I don’t want to pick any position here but I think one problem of ex-post moral judgements is that the failures themselves can be valuable lessons. Generally, governments seem to underrate the value of experiments—imagine if welfare interventions or tax policies utilized an RCT approach.
Natural experiments that showed any culture is compatible with freedom (e.g. South vs. North Korea; mainland China vs. Taiwan), that healthcare & education can be cheaper even with a government-run system (USA vs. EU) or that central planning seems worse for welfare (West vs. East Germany) - seem like a really important driver of progress.
I don’t want to pick any position here but I think one problem of ex-post moral judgements is that the failures themselves can be valuable lessons. Generally, governments seem to underrate the value of experiments—imagine if welfare interventions or tax policies utilized an RCT approach.
Natural experiments that showed any culture is compatible with freedom (e.g. South vs. North Korea; mainland China vs. Taiwan), that healthcare & education can be cheaper even with a government-run system (USA vs. EU) or that central planning seems worse for welfare (West vs. East Germany) - seem like a really important driver of progress.