{"id":1605,"date":"2013-02-27T20:31:43","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T01:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/hlpr\/?p=1605"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:22:06","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:22:06","slug":"in-defense-of-paternalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2013\/02\/27\/in-defense-of-paternalism\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Paternalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mark Wilson<\/p>\n

<\/em>Policies designed to encourage people to do things that are good for them, and discourage people from doing things that are bad for them, are not in vogue. They\u2019re derided as the province of a \u201cnanny state<\/a>\u201d that wants to override private individuals\u2019 ability to decide what\u2019s good for them.
\n
\nCass Sunstein, co-author of\u00a0Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness<\/em>, isn\u2019t so sure. In\u00a0The New York Review of Books<\/em>\u00a0this week,\u00a0Sunstein reviews another book<\/a>\u00a0about \u201ccoercive paternalism,\u201d concluding that paternalism isn\u2019t such a bad thing, after all. In the abstract, personal autonomy\u2014including a person\u2019s ability to judge the consequences of his or her actions\u2014is vital. Empirically, however, we\u2019re terrible at judging risk (as Bruce Schneier has pointed out, we have a bias toward the spectacular, even though spectacular threats, like shark attacks, are extremely unlikely to occur). We\u2019re also really bad at gauging outcomes and evaluating our own competence compared to others; Sunstein notes that 80 percent of drivers in one survey \u201cwere found to believe that they were safer and more skillful than the median driver.\u201d It\u2019s not that people are stupid; it\u2019s that our feeble human brains are easily lured into\u00a0many of the dozens of cognitive biases<\/a>\u00a0out there. Many of us also don\u2019t have sufficient information to make a well-informed decision.<\/p>\n

This presents a\u00a0quandary\u00a0for policy-makers. Yes, we value autonomy, but at the same time, must the state sit idly by as its citizens make objectively poor decisions? When people use their personal autonomy to make bad decisions, it\u2019s often everyone else who foots the bill.<\/p>\n

Sarah Conly, author of\u00a0the book<\/a>\u00a0Sunstein reviews, advocates a middle ground. John Stuart Mill\u2019s proscription on the state outlawing bad behaviors still stands, but the state should be permitted to gently coerce (\u201cnudge\u201d) people in the right direction. Don\u2019t ban sugary drinks, but do impose a tax on the drinks, or limit portion sizes.<\/p>\n

As we learn more about human brains, we\u2019re inevitably drawn away from the\u00a0Lochner<\/em>\u00a0era\u2019s veneration of personal choice and responsibility and into a world where people are easily fooled, to their detriment, by advertising and suggestion. And sometimes, the exercise of personal choice in the abstract is heavily outweighed by the probability of harm caused by making a bad decision and the magnitude of that harm.\u00a0Tucker Carlson famously once said<\/a>\u00a0that he doesn\u2019t wear a seat belt simply because the government makes him do it. But how would he be able to exercise his personal liberty after he had been thrown through a windshield at 50 miles per hour? It\u2019s the most\u00a0Pyrrhic\u00a0of\u00a0Pyrrhic\u00a0victories.<\/p>\n

In 2010, conservatives were outraged\u2014outraged!<\/em>\u2014that President Obama would presume to require everyone to have health insurance. But what does not having health insurance get you? (You can find out by reading\u00a0Steven Brill\u2019s\u00a0Time<\/em>\u00a0cover story<\/a>. TL; DR: lots of expensive bills that you can\u2019t pay.) It\u2019s hard to exercise personal liberty when you\u2019re dying or dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mark Wilson Policies designed to encourage people to do things that are good for them, and discourage people from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-pT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}