TheAgitator.com
Nudged
Thursday, January 8th, 2009All hail the rise of “soft paternalism:”
The incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama will name Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor who pioneered efforts to design regulation around the ways people behave, as regulatory czar, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A report on WSJ.com said Sunstein would head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, overseeing “regulations throughout the government, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.”
Will Wilkinson slapped around Sunstein’s Nudge in the October 2008 issue of Reason.
So, he’s the Chief Regulator of Regulations. Hilarious in a not really hilarious sort of way.
At least he knows of the word “libertarian” (if not fully appreciative of its meaning). The position of “regulatory czar” could be held by someone a lot worse.
I don’t think libertarians should be dismissing soft paternalism. The unfortunate reality is that regulations are always going to be there. At least these are regulations you can opt out of.
Whoo-hoo, another czar. Crap.
“Follow me, stupid masses, I shall show you the light. Or make you eat bullets if you refuse.”
How about this-
“Leave me the fuck alone, asshole”. Or to quote the child River Tam, from the movie “Serenity”
“People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.”
Everytime the Gov wants to help, run screaming in the other direction- every thing they want to “help” with will have a nasty unexpected consequence to YOU.
Damn, the social engineers just can’t take hints. Heinlein was right:
“Political tags–such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and. so forth–are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
I’ll take the curmudgeons, please.
Ditto on the curmudgeons
I think in real world terms I agree with post number 3. The difference between ‘the way the world should be’ libertarianism and ‘get things done’ libertarianism is that in the real world liberty is not the default premise of a large number of people who have power to set the rules. Apart from his entirely valid ‘much of this has been said before and is just being repackaged’ argument which applies to most ‘big idea’ books Will’s other key argument is essentially based on the slippery slope.
It’s certainly true that ‘libertarian paternlism’ can easily slip into just paternalism if the political winds change. That’s true of any public policy in a marketplace of competing political ideas and it isn’t in practice any different to the fear from paternalists that a compromise on their part into libertarian paternalism could slip into free choice (with all the ensuing evils they envisage).
It’s precisely by demonstrating to the sceptical that freedom of choice doesn’t lead to wanton anti-social behaviour that we put the lie to the moral fervour of the social conservatives and blunt their fear-mongering. The incentive they have to play ball is that if they genuinely believe violent upheaval will follow a loosening of the rules then a limited demonstration will strengthen their own case.
That isn’t to say that we should settle for ‘nudges’ if we can get unfiltered freedom. The problem there is that I haven’t seen an awful lot of that in government policymaking lately, and if this signals a move from breaking down our doors to patronising us then I see that as a small positive step.
Man, I can’t wait for all the artist, poets, teachers, and musicians to start squawking about the big-brother nannyism of the incoming Obama administration…
Hah, oh wait – that only happens when it’s someone from the GOP.
This, along with the appointments of Clinton to a cabinet position and the DOJ position for the ex-RIAA lawyer, just makes me feel like laughing at all the dopes who voted him in on the CHANGE/HOPE/UNICORNS platform. At this level of politics, the political machinery kicks the ideals in the ass every time.
The government’s “nudge” will inevitably turn into a “violent shove.” I don’t need your nudge, BHO.
http://rightklik.net
I have a couple problems with “libertarian paternalism” (aside from hating the name) as an approach to government policy. The obvious one is that it buys into the same fallacy as other well-intended statism: Somehow the enlightened government is going to be better at making the determination of what the “best” choice is than the benighted governed are. I mean, yes, it is obvious that people are not always rational decision-makers. But, that really doesn’t justify more government action because the government isn’t composed of rational decision-makers either and there is no evidence that they are better at it than we are. And, in reality, government will be worse because they will never have as strong an incentive to do what’s in our best interest as we do.
Just as important an objection is that in practice the new paternalism just encourages more government interference. There is no way the old government paternalism is going away, so instead of supplanting fines and jail time and bullets through the head at 3 AM with gentle “nudges”, we’ll still have all of the coercive force plus a bunch of government nannies nagging us toward their politically or bureaucratically determined best choice. In other words, instead of looking at the existing glut of government laws and regulations and saying “let’s get rid of most of these and let people make their own choices, but present the best choice in a way that people will naturally prefer it”, what will really happen is that all of the old regulations will remain and the government will look to whole new areas in which to “offer” preferred choices. Keep in mind that those choices are already there; government won’t generally create new choices, it will only interpose itself to tweak the incentives about the choices we already have.
And, of course, we are still talking about government. So, when not enough people opt for the “best” choice that our wise masters have chosen for us, there won’t be any more hesitation than there is now to impose direct punishment for choosing the others.