Blog by Cass Sunstein: “In the last fifty years or so, there has been an explosion of empirical work on how and when human beings depart from perfect rationality. This work has led, not surprisingly, to a rethinking of paternalism and its limits.
We now have three camps, more or less:
- coercive paternalists, who urge that behavioral findings greatly strengthen arguments for mandates and bans (and leave John Stuart Mill in the dust, more or less);
- libertarian paternalists, who urge that behavioral findings point to a host of freedom-preserving interventions, such as warnings, reminders, and automatic enrollment; and
- antipaternalists, who urge that behavioral findings justify only, or at most, efforts to strengthen people’s capacities to make good choices.
It is important to see that each of the three views can be taken as a dogma, or a fighting faith, or instead as a presumption or an inclination.
For example, you could be a libertarian paternalist while also liking some mandates and bans (for example, compulsory seatbelt laws and social security laws). I like libertarian paternalism, but I certainly agree that there is a place for mandates and bans, even to protect people from their own mistakes. You could be an antipaternalist while also liking some nudges (for example, warnings about allergens). Still, presumptions and inclinations matter a lot.
A whole book could easily be written on the underlying debates. (I may have written one; who knows?) My main purpose here is far more modest. It is to put members of the three camps in the same room, so to speak, and to see what they might have to say to each other…(More)”.
