tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3829599.post114489113185329346..comments2024-01-28T00:20:40.933-08:00Comments on Agoraphilia: Slippery Paternalist RhetoricUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3829599.post-1144954097045812282006-04-13T11:48:00.000-07:002006-04-13T11:48:00.000-07:00Blar, I think it's Sunstein and Thaler who are doi...Blar, I think it's Sunstein and Thaler who are doing the conflating.<BR/><BR/>You're right that coercive v. non-coercive and gov't v. non-gov't are two different distinctions, but they are very often the same, and they are the same in this case. Look up coercive, and you'll find that all the definitions refer to physical force or irresistible pressure. That's simply not the case for the dessert policies of restaurants or the benefits packages of employers. You can eat at other restaurants, and you can take other jobs. Your deals with restaurants and employers are voluntary arrangements. On the other hand, state mandates are enforced by coercion. If the state requires an employer to offer certain rules for savings plans, or requires a restaurant to increase the price of desserts, any employer who refuses will be subject to punishment by the state. <BR/><BR/>The Save More Tomorrow plan is, if chosen voluntarily by employers, non-coercive paternalism (I conceded in the post that paternalism does have both political and non-political meanings). But if the employers are forced to offer that plan, that's coercion.<BR/><BR/>I suppose you could say, "If you don't like the government's policies, you're free to leave the country and live elsewhere." In other words, America: love it or leave it. If that's your position, then you can maintain your claim that the restaurant, the employer, and the state all give you nothing but an exit option. But the state's exit option forces you to change every aspect of your life (leave you friends, leave your family, leave your home, leave your property, leave your job...). One of the benefits of have a private, decentralized economy is precisely that it allows you to exit some arrangements without exiting others.<BR/><BR/>Also, note that the "love or leave it" position will defend any government policy you want, including the most egregious violations of civil rights. Don't like being unable to speak your mind? Don't like having your home searched without even a warrant? Then leave! <BR/><BR/>I agree with you that there are degrees of coercion, and I'd certainly rather have less coercive policies than more coercive ones. Insofar as S&T's gov't policies are presented as alternatives to "hard paternalist" policies with fewer exit options, I would support them. But I think S&T have much more in mind. Their "soft paternalism" is not the alternative to "hard paternalism," but the precursor to it -- the thin end of the wedge.Glen Whitmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01425907466575991113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3829599.post-1144941028509893702006-04-13T08:10:00.000-07:002006-04-13T08:10:00.000-07:00Glen, I think that there are actually two distinct...Glen, I think that there are actually two distinctions here that you and Klein are conflating. One is coercive vs. non-coercive, and the other is government vs. non-government. S&T are not using your definition of paternalism. To them, an act of paternalism is something like "when a group of people believe that they know what is good for others, and create policies in an effort to bring that about." That group could be in the public sector or the private. They could try to benefit others in a coercive way (such as by restricting individuals' choices) or in a non-coercive way (such as by changing the default option or describing the options in a way that makes more people choose one over the others). The Save More Tomorrow plan is an example of non-coercive paternalism by an employer. It increases employee savings, not by forcing people to save, but by structuring people's options in a way that makes high-savings choices attractive to people (as by letting employees make plans to dedicate portions of future raises to savings which will go into effect unless they choose to reverse them). If the employer instead <I>required</I> all of its employees to put some of their earnings in a savings plan, then that would be coercive paternalism by a private employer. Government paternalism can similarly be coercive or non-coercive. <BR/><BR/>Coercive paternalism is generally less burdensome if it is done by an agent in the private sector (like an employer), since exit is easier and there are generally more substitutes available, but S&T are counting both kinds of policies as coercive (since exit is the only way to avoid them) and paternalism (since they are intended for the benefit of the individuals who they manipulate). S&T are allowing "libertarian paternalism" to cross betwen government and non-government policies, as long as they are non-coercive and for the benefit of the manipulated. Presumably, their reason for this is that non-government examples are more plentiful and easier to understand (at least for <I>most</I> people).<BR/><BR/>One tricky issue is that coerciveness varies in degree, and almost all government policies involve at least some sort of coercion on some level. If the government is controlling how a choice is being structured or described, then either the government is offering the options (in which case there is probably at least some taxation required in order to offer these options) or some other actors are offering the options (in which case the government is restricting how other people can describe the options that they offer). A strict libertarian could object to either of these, but they're within the range of what most people accept as not-particularly-coercive. Even if it is not strict libertarian paternalism, at least the libertarian paternalist spirit is still available to encourage the government to leave as many options open as possible while arranging things so that many individuals make choices that the government believes to be for their own good.Blarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17654557196171228300noreply@blogger.com