The Latest Neocon Thoughtscam

Most often the state compels you to do things, not because these things are supposed to be good for you, but because they fulfill the state’s purposes. The state doesn’t take your money to help you. Sometimes, though, the state does pass laws that claim to restrict people for their own good, e.g., laws that forbid use of certain drugs that are supposed to be bad for your health. Laws of this kind are called paternalistic.

Libertarians of course oppose paternalism, but it is not only libertarians who reject it. It is at odds with the entire heritage of classical liberalism. John Stuart Mill famously opposed paternalism in On Liberty; and it is Cass Sunstein’s principal aim in Why Nudge?: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism to cast doubt on Mill’s canonical statement of anti-paternalism, the Harm Principle. This principle is

Sunstein criticizes another argument for the Harm Principle. This argument appeals to autonomy: “We might insist that people have a right to choose and that government cannot legitimately intrude on that right even when it does in fact know best. … On this view, people should not be regarded as children; they should be treated with respect. They should be seen as ends, not means.”

This is of course the second formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative and is today widely accepted as a principle of morality, even by philosophers not in orientation Kantian. Unfortunately, Sunstein is tone deaf to its force. He thinks preference for freedom of choice is at best a component of welfare. If it is taken to be more than this, it stems from System 1 thinking: it is a “rapid, intuitive judgment about welfare.” Besides, many people do not want what they consider an overabundance of choices. (But aren’t such people free to seek situations where they would confront fewer alternatives?) I fear that Sunstein, like all-too-many economists, is so committed to welfare as the objective of morality that he is unable to understand respect for persons. This phenomenon is itself a cognitive defect, albeit one that has yet to attract the attention of behavioral economists. I do not recommend government intervention, even the mildest nudge, to correct it.

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