend money.

Another hypothesis—Is the argument supposed to make progressives feel better when they read statistics about defense spending? Perhaps, but it doesn’t seem to accomplish that either. If I’m morally opposed to the primary effect of Policy X, it’s unlikely to assuage me that Policy X has some marginally beneficial secondary effect. Suppose I said: Conservatives shouldn’t be as upset as they are about federal dollars being spent on abortion. That policy looks categorically progressive, but it isn’t, because every time federal dollars contribute to the termination of a fetus that would have grown up to be on welfare, a conservative agenda—less welfare, smaller government—is marginally advanced! And sure, the advancement is contingent, but that shouldn’t worry us: all I mean to show is that federal spending on abortion is a trade-off for conservatives, not a categorically bad thing.

This argument is the same, in form, as Montana’s. I am merely intending persuade my interlocutor that increased funding for abortions is not absolutely opposed to conservative values; that it is, in fact, a trade-off with respect to conservative values. At this point, my interlocutor, if she is thoughtful, will object that the trade-off, even if accepted as true, doesn’t matter; she still opposes the policy. To which I parry: No, you are missing the point, I simply want you to admit of the trade-off! To which she reposts: No, you are missing the point. I have already, comfortably, admitted of the trade-off. It changes nothing. The policy is still heinous.

[1] Congratulations are due to Montana for being reasonable when I write his rebuttals for him.