Advocates of the “new paternalism” (sometimes also called “libertarian paternalism”) argue that carefully calibrated government interventions can help consumers avoid mistakes caused by their own cognitive biases. In this interesting new article, economist Mario Rizzo and legal scholar Glen Whitman argue that new paternalist policies are vulnerable to slippery slopes that will extend them far beyond the areas where they might be genuinely need to correct consumer errors. Here is the abstract:
The “new paternalism” claims that careful policy interventions can help people make better decisions in terms of their own welfare, with only mild or nonexistent infringement of personal autonomy and choice. This claim to moderation is not sustainable. Applying the insights of the modern literature on slippery slopes to new paternalist policies suggests that such policies are particularly vulnerable to expansion. This is true even if policymakers are fully rational. More importantly, the slippery-slope potential is especially great if policymakers are not fully rational, but instead share the behavioral and cognitive biases attributed to the people their policies are supposed to help. Accepting the new paternalist approach creates a risk of accepting, in the long run, greater restrictions on individual autonomy than have been heretofore acknowledged.
I have myself previously criticized the new paternalism here, here, here, and here. Rizzo and Whitman argue that the danger of slippery slope effects is greater if policymakers themselves suffer from cognitive biases. In this post, I pointed out that the voters who elect the policymakers also suffer from ignorance and cognitive bias, often to a greater extent than the consumers whose biases new paternalist policies are intended to correct. Giving more power to cognitively biased government officials elected by rationally ignorant and cognitively biased voters is likely to exacerbate the effects of cognitive error more than correct it.
Finally, I can’t write a post about slippery slope effects without mentioning Senior Conspirator Eugene Volokh’s excellent “Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope,” which is extensively cited by Rizzo and Whitman. This is my personal favorite among Eugene’s many articles.
neurodoc says:
Yes, but was that one as enjoyable as what Professor Volokh co-authored with Judge Kozinski (“Lawsuit, Shmawsuit”. Yale Law Journal 103 (2): 463–467)?
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November 6, 2009, 1:09 amPeteP says:
The REALLY scary thing is that the biggest and worst progenitors of ‘a New Nanny State’ are currently, massively, in power. Obama, Pelosi, Reid & Co know that they will likely never be in a stronger position than right now to push their agenda, and they are in a hurry to cram it all in before ‘worrying about November’ fever hits Washington next year. It’s AMAZING, the size and the scope and the variety of things they are hoping to push into law during the next 2 — 3 months. There is no aspect of the country, the economy, or our lives, that they don’t think they are better qualified to decide for us than we are.
Hell, look at the crap Boxer pulled this week in the EPW comittee — broke every comittee rule in the book, and ‘passed’ her Cap & Tax bill out of committee basically single-handedly.
We can only hope that a few Senators have the balls and the backbone to say ‘I will not let this pass !’, and shut down the Senate for a while. Like until Spring, at least.
Any Senator can do it. All they have to do is put country first, and self / carreer second.
If just one or two decide to live on the Senate floor and say ‘I Object’ to EVERY SINGLE UC REQUEST, peppered liberally with ’ I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I demand a recorded roll call’, the Senate stops in its tracks. No committees meet, the ‘minutes of the previous day’ must be read into the record, Every bill ( like the 2,000 page health reform’ bill et al ) must be read into the record multiple times ) and then take a 60 vote margin to approve, I mean Harry Reid doesn’t get so much as a BATHROOM BREAK without a recorded roll call and 60 votes.
This can be done — if someone dares, and cares.
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November 6, 2009, 1:25 amSteve says:
Glenn Beck, call your office. PS: Dems are not the “new nanny state,” we’re the regular old nanny state!
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November 6, 2009, 2:11 amSammy Finkelman says:
I had a bit of a ard time figuring out what you were saying — I think that the “slippery slope” you are talking about is the change from just changing defaults where there has to be some default to really pushing much harder.
In other words it really wouldn’t stay just opt-in and the people arguing for this sort of policy in some specific instances really want something much stronger. all sorts of conditions. Some outright prohibitions.
But can this be avoided?
You can’t avoid defaults in many things. Marriage and divorce law is going to have something. the whole point of registering a marriage is to have a bunch of defaults and presumptions different than what you have when there isn’t a marriage, and defaults as to what happens when people separate.
Now you can say that really it is not to be expected that people making laws and regulations will limit themselves to defaults, so I suppose a point would be that people should not quietly let what they feel is the the wrong defaults get set on the grounds well, it is only a default.
And that quite often the “conventional wisdom” may be wrong (The policy prescriptors will of course most often act on the basis of the conventional wisdom)
And what they want may be specifically wrong when benefits are overlooked. I suppose a classic example would be minimum wage laws.
And yet, in fact, nudge type regulation is a good or better type of regulation than otherwise. If it won;t stay that way, well, then it won;t stay that way, but it is still a better kind of regulation — the only fault being that people won’t do it.
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November 6, 2009, 2:15 amDavid Welker says:
If we allow people to have any freedom at all, that will lead along a slippery slope to anarchy.
If we allow people to eat meat, that will lead to a slippery slope and they will soon want to eat other people.
If we allow people to own guns, that is a slippery slope and soon people will accumulate large arsenals and use them to destroy entire communities.
I love slippery slope arguments. If you can’t actually argue against the policy, why not argue against something else?
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November 6, 2009, 2:19 amCornellian says:
Advocates of the “new paternalism” (sometimes also called “libertarian paternalism”) argue that carefully calibrated government interventions can help consumers avoid mistakes caused by their own cognitive biases.
The choice isn’t between government intervention and no government intervention. Zero government intervention isn’t a free market, it’s anarchy. The issue is what are the default rules that should apply, absent contracting for other rules and are those default rules the optimal ones for achieving the desired results.
The nice thing about the Law and Economics school was that it insisted on looking for evidence of whether legal rules actually achieved what they were intended to achieve. I don’t see a problem with having that evidence include evidence about human cognitive biases.
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November 6, 2009, 2:25 amyankee says:
Color me unimpressed; it seems to a combination of objections that libertarian paternalism isn’t “really” libertarian and a bunch of the standard public choice arguments that can be used against any policy whatsoever.
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November 6, 2009, 2:52 amOren says:
PeteP, what makes you think Coburn, the Senate’s very own Dr. No, isn’t already doing that?
This is wishful thinking (or if you prefer, optimism bias). NP’s influence on policy has been to moderate the already-extant paternalistic impulse to make it more compatible with public choice. In its absence, those same policies would be implemented but in a worse form.
I, for on, am glad that Sunstein is making our government policy less awful rather than out here fantasizing about eliminating whole government agencies.
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November 6, 2009, 3:12 amOren says:
David, the slippery slope argument is not “if A then maybe B”, it’s “A makes B more likely”. People eating meat doesn’t increase the odds of them eating people. It actually probably decreases it because cow-meat and people-meat are substitute goods. So if you are against cannibalism, you ought to be for meat-eating.
It seems perfectly reasonable to judge an action by its likely outcome, even when that outcome isn’t certain.
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November 6, 2009, 3:16 amSteve says:
David’s argument makes perfect sense to me. If we allow people to consume animal flesh, they may very well develop a desire for human flesh as well. To avoid that slippery slope, we need to stop people from eating any meat whatsoever.
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November 6, 2009, 3:19 amRicardo says:
This misses the point that some libertarian paternalist policy proposals are a substitute for or a competing idea against outright paternalism. For instance, some paternalists are arguing for a higher alcohol tax to reduce drunk driving. Instead, maybe you could reduce drunk driving by requiring bars to prominently display the phone numbers of local taxi companies. Similarly, the “nudges” that Sunstein and Thaler discuss in their book urging people to contribute more to no-load index funds may allow us to cut back on Social Security over time.
If you summarily reject anything under the heading of “libertarian paternalism,” you are consigning many of your ideas to political irrelevance. If libertarian paternalism can be used to gradually pare back the power of the state as an alternative to outright paternalism, rejecting it is rigid and dogmatic.
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November 6, 2009, 3:48 amDavid Schwartz says:
The slippery slope actually cuts in favor of Libertarian paternalism, not against it.
In just about every conceivable arena in which Libertarian paternalism is brought up, it’s a movement to less regulation and less government involvement than we have now. Even in those few areas where it is used to advocate arguably-greater government involvement, it is still (assuming it works) more likely to lead to slip towards changing other areas in which there is currently outright coercion into paternalistic defaults instead.
If we move to Libertarian paternalism, and that works, it will make it more likely that we will move ever further away from ubiquitous government compulsion.
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November 6, 2009, 4:20 amrxc says:
What we really need is to stop people from eating anything that is/was/has ever been alive, because eating formerly alive things is a slippery slope to cannabalism.
/snark off
I think that rather than the slippery slope, a better argument against this is that nannys, by their very nature, are not satisfied with the results of “gentle nudges”, when people do not behave the way they are supposed to behave. This sort of human nature frustrates nannies to no end, and they end up ndging harder and harder to get the results that they consider to be appropriate. I would not call this a slippery slope, but a failure of character by nannies — they do not want to leave other people alone. Indeed, I think they are incabable of doing so.
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November 6, 2009, 7:50 amPersonFromPorlock says:
These arguments all presume a disinterested paternalism, where the government makes the best choices it can for the People and the harm is in its taking choice away from them. But who can look at the history of government here or abroad and not see that corruption would set in at once, so that government ‘choices’ would go to the highest bidder and the People would end up with neither freedom to choose nor the best choice?
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November 6, 2009, 7:56 amJonathan says:
Would this be such an example? I think so.....
“Senate Democrats inserted a wide-ranging provision for “Community Transformation Plans” in their half-completed health care bill, outlining the proposal on page 382 of the now-615 page bill, major sections of which have yet to be written....The transformation plans must also take action to promote certain “healthy options” at privately owned restaurants as well as “prioritizing strategies” to “reduce racial and ethnic disparities,” although the bill does not explain how racial and ethnic disparities figure in to community transformation.”
Or is this just simply paternalism?
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November 6, 2009, 8:52 amJonathan says:
Link from previous — CNS News
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November 6, 2009, 8:53 amDjDiverDan says:
“Libertarian paternalism” sounds like an oxymoron to me. I guess you can count me among the “libertarian darwinists” — give people the freedom to make their own stupid mistakes, and then allow them to suffer the consequences. When the reality sinks in that they will have to suffer the consequences of those mistakes, they will see the benefits from actually having to learn enough (and think enough) to avoid those mistakes. I’m all in favor of strong incentives for thoughtful action. It seems that backers of any form of paternalism are motivated by a strong sense of their own superiority, and a need to “protect” that poor flock of sheep that is everyone less intelligent than they are. I’d rather not be among the sheep, thank you very much.
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November 6, 2009, 9:07 amDavid Schwartz says:
DjDiverDan: So you think laws should be set up to make it intentionally difficult for people to get what they actually want? Do you, for example, like the idea of having to negotiate a contract to buy a book?
Governments (or courts for you anarchists out there), in a large number of cases, have to set defaults. The point is that you can do a lot of government functions just by cleverly setting defaults, without initiating any force.
If you walk into a barbershop and sit in the chair and say “I’d like a haircut”, you get a huge set of defaults — all set by law. You are free to negotiate different defaults, of course, but because those defaults are pretty close to what you and the barber actually want, most of the time you don’t have to. And that’s a good thing.
You will never hear LP being used as a justification for more government force. If government doesn’t need to set the defaults, then there’s no call for LP at all. Basically, it’s a way of saying “this law works just as well if people can knowingly opt out of it, and that minimizes the force used”.
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November 6, 2009, 9:40 amray_g says:
The problem with anyone who uses the word paternalism in the context of setting policy is the state of mind that it reveals. “We know better than you”. OK, some say they are just setting defaults, and so are harmless. I ask, what happens if 99% of the people reject the default, so the desired policy goal is not met. Do you expect these policy makers to just sit there and accept this? I don’t, I would expect they would institute more coercive measures. I don’t trust them, because they use that word.
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November 6, 2009, 9:52 amAllan Walstad says:
In principle, where defaults have to be set by government (if they do), then tweaking them in a way to favor better choices or help avoid bad ones makes some sense. The (big) problem is with assuming that a) government is likely to be any more rational than people by&large, and b) “nudges” won’t matastasize and morph into just another rubric for coercive paternalism.
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November 6, 2009, 10:24 amKen Arromdee says:
I wonder how many of the people here who are pooh-poohing the idea of slippery slopes have actually read Eugene Volokh’s paper.
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November 6, 2009, 10:33 amFloridan says:
I don’t think government regulations are needed to overcome consumers’ “cognitive biases” so much as to deal with the fact that, absent regulations, there is virtually no way a consumer can be knowledgeable about the product he or she is purchasing.
I’m not upset that there are health and quality-control regulations regarding the production of food and medicine, rather than “caveat emptor” signs at the grocery store and pharmacy.
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November 6, 2009, 10:36 amPeteP says:
Oren — “PeteP, what makes you think Coburn, the Senate’s very own Dr. No, isn’t already doing that?”
I’m not sure what you’re asking about. While Coburn is certainly one of the very few who might decide to stop Reid, he is certainly not doing what I discussed, nor is anyone else.
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November 6, 2009, 10:47 amPintler says:
Your theory collides with data — go back to 1000AD or 1000BC or whatever. You could eat whatever you could catch, possess whatever weapons you could obtain, etc. Eating long pig and offing fellow members of your own tribe without cause have never been commonplace, and once past small tribes people self organize governments in every society I have heard of. If there is a reason to think that history in this case does not predict the future you should articulate it.
The history of paternalistic government is less comforting — looking at the history of restrictions on smoking does show a slope that’s just a wee bit slick.
There may be hypos that will make your point, but I don’t think those three work.
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November 6, 2009, 10:53 amray_g says:
If I were to define a libertarian method of setting defaults, it would be this: set the default to whatever has the smallest cost to the person affected. Not to the desired policy outcome, not to what is “best” for the person, the minimum cost. That shows the most respect for their autonomy and their property. That is libertarian. “Libertarian paternalism” may the the lesser of evils, but it is still evil.
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November 6, 2009, 10:54 amDjDiverDan says:
Well, then, the remedy for that shortcoming is to require more disclosure, not to restrict choices. A prime area where this could apply is in new drugs not yet approved by the FDA, but approved and being used in other countries. Rather that simply prohibit the use of these drugs in the US, why not simply require full disclosure to both the prescribing physician and the patient? After all, informed consent is enough for experimental surgical procedures, why not experimental drug treatments? I have no problem with requiring that all known relevant information be provided; I do have a problem with the government taking away my ability to make my own assessment of risks and benefits in order to make my own choice. And if I’m just too stupid or careless to read or heed the warnings given to me, the consequences ought to fall on my head, not shifted by a personal injury-tort system gone mad and run primarily for the benefit of contingent fee plaintiff’s lawyers.
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November 6, 2009, 10:54 amSeaDrive says:
Ain’t that the truth.
I would point out that this is true of conventional expert opinion, as well as the common wisdom of the Congress, or of the electorate. The mistakes of the experts are more subtle, though.
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November 6, 2009, 10:56 amDavid Schwartz says:
Why would that situation occur, considering it would create obvious competitive advantages for companies that provided more information and there are no significant obstacles to them doing so?
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November 6, 2009, 11:01 amyankee says:
In markets where health and safety information is known to producers/sellers but is not immediately apparent to buyers, sellers consistently do not provide such information. The information is provided only when mandated by law or where failure to do so could subject the producer/seller to liability.
I’m not really interested in the sure-it-works-that-way-in-practice-but-does-it-work-that-way-in-theory line of argument.
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November 6, 2009, 11:28 amBruce Hayden says:
I think this new paternalism fails for the same reasons that normal paternalism, and, indeed, socialism do. It is based on a couple of fallacies. First, that the government can make choices better than the individual. Second, that government can be unbiased, and third, that government can be non-corrupt.
Sure, for a short period in time, after a government program is put in place, the pure of heart may be able to run it. Maybe. But, soon, those running government programs are either unelected bureaucrats, or have some stake in the matter.
So, how do these new paternalists who try to nudge us in some direction that they think we should go handle the fact that they are inevitably destined for failure? Man is selfish, brutish, etc., and nudging most likely isn’t going to shift him enough to satisfy the nudgers. So, what do they do next? Walk away because their nudge didn’t work? Or just nudge a bit harder? My vote is the later, which is why the slippery slope is relevant.
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November 6, 2009, 12:32 pmSeaDrive says:
Most anyone doing a survey of the pill bottles in an health food store or alternative medicine shop will see immediately that half of the products are worthless. The are, in fact, a complete fraud on the consumer.
The questions are:
1. Which half?
2. Does the government have a privileged position in deciding which half?
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November 6, 2009, 12:37 pmBruce Hayden says:
Actually, I don’t mind a whole lot if the government merely provides information. Yes, it bothers me that our tax dollars go to fund this, but the government wastes money far more egregiously than that. As long as no one is actually required to read and accept the government’s information.
So, I would be far happier with the government providing us information as to the safety of drugs, than keeping needed drugs off the market so that the efficacy and safety can be triple, and quadruple checked, which people die or suffer as a result.
So, nudging as a retraction of government power is probably good. Nudging as an expansion, not really.
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November 6, 2009, 12:40 pmOren says:
Coercive paternalism never needed anything of the sort. The options are not LP or nothing, it’s LP or CP.
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November 6, 2009, 12:44 pmTheBadness says:
A prime area where this could apply is in new drugs not yet approved by the FDA, but approved and being used in other countries. Rather that simply prohibit the use of these drugs in the US, why not simply require full disclosure to both the prescribing physician and the patient?
Because Thalidomide made for such a rollicking good time over there in Europe?
I mean — I tend to prefer disclosure as a matter of course. It usually works quite well, so long as the disclosure consists of information the recipient is able to process effectively.
The problem is that, especially with medical risks, the sufficiency of information isn’t always such that it permits for a well-considered choice.
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November 6, 2009, 12:47 pmOren says:
Whoops!
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November 6, 2009, 1:05 pmMario Rizzo says:
For those who don’t have the time or patience to read the whole article Glen Whitman will be summarizing it in a series of posts.
http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-paternalism-on-slippery-slopes-part.html
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November 6, 2009, 1:10 pmGlen says:
Ilya — actually, Mario and I are both economists.
I frankly don’t understand the commenters who say things like, “In just about every conceivable arena in which Libertarian paternalism is brought up, it’s a movement to less regulation and less government involvement than we have now.” It’s just not true. Read what Sunstein, Thaler, et al., have actually written, and you’ll find the new paternalism is virtually always used as either a justification of existing intervention or a wedge for further intervention. When challenged by libertarians, the new paternalists say, “Well, our approach could justify less intrusion in some cases.” But it’s only lip service, in response to a challenge. Then they go right back to advocating more intervention. For every case where they’ve advocated less intervention, I will give you three where they’ve advocated more.
For those who just don’t like slippery slope arguments, I urge you to read the actual literature on the subject, including Eugene Volokh’s excellent article. Slippery slope arguments are not simplistic claims that say, “If we do A, we will necessarily do B, C, and D.” They are probabilistic statements based on specific mechanisms. That’s why it’s possible for us to argue that new paternalist policies are more vulnerable to slippage than other policies.
Finally, for those who say new paternalism is “inevitable” because of the need for default rules. If that were true, then why would the new paternalists be spending so much time pushing their position? Again, read their actual academic work — and not just their PR spin articles. You’ll find they are advocating policies that go far beyond just manipulating default rules. (A more extensive response to the default argument is included in the article.)
For those interested, I will be posting a series of excerpts from the article on my blog, Agoraphilia.
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November 6, 2009, 1:32 pmDavid Nieporent says:
You and a few other people have said that several times; the problem is, it isn’t true. LP does not involve substituting “nudges” in places where there was formerly coercion; it involves putting in “nudges” where they didn’t exist before. And sometimes, putting in outright coercion — see their proposed abrogation of employment at will for an example.
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November 6, 2009, 2:02 pmBruce Hayden says:
Let me suggest though that the cure may have been worse than the disease here. There have been a lot of medicines that took a long time as a result getting to market and saving lives and reducing suffering. Plus, the level of testing involved drives up the costs significantly of the prescription medicines involved, and therefore decreasing the number that finally make it into doctors’ hands. So, I may suggest that maybe, just maybe, a lot more people would have benefited if the FDA hadn’t clamped down than were saved from Thalidomide.
Plus, our tort system seems to work just fine in penalizing companies that bring defective or dangerous drugs to market. Maybe the answer is to make the researchers and those at the top of the drug companies personally financially liable if they screw up and people die as a result. That way, they wouldn’t be in a heads I win, tails I walk away sort of situation when it comes to trading off tort liability and profitability. (Hey, we probably should do that with securities too, for similar reasons, as we discovered this last year — having your own assets on the line is a much more powerful motivator for being a bit conservative, than having someone else’s money at stake).
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November 6, 2009, 2:06 pmBruce Hayden says:
I think that David is right here. I am happy when the government moves from control to nudges, but that is really unlikely. What is really being proposed is the government nudging where it hasn’t controlled before. In other words, new government intervention, not less old intervention.
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November 6, 2009, 2:09 pmMario Rizzo says:
Exactly!
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November 6, 2009, 2:21 pmOren says:
It involves using nudges instead of outright coercion in places where one of the two was going to happen anyway.
Again, if you seriously think there’s any chance of rolling back the regulatory state, more power to you. As a practical matter, damage-control is the best we can hope for.
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November 6, 2009, 2:41 pmTheBadness says:
Let me suggest though that the cure may have been worse than the disease here. There have been a lot of medicines that took a long time as a result getting to market and saving lives and reducing suffering. Plus, the level of testing involved drives up the costs significantly of the prescription medicines involved, and therefore decreasing the number that finally make it into doctors’ hands. So, I may suggest that maybe, just maybe, a lot more people would have benefited if the FDA hadn’t clamped down than were saved from Thalidomide.
The reason the FDA “clamped down” is that there were suggestions that the rosy picture being painted of Thalidomide was incomplete. And that the use for which it was being promoted most heavily was inappropriate. As it so happens, history bore out those misgivings.
Had European health services been a touch more cautious, Thalidomide would likely have been approved far earlier. Subject to the kinds of constraints now placed on its use from the get-go. Approval was a lot less palatable when the risk involved babies, and made for a spectacle when it was realized.
Maybe the answer is to make the researchers and those at the top of the drug companies personally financially liable if they screw up and people die as a result.
But when? The researchers at Grunerthal were operating under the then-prevalent assumption that drugs wouldn’t cross the placental barrier. L’Affaire Thalidomide helped disprove that assumption.
Unless you’re arguing for absolute liability, which I suspect would be a pretty strong incentive for researchers to develop new and improved flavors for aspirin and other known quantities rather than come up with new compounds. Testing does have to occur at some point, unless the risk disclosure is, “It might kill you, so you might want to try giving some to your cat before taking any yourself.”
I’m not saying that the FDA process is perfect. It is, however, supposed to ensure that (1) drugs sold to the public are reasonably safe, and (2) the risks drugs pose are understood well enough to be disclosed to consumers. When the side effects are especially nasty (or make them too much fun to take), drugs get restricted in ways that sometimes are wise and sometimes reflect other national priorities . The FDA doesn’t even require new compounds improve on what is available, after all, just that they not be deadly poisonous or expensive placebos.
In short, I disagree with you about drug testing, though I understand where you’re coming from. As I see it, the difficult question is determining which markets really need the kinds of restrictions posed by the FDA and which are better solved through disclosure (or through plain old tort law). I again have to disagree regarding the adequacy of tort law, as money is an inadequate substitute for the innocent victim whose injury is not subject to a realistic remedy. Money can replace money; we use it to replace arms and legs and the like because lex talionis is unpalatable.
And, hooray for OT.
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November 6, 2009, 3:06 pmDavid Schwartz says:
If we lived in a Communist world, the version of this same argument would be that we can’t trust private industry to run the food distribution network because what happens if you get to the private food distribution center for your city on your appointed day and they refuse your ration coupons? You could starve!
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November 6, 2009, 4:27 pmKen Arromdee says:
That’s not a version of the same argument, because it isn’t accompanied by the experience of private food distribution centers refusing ration coupons.
It’s one thing to suggest that a hypothetical won’t happen, it’s another to suggest that something that actually happens won’t happen.
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November 6, 2009, 5:02 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Ken Arromdee: There is no evidence that in an unregulated market in a Libertarian economy private companies will act as suggested. The problem is the level of specificity. It is precisely the same mistake to assume private food distribution centers would have the same problems as government-run ones as it is to assume that private companies in a market troubled as you suggest in a Libertarian country would act as they do in this one.
There are dozens of obvious reasons not to think this would be the case. The most obvious is simply that a taxpayer-funded, mediocre solution will cloud out private, excellent solutions, much as public schools do in our country.
Another is that the level of disclosure in our markets may actually be above the market-optimal level.
The last is two forms of selection bias. When the government compels a company to disclose something, you think “wow, they didn’t disclose that”. But you don’t think about all the thousands of things companies disclose every day. Why does Ford tell me how many cylinders their cars have? What law requires this?
The other form of selection bias is that you see cases where regulation keeps a dangerous product off the market but not cases where it prevents a potentially life-saving product from entering the market. One of the medications I’m on was approved by the FDA more than three years after it was approved in Europe. When the FDA approved it, they bragged that it would save 35,000 lives per year. That is, they admitted that their safety rules killed over 100,000 people.
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November 6, 2009, 6:27 pmAllan Walstad says:
Well, it’s one thing a) to try to substitute “nudges” for crass paternalism where the latter exists or was going to happen anyway, and quite another b) to allow nudges where crass paternalism might have been staved off, or to allow nudges to multiply the number of camel’s noses leading to more crass paternalism. I’m not sure how you can be confident that the a’s will outweigh the b’s. And I don’t think the cause of liberty is well served by a defeatist attitude. Isn’t that what you are offering? Or are you thinking defense-in-depth, strategic retreat until...well, until what?
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November 6, 2009, 8:00 pmOren says:
I’m not, but it seems better than letting crass paternalism run amok, which is what I see happening.
Acknowledging that we are, for the time being, in a position of weakness seems to me an uncontroversial statement of fact.
At the very minimum, 2010. We aren’t going to make headway with this Congress. As to the “what”, a conservative party that isn’t obsessed with antediluvian biblical norms seem to me essential if you want anyone under 40 (many of whom are naturally draw to economic conservatism) as part of the coalition.
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November 6, 2009, 9:53 pmRicardo says:
I disagree. Since I have read what Sunstein and Thaler have actually written, I’ll post the chapter list from their book Nudge for all chapters dealing with actual policy proposals:
Save More Tomorrow
Naive Investing
Credit Markets
Privatizing Social Security: Smorgasbord Style
Prescription Drugs: Part D for Daunting
How to Increase Organ Donations
Saving the Planet
Improving School Choices
Should Patients Be Forced to Buy Lottery Tickets
Privatizing Marriage
My recollection is a little hazy, but of these chapters, the only ones you could point to as examples of advocating more coercion than what we currently have might be “Credit Markets” and “Saving the Planet.” As I said, though, my memory is hazy and maybe these chapters did not actually advocate coercion. The rest of the chapters talk about things like privatizing Social Security, keeping Medicare Part D insurance private, advocating school vouchers, gay marriage, voluntary medical malpractice waivers, and encouraging private employers to make 401(k) contributions the default with some specified default options.
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November 6, 2009, 11:32 pmAllan Walstad says:
I’m not entirely clear what the “it” is. If you mean a strategy of generally endorsing nudges as a way of avoiding crass paternalism, then if my “b” cases above were to outweigh the “a” cases, the strategy would lead to more, not less, of the latter. If you mean endorsing nudges only in the “a” cases, my concern would be how well we really can distinguish the a’s from the b’s ex ante.
Right. What about letting go of the military interventionism?
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November 6, 2009, 11:41 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Glen: Even in those few cases where advocates propose more government intervention than we have now, it will almost always be in cases where it’s presented as an alternative to more coercive types of government intervention. And even in those cases, if the LP policies are tried, and work, it will strengthen the argument for LP as an alternative for more coercive policies in other arenas, so there still might be a net benefit to Liberty.
If you want a gradual move towards Liberty, you might want to start planning a strategy to get there. And arguments like “this new law will work just as well if we let people intelligently opt out of it” might be a step in that direction.
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November 7, 2009, 11:14 ammarkm says:
And the specific mechanism is pretty obvious: give a nanny-stater an inch and he’ll take a mile.
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November 7, 2009, 3:15 pmOren says:
I would endorse nudges because I don’t believe there are any “b” cases left. If it can be regulated, it will be regulated and I’d prefer a regulation that is less awful.
I’d settle for Congressional approval of every boot on the ground and every (manned) jet in the sky. Something along the lines of the War Powers Act (with appropriate exception in case the Congress is not formally convened...).
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November 7, 2009, 3:55 pmAllan Walstad says:
Oren: Thanks. Friendly disagreement here on strategy.
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November 7, 2009, 8:28 pmOren says:
My pleasure. Since the thread is dead, I should add that you’ve been quite helpful lately showing me where I stand.
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November 7, 2009, 11:17 pmDavid Schwartz says:
As is the counter-mechanism. Give a nanny-stater an inch and solve the problem, and he has no problem to point to when he wants a mile. Next time he points to a problem and wants a mile, counter that an inch worked last time.
The point is that nanny-staters are getting miles because their inches don’t work. So we have to be smart and give them the right inch, if we have to give them an inch.
That is, the only practical strategy we have left to fight the nanny-staters it to make sure their policies *work*, so they won’t pile on more and more policies to “fix” the previous policies’ failures.
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November 8, 2009, 10:02 amRichard Aubrey says:
There are two kinds of slippery slopes:
One is where action 1 more or less naturally leads to action 2, after which action 3 comes pretty easily and we end up with disastrous result 10.
The other is when the proponent actively desires disatrous result ten but knows he can’t sell that. So he starts with action 1, after which action two is an easier sell, and by the time we reach 9, disastrous result ten is inevitable.
So we are stuck trying to figure out which kind of slippery slope is being proposed.
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November 8, 2009, 1:33 pm