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2 results

Escaping Paternalism
  • Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy
  • Mario J. Rizzo, Glen Whitman
  • Published online:
    02 December 2019
    Print publication:
    05 December 2019
  • The burgeoning field of behavioral economics has produced a new set of justifications for paternalism. This book challenges behavioral paternalism on multiple levels, from the abstract and conceptual to the pragmatic and applied. Behavioral paternalism relies on a needlessly restrictive definition of rational behavior. It neglects nonstandard preferences, experimentation, and self-discovery. It relies on behavioral research that is often incomplete and unreliable. It demands a level of knowledge from policymakers that they cannot reasonably obtain. It assumes a political process largely immune to the effects of ignorance, irrationality, and the influence of special interests and moralists. Overall, behavioral paternalism underestimates the capacity of people to solve their own problems, while overestimating the ability of experts and policymakers to design beneficial interventions. The authors argue instead for a more inclusive theory of rationality in economic policymaking.

  • Chapter 4 - The right to autonomy and the justification of hard paternalism

  • Edited by Christian Coons, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Michael Weber, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
  • Book:
    Paternalism
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    14 February 2013, pp 74-92

  • Summary

    This chapter critically examines some different views about the content, strength, and justification of a right to autonomy. It explains some background assumptions about the right to autonomy, the concept of paternalism, and the soft/hard distinction. There are two basic approaches to spelling out the content of the right: choice-based and preference-based. Joel Feinberg's view that the right protects only self-regarding choices that are voluntary enough is one example of the former. The claim that the right is absolute vis-à-vis moralistic reasons mean that when moralistic interference infringes the right to autonomy, it is always wrong. If the right to autonomy is cashed out in terms of a hybrid current preferences account (CP) test, then an example of soft moralism might be one orthodox Jew's forcing a second to wait to eat till his craving for a delicious but non-kosher food passes.