It’s for your own good!
When society seeks to overrule the individual’s judgment, Mill wrote, it does so on the basis of “general presumptions,” and these “may be altogether wrong, and even if right, are as likely as not to be misapplied to individual cases.” If the goal is to ensure that people’s lives go well, Mill contends that the best solution is for public officials to allow people to find their own path. Here, then, is an enduring argument, instrumental in character, on behalf of free markets and free choice in countless situations, including those in which human beings choose to run risks that may not turn out so well.
Mill’s claim has a great deal of intuitive appeal. But is it right? That is largely an empirical question, and it cannot be adequately answered by introspection and intuition. In recent decades, some of the most important research in social science, coming from psychologists and behavioral economists, has been trying to answer it. That research is having a significant influence on public officials throughout the world. Many believe that behavioral findings are cutting away at some of the foundations of Mill’s harm principle, because they show that people make a lot of mistakes, and that those mistakes can prove extremely damaging. …
To Mill’s claim that individuals are uniquely well situated to know what is best for them, Conly objects that Mill failed to make a critical distinction between means and ends. True, people may know what their ends are, but sometimes they go wrong when they choose how to get them. Most people want to be healthy and to live long lives. If people are gaining a lot of weight, and hence jeopardizing their health, Conly supports paternalism—for example, she favors reducing portion size for many popular foods, on the theory that large, fattening servings can undermine people’s own goals. In her words, paternalism is justified when
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F ck. You. Cass Sunstein
That is all.
soundingboard on February 19, 2013 at 11:08 PM
I won’t click on the link to the article.
To anyone brave enough to do so, are there any rational comments there, or are they mostly 0bama cheerleaders saying how wonderful Cass Sunstein is?
UltimateBob on February 19, 2013 at 11:12 PM
If a bunch of government busybodies are going to try to take away my autonomy under the guise of “science”, could they at least use actual science, rather than things like psychology and economics. If they’re going to be that pseudoscientific, then why not go all the way and just use astrology?
RINO in Name Only on February 20, 2013 at 1:12 AM
From later in the article:
Yes, people do indeed have quite a bit of trouble with probability. Anyone using this as an argument in favor of nanny-state intervention by social scientists has either no sense of irony, or a very twisted sense of humor.
Social scientists expressing concern over other people’s understanding of probability – I’m not sure whether to laugh, sneer, or just weep for mankind.
RINO in Name Only on February 20, 2013 at 1:36 AM
Torches and pitchforks were undoubtedly invented with guys like this in mind.
trigon on February 20, 2013 at 1:46 AM
Actually, I rather like that formulation. Short and to the point.
RINO in Name Only on February 20, 2013 at 1:58 AM
The eternal creed of despots and slave owners.
tommyboy on February 20, 2013 at 5:01 AM
Wow, just wow.
This article is a fantastic find. I really enjoyed reading it. No seriously, I did.
It made me feel fantastic. All time time I fancied myself as someone of moderate intelligence whom still had tons to learn at my ripe old age of 30. Now I’m seeing that I’ve been selling myself short considering I could turn this Cambridge Professor inside out from a philosophical perspective.
I could go on for hours about the specifics of this article. The primary point I’d like to make is the double standards and totally incorrect examples made here. The author tries to argue that people are, in general, incapable of making sound decisions that could benefit their lives. Instead, impartial third party observers are capable of making more objective decisions because they don’t have the small view of life that you do as an individual.
So how is it that people, in general, are incapable of planning for the future or seeing danger but an “outsider” is? How can you, in one breath, claim that individuals are too flawed and narrow minded to make sound decisions but that other people can? Either people are fully capable and equipped to make decisions in their best interests, or they can’t.
But of course the one aspect not mentioned here are the special breed of elite intellectuals who CAN make these decisions for you. They can decide that cigarettes are too dangerous, trans-fats too risky, and those large portion sizes too fattening. Why? Because they are smarter than you are.
I cry foul. Trying to paint small examples like 401k’s as evidence that “nudges” benefit society is quite a stretch. Pretending that “nudges” in the areas of fuel and energy efficiency preserve our freedom of choice is naive. Last I checked, energy policy decisions were LAW, not suggestions. I fail to see how a person could be “nudged” to purchase compact fluorescent light bulbs when the alternative is BANNED from being produced. Likewise, how can society be influenced to stop smoking when smoking is illegal.
This is a far cry from having employees opt out of a 401k rather than opting in. Any idiot can see the difference except for these ivory tower hippies.
Watch out folks because this is the very kind of argument being eaten up by today’s youth. We have spent years coddling our children and now we have individuals who are waiting in the wings to happily make all their hard life choices for them. After all, responsibility is one of the hardest burdens of freedom to accept. There are a lot of people who would gladly abandon that burden for a life free of worry.
Me? I’ll take my chances.
Flashwing on February 20, 2013 at 7:42 AM
^This. The Progressive ideology has made people petrified of becoming adults. Being a free adult, making difficult trade-offs and decisions and facing the responsibility of those decisions, is not easy. It’s very hard and very stressful. This is what the conservative philosophy offers. The Left offers the opposite: perpetual adolescence.
visions on February 20, 2013 at 8:06 AM
YES.
And another YES.
These are Communists in Progressive Liberal’s clothing.
Nobody is taking communist ideology seriously anymore for the cancer that it is.
We are doomed to repeat history bcs that history has been trivialized.
Millions & millions of deaths to communism all swept away.
Badger40 on February 20, 2013 at 8:29 AM
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