I’m not talking about giving up principles. I’m talking about haveing the wisdom and insight to exercise those principles to their optimum effect. In order to make a fair comparision you must put both in the same scenario. In this case you gave the consequentialist best case and principalist worst case.
The consequentialist faces the problem of trying to figure the best outcome. He can’t know so he makes an educated guess based on what? Experience. Wisdom. Insight. Those are the same tools the principalists uses to accomplish the same goals. I don’t think one method is obviously better than the other. If the principalist is wise he will look toward the desired consequence in chooseing how to exercise those principles. He steps into the realm of a consequentialist while still useing principles. A consequentialist may discover with experience that honesty is consistantly a good guideline for positive outcome. In that case he steps over into the realm of principles while still being a consequentialist.
As I said, principles are guidelines to help us make decisions within society. They’re not perfect, but I think they serve a useful purpose. They are a foundation to build upon as we gain experience. You can make a valid point that if we were all consequentialist we don’t need them. I think even starting from scratch as consequentialists we would develop principles. General guidelines.
Think about this. What if we could somehow make everyone on this planet tell the truth all the time. Certainly there would be chaos at first but give it a couple of years for things to settle down. Do you imagine that the world would be better if we knew everyone was always telling the truth and everyone knew we always did too?