Cass Sunstein reviews Sarah Conly’s Justifying Coercive Paternalism in the latest New York Review of Books:
Her starting point is that in light of the recent findings, we should be able to agree that Mill was quite wrong about the competence of human beings as choosers. “We are too fat, we are too much in debt, and we save too little for the future.” With that claim in mind, Conly insists that coercion should not be ruled out of bounds. She wants to go far beyond nudges. In her view, the appropriate government response to human errors depends not on high-level abstractions about the value of choice, but on pragmatic judgments about the costs and benefits of paternalistic interventions. Even when there is only harm to self, she thinks that government may and indeed must act paternalistically so long as the benefits justify the costs.
Conly is quite aware that her view runs up against widespread intuitions and commitments. For many people, a benefit may consist precisely in their ability to choose freely even if the outcome is disappointing. She responds that autonomy is “not valuable enough to offset what we lose by leaving people to their own autonomous choices.”
Perhaps the book will earn her a title as “Bloomberg’s court philosopher,” (she defends New York’s trans-fat ban as a prime example of justifiable paternal coercion), for Conly is of course no religious conservative. The real reason to question libertarian freedom is not an overriding moral imperative—the good of anyone’s soul—but rather because “studies show” what’s good for people’s health and wellbeing. New neurological research, along with data analysis, suggests that things we already value could be attained more efficiently with the expedient of coercion.
Thus in her conclusion there’s a lingering attempt to honor the kinds of values liberals intuitively feel allegiance to. After making this striking argument in favor of paternalism, Conly still wants to insist that our freedom remains essentially unchanged. Indeed, she says, if we freely agree on the “ends” while varying the means to include coercion, we might actually enhance our autonomy. This strikes me as implausible, as it does the reviewer, and in a way actually seems more paternalistic than a simple assertion of knowing what’s best in a particular case. Regardless, as Sunstein says, this book is an important one in that it raises serious questions about Mill’s harm principle, from a liberal perspective, as the standard to which citizens pursuing authentic liberty ought to repair.
February 25th, 2013 | 12:37 pm
Shades of Rousseau – “whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; [« ce qui ne signifie autre chose sinon qu'on le forcera d'être libre »] for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence.”
If, like Rousseau, one believes that freedom consists in a people obeying laws of their own making and magistrates of their own choosing, so that government action is the consummated result of the citizens’ own organized wishes, this has a sort of remorseless logic about it.
February 25th, 2013 | 12:46 pm
And the inner contradictions and logic of liberal theory turns on itself! I am in awe. This must needs be saved for posterity. “Young ones, this is when some of us starting to realize that our foundational philosophies were quite mad.”
February 25th, 2013 | 12:53 pm
Thanks for the article. For info on people using voluntary Libertarian tools on similar and other issues worldwide, please see the non-partisan Libertarian International Organization @ http://www.Libertarian-International.org/ ….
Too fat, in debt, few savings etc. are today the result of coercive and underhanded government policies that promoted sugary carbohydrates, misdirected investment with inflation, and penalize savings.
So the solution is…more of them?!
February 25th, 2013 | 3:11 pm
“[Conly]” responds that autonomy is not valuable enough to offset what we lose by leaving people to their own autonomous choices.’ ”
The paradoxical irony concerning Conly’s argument is that State-paternalism always leads to further autonomy and a drying of human energies.
Libertarianism is an empty harbor lacking an answer to State-paternalism–both ideologies end up in the same place because they share an autonomous-ontology. Adherents to State-voluntarism view the State as the source and arbiter of human relations. Thus, while adherents to State-voluntarism may value “community,” they see community and solidarity as synonymous with bureaucratic expansion. Libertarians manly view any human relation or community as an intrusive threat and a possible gateway to Statism. Ontologically, both ideologies view the human person as naturally empty of any relations—to God, others and the natural world–and thus empty of any naturally given responsibility to God, others or the natural world.
As R.R. Reno often notes, the State-centric view of morality is an esoteric morality of “healthy choices.” Thus, State-voluntarist ethics are essentially bourgeois–centered on “success,” sentimental notions of altruism and “service,” and “open” to accommodate any deconstruction of morality. In effect, bourgeois ethics are a reduction of morality and human work that has proved as destructive as any outright deconstructionist ideology. Therefore, neither is conservatism–rooted in an essentially bourgeoisie ethic that shares Libertarianism’s and Statism’s autonomous ontological roots–a substantial answer to State-voluntarism. Conservatism has all but accommodated no-fault divorce which was a foot in the door that lead to other deconstructions of marriage and the familial/social integration that State-paternalism only exacerbates.
February 25th, 2013 | 4:07 pm
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Autonomy-Justifying-Coercive-Paternalism/product-reviews/1107024846/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0
Some amusing reviews of this woman’s work.
February 25th, 2013 | 4:09 pm
*meant to write” familial/social disintegration” in the last sentence.
February 25th, 2013 | 9:52 pm
Someone should have paternally coerced her into not publishing that book.
February 26th, 2013 | 5:40 am
Andrew is right.
It was a fundamental principle of the Enlightenment that the nature of the human person can be adequately described without mention of social relationships. A person’s relations with others, even if important, are not essential and describe nothing that is, strictly speaking, necessary to one’s being what one is. This principle underlies all their talk about the “state of nature” and the “social contract,” and from it is derived the notion that the only obligations are those voluntarily assumed.
This was later summed up by Bentham, for whom the idea of “relation” is but a “fictitious entity,” though necessary for ‘convenience of discourse.’ And, more specifically, he remarks that “the community is a fictitious body,” and it is but “the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.”
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