Comments on: Libertarian Paternalism: The Revenge

By: Dave W.

Dave W. — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:27:29 +0000

My favorite form of libertarian paternalism is government mandated nutritional labeling. I see this form of paternalism as high preferable to food bans.

By: Arkady

Arkady — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 06:48:28 +0000

I think you’re both right: innocuous policy A could be a good option if it moves you away from a pre-existing intrusive policy B, or if it diffuses political support for policy B (although given the history of slippery slopes and reductio creep, I’m not sure the second scenario really occurs in the long run).

But if the examples in Glen’s post are at all representative, then voluntary casino blacklists and different retirement plan defaults aren’t really of the same degree (plus, you can imagine how either of them might arise — and have before — without state coercion). If Sunstein and Thaler “would be willing to impose real [I assume here they mean large] costs on workers and consumers who seek to do what, in the paternalist’s view, would not be in their best interests,” then I don’t understand how that is any different from the same old normal paternalism.

By: Julian Sanchez

Julian Sanchez — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 02:10:07 +0000

Glen: Well, not for cases where we’re already at the bottom of the slope. Something like the no-gambling list might make the legalization of gambling in more areas more palatable; you can imagine some parallel system for recreational drugs.

By: Dave W.

Dave W. — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:44:24 +0000

Nice post!

By: Glen Whitman

Glen Whitman — Thu, 31 May 2007 23:24:37 +0000

I think your metaphors are in conflict, Julian. If you think the slippery slope is the most serious objection to libertarian paternalism, you can’t follow that by saying you’d like a little bit of soft paternalism as a vaccine against hard paternalism. These are contradictory mechanisms. The slippery slope mechanism says that innocuous policy A increases the likelihood of intrusive policy B. The vaccine mechanism says that innocuous policy A decreases the likelihood of intrusive policy B.

I also think you should take the semantic arguments more seriously, because it is precisely through semantic manipulation that people like Sunstein & Thaler are greasing the slope. For more on this, see my follow-up post:

http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-libertarian-paternalism-greases.html

By: jadagul

jadagul — Thu, 31 May 2007 22:49:46 +0000

There are certain types of libertarian paternalism that don’t bother me at all. The main example that comes to mind is default contract rules: for instance, I have no problem assuming that any contract that doesn’t explicitly include “will perform sexual favors for coworkers/boss” as a job responsibility includes a tacit provision saying that no such favors are required (as a proponent of legalized prostitution I obviously think contracts that explicitly mandate the performance of sexual acts should be valid). Similarly, I wouldn’t really be upset by something like Glen’s 1-4, such as the presumption of a certain amount of vacation time, as long as overriding that presumption really is as simple as including a “vacation time” clause in the contract.