Is A Paternalistic Government Beneficial for Society and its Individuals? By Alexa Li Ho Shan Third Year, Runner Up Prize

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1 Is A Paternalistic Government Beneficial for Society and its Individuals? By Alexa Li Ho Shan Third Year, Runner Up Prize Paternalism is a notion stating that the government should decide what is the best for people and enforce those judgments even facing foreseeable opposition. (Sunstein and Thaler, 2003). Regarding such ideology, it has been being widely debated among different academics over time. From the perspective of paternalists, the government s restriction upon people s behaviours is justified in protecting people from the harmful consequences of their actions. However, some may argue that liberty is restricted when being forced to act or not to act in certain ways, expressing their discontent with the paternalism. The proposition that individual choices should be free from intervention is normally based on the assumption that people are good at making choices, or at least that they can make a better choice than the third parties do. However, in the reality, most of the individuals are not always rational and may not understand their own interests clearly. Even if they understand their interests well, they may not know the best means for realizing those interests without imposing any harm to the others. (Dworkin, 1972). Empirically, the research conducted by psychologists and economists over the past few decades has expressed doubt about the rationality of the decisions and judgments that individuals make. Regarding the research s findings, people do not demonstrate rational expectations, fail to make forecasts which are consistent with Bayes rule, use heuristics that lead them to make systematic blunders, exhibit preference reversals and make different choices depending on the wording of the problem. (Kahneman and Tversky, 2000) (Gilovich,et al, 2002). Due to the individuals limited cognitive capacities and ignorance of facts found in the empirical evidences, most people would agree that a paternalistic government is needed in helping people to discover and realize their true interests, but avoiding irrational decisions that induce unsatisfactory consequences. And the paternalism should be justified in this sense. For the real world example, the smoking ban in public places is usually supported with the reference to harm imposed to others. It is a common knowledge that smokers can cause physical harm to non-smokers through passive smoking, ranging from minor irritations to demonstrable carcinogenic, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Besides its negative effects on health, restrictions often refer to the indirect social harm such as increased medical costs, loss of productivity and fire hazards. All these private and social costs induced by smoking naturally provide sufficient basis for restricting smoking in public area a statement that is being increasingly confirmed by recent policy developments throughout Europe. With the judgement that smoking is harmful to the society, the government has decided to

2 play a more active role in banning smoking, dealing with the overconsumption of cigarettes and its consequences. While paternalism seems to be rationalized by people irrationality demonstrated in the behavioural economic and psychology literatures, the libertarians have heavily criticized such idea which induces the conflicts of two crucial values: (1) the value we place on the freedom of persons to make their own choices about how they will lead their lives, and (2) the value we place on promoting and protecting the well being of others. (Andre and Velasquez,1991). When people freely choose to act in ways that seem contrary to their own well being, the question of whether we are justified in interfering with their affairs, the problem of paternalism arises. Under a paternalistic government, physical protections of various forms are easily visible such as prescribing the use of crash hamlets or safety-belts, establishing restrictive rules for dangerous sports like boxing or motor racing and requiring the use of brightly coloured jackets or safety equipment among construction workers. The traditional objection against these restrictions makes an appeal to the individual autonomy, although most mentioned cases remain undisputed since they have only instrumental functions but not adversely affect people basic life plans. Despite that, those regulations can still demonstrate the conflicts of values. In 1990s, 3000 bikers staged a protest against a California law that goes into effect in January requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets in Los Angeles. On one hand, supporters of the law argued that hamlets are useful in protecting cyclists from serious injuries. On the other hand, bikers tried to overthrow the measure, upholding the freedom of choice. According to Andre and Velasquez (1991), one biker said that helmets would mess up his spiked and "rock 'n roll" hairstyle. Some bikers, followers of the Sikh Dharma religion, claimed that they couldn't wear helmets because helmets would interfere with the turbans worn to symbolize their faith. Using the utilitarian argument, some moral philosophers like John Stuart Mill illustrated that allowing an individual to exercise his freedom of free choice is more beneficial to the society than deciding for him what is in his best interests with two reasons. (Mill, 1956). Firstly, freedom is necessary for the development of everyone s individuality, the attainment of truth and development of new and more enriching lifestyles (or generally the most fundamental social value). (Mill, 1956). Moreover, the ability to make choices that promote our well-being is a capacity one acquires and improves only through practice. And such argument is further supported by Immanuel Kant (2012) with the rationale of equal dignity of all human beings: respect for human dignity implies respect for people's ability to think and choose for themselves. Secondly, according to Mill (1956), individuals are the best judges of their own interests and so should be left free to pursue them. This is because the individual best knows his or her own interests and how to achieve them, the ideal way to maximize individual satisfaction is to not interfere with how people s choices are

3 made. From Mill s argument, no one should have the right to interfere with others choices which affect their interests only, implying the inappropriateness of paternalism. And now the question is whether paternalism should still be justified or not, if apart from cases involving serious incompetence or other limitations. For instance, the smokers who believe that the pleasure and excitement gained in smoking can compensate for the years of life loss. Or the cyclists who refuse to wear hamlets simply because their images need to be maintained. For many people, freedom may be a crucial value, but it is not the only value. There may be situations in which the costs to a person's freedom are very minor compared to other values, such as health and safety that might be gained by restricting that freedom. For an example, compulsory seat belt laws may imply a loss of freedom which is trivial compared to the lives or other social costs saved by such laws. Instead of viewing paternalism as two extremes, the idea of libertarian paternalism can be employed as a new way solving those conflicts of values mentioned before. Under the approach of libertarian paternalism, both private and public institutions are authorized to affect people s behaviour that will promote their welfare, while the freedom of choice can still be preserved. (Sunstein and Thaler, 2003). Some kind of paternalism is likely whenever such institutions set out arrangements that will prevail unless people affirmatively choose otherwise. Most importantly, it is possible to show how a libertarian paternalist might select among the possible options and to assess how much choice to offer. Regarding the fact that the obesity rate is rising in the developed countries, especially United States, the libertarians would obviously allow anyone to sell or eat everything they want to. Therefore, no laws, no inspections and no penalties are imposed to those who knowingly sell food that are unhealthy. In contrast, the paternalists would restrict everyone s diets and types of food to be sold. For the libertarian-paternalists proposing the nudge-type policies, they would do something more like displaying the fruit more prominently in cafeterias, posting nutrition information like calories in fast food restaurants or making ingredient labeling in grocery stores more prominent and user friendly. Compared to the complete and widespread usage of bans, mandates and inspections, the approach of libertarian paternalism is certainly moderate. As a result, the government can still promote those fully-informed choices, but leaving space for the public to make their own decisions at the same time. It is true that conflicts of values that people care about like freedom; happiness and health always exist. No matter which policy approach (paternalism or libertarian) the government wants to adopt, there must be a trade-off between different values and some fierce debates among the public. And the most challenging fact is that there are no rights or wrongs or even the best advices for any government s policy approaches when dealing with any irrational or inappropriate behavior of individuals. Therefore, it may be hard to conclude which type of approach mentioned above best suites to any particular government.

4 In general, to strive for a better balance between all different values upheld by different parties, the government should first have a better understanding about the causes and consequences of choices made by people. Meanwhile, a careful assessment of what kind of response would do more good is seriously needed when deciding any long term policy approaches.

5 References Andre, C. & Velasquez, M. (1991). For Your Own Good in Issues in Ethics, Vol.4. No.2. Dworkin, G. (1972). Paternalism in The Monist, Vol.56: pp Gilovich, T., Griffin, D., & Kahneman, D. (2002). Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment. Cambridge University Press. Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (2000). Choices, values, and frames. Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2012). Fundamental principles of the metaphysics of morals. Courier Dover Publications. Mill, J. S. (1956). On Liberty. Liberal Arts Press. Sunstein, C. R. & Thaler, R. H. (2003). Libertarian paternalism in American Economic Review, pp Sunstein, C. R. & Thaler, R. H. (2003). Libertarian paternalism is not an oxymoron in The University of Chicago Law Review, pp

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