Giving the nanny state a new uniform

  • I admit I’ve taken a bit of delight watch­ing sec­u­lar Big Gov­ern­ment pro­po­nents wres­tle with how it is you get peo­ple to do things that are con­sid­ered bad for them. The cru­sade against smok­ing had all the reli­gious fer­vor of any other cru­sade, but since those lead­ing the charge are the same ones who urge Chris­tians not to judge gays, for­ni­ca­tors, adul­ter­ers, sin­gle moms, home­less peo­ple etc. etc. etc., they end up hav­ing to pick their words care­fully to explain how it’s appro­pri­ate to not only judge smok­ers, overeaters and gam­blers, but limit their choices through fed­eral reg­u­la­tion and puni­tive fees.

    And besides those with bad behav­iors, what about those that just seem to be mak­ing ques­tion­able deci­sions — those that don’t wear their seat belt or won’t sign up for the pen­sion plan at work? Should they be edged fur­ther away from mak­ing those deci­sions, “for their own good”?

    A new school of thought says yes. As an arti­cle in the Econ­o­mist spells out, there is a new face on the old idea of a pater­nal­is­tic gov­ern­ment that argues that a “soft pater­nal­ism” is appro­pri­ate. There may still be too many thick-headed peo­ple who don’t think it advis­able to have the gov­ern­ment stron­garm you into doing the right thing, but maybe if they did it, y’know … like a pal.

    Hav­ing doc­u­mented people’s inad­e­qua­cies, the behav­ioural­ists now want to save them. The icon­o­clasts are becom­ing pater­nal­ists — but of a dis­tinc­tive kind. Two of them, Cass Sun­stein and Richard Thaler of the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago, describe their approach as “lib­er­tar­ian pater­nal­ism”, which, they insist, is not an oxy­moron. … Their aim is not the “nanny state”, a scold and killjoy forc­ing its charges to eat their veg­eta­bles and take their med­i­cine. Instead they offer a vision of what you might call the “avun­cu­lar state”, worldly-wise, offer­ing a nudge in the right direc­tion, per­haps pulling strings on your behalf with­out your even noticing.

    … Rea­son­ing, judg­ment, dis­crim­i­na­tion and self-control — all of these the soft pater­nal­ists see as bur­dens the state can and should lighten.

    Read the rest of it here.


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    April 8th, 2006 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Glenn 04.08.2006

    What strikes me is not that gov­ern­ments nudge peo­ple toward behav­ior they believe to be “moral,” after all, why else have laws? What strikes me is the incon­sis­tency of advo­cat­ing choices that are inher­ently moral choices (which are inevitably the same thing as “things that are good for you” or “healthy” choices), all the while try­ing to wig­gle out of any pesky con­sid­er­a­tions of sub­scrib­ing to an actual overt, there ya’ go, set of beliefs. So while we obfus­cate on issues that are inher­ently obvious–does any­one really doubt that a happy Dad and Mom who love each other is the best place to raise children?–we sud­denly see with absolute clar­ity the impor­tance of eat­ing low fat foods and not sub­ject­ing our­selves to the evils of smoke filled nico­tine. Damn you if you don’t care about liv­ing for­ever. But ask those same peo­ple if what they’re say­ing is that choices that are clearly indi­vid­ual choices (“E.g. Do I care more about liv­ing to 90 or eat­ing my dou­ble cheese­burger?”) are the legit­i­mate purview of the state, and it’s dou­ble­s­peak time!

  • Grace

    I won­der if the true believ­ers see any con­tra­dic­tion there. We can both admit that we don’t under­stand the mind-set (and then we can breathe a sigh of relief).

    It seems to me that sooner or later, the pater­nal­is­tic gov­ern­ment types (soft or hard) have to fig­ure out what “free will” is actu­ally worth to them. They’d prob­a­bly like to say “not bloody much.” But then after all, the entire pro-abortion argu­ment hinges on the idea that a woman’s right to choose is all-important, even in late-term abor­tions where it’s harder to imag­ine that it’s not a child. How­ever, this seems to be the only choice that receives this inflated sta­tus. The Big Gov­ern­ment types don’t think much of people’s right to choose pri­vate schools over pub­lic, or pri­vate Social Secu­rity accounts over the government-regulated kind. So appar­ently, preg­nant women alone have this magic abil­ity to make per­fect deci­sions that we must all sup­port at all costs. Other peo­ple are bone­heads that can’t be trusted.

  • s-p

    sigh.…That is why Lib­er­tar­i­an­ism appeals to me: remove all warn­ing labels, let peo­ple make their deci­sions and choices and let them suf­fer their own con­se­quences with­out a gov­ern­ment pro­gram to bail them out. It may seem mer­ci­less, but what is more mer­ci­ful, to give peo­ple the dig­nity of respect­ing their free will and power to change or try­ing to leg­is­late com­mon sense and an ever expand­ing safety net so no one has to suf­fer the con­se­quences of their pas­sions and wellll… stupidity.

  • Grace

    I have a friend who’s very Lib­er­tar­ian and Greg was more of a die-hard when he was younger. My two cents is that in order for it to work even on a local level, you have to have a pop­u­lace that isn’t as liti­gious as Amer­i­cans seem to be these days. Because the sec­ond that law­suits start fly­ing around, all the reg­u­la­tions come back out.

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