[extropy-chat] Libertarian paternalism

[Ian Goddard]

--- Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/richard.thaler/research/LIbpatLaw.pdf
> >
> > Cass Sunsteina and Richard Thaler defend what they
>   call libertarian paternalism
> 
> Such steering of choice amounts to a likely 
> imposition of force incompatible with 
> libertarianism.  It also to some degree derails  
> feedback from reality on the micro level of
> individual choices.   It would require superior 
> relatively all wise "parents" capable of mapping 
> decisions and consequences better than local
> actors.   We have seen just how well such 
> centralized "benevolence" works in  
> practice.   


 Sunsteina and Thaler dismiss the libertarian view
that individuals plan best for themselves with the
analogy: "Suppose that a chess novice were to play
against an experienced player. Predictably the novice
would lose precisely because he made inferior
choices—choices that could easily be improved by some
helpful hints. [..] So long as people are not choosing
perfectly, it is at least possible that some policy
could make them better off by improving their
decisions."

 But of course virtually nobody, even a central
planner, has perfect knowledge. The analogy looks like
a red herring. They also express the libertarian view
in question as holding "that almost all people, almost
all of the time, make choices that are in their best
interest or at the very least are better, by their own
lights, than the choices that would be made by third
parties." That looks like a straw man; notice that
saying "almost all people, almost all of the time"
looks set up to fail. 

 In my opinion, the libertarian view is not that
almost everyone always makes the best possible choice
toward their goals. It is instead that more often than
not, x million free and consensual actors (bounded
only by private property, contract law, and tort
liability) will by their own free choices optimize the
allocation of resources towards their net maximal
happiness better than any set of central planners.
That more accurate representation of the view is also
testable, and I believe is shown to be true at least
most often if not almost always. ~Ian


http://IanGoddard.net

"A proposition is a model of reality as we imagine
it." - Wittgenstein

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