Means Paternalism and the Problem of Indeterminacy

Johan Brännmark

doi:10.1515/mopp-2021-0032

Abstract

Abstract Many contemporary defenders of paternalist interventions favor a version of paternalism focused on how people often choose the wrong means given their own ends. This idea is typically justified by empirical results in psychology and behavioral economics. To the extent that paternalist interventions can then target the promotion of goals that can be said to be our own, such interventions are prima facie less problematic. One version of this argument starts from the idea that it is meaningful to ascribe to us preferences that we would have if were fully rational, informed and in control over our actions. It is argued here, however, that the very body of empirical results that means paternalists typically rely on also undermines this idea as a robust enough notion. A more modest approach to paternalist interventions, on which such policies are understood as enmeshed with welfare-state policies promoting certain primary goods, is then proposed instead.

Highlights

IntroductionThe most well-known approach here is the libertarian paternalism developed and defended by Thaler and Sunstein (2003, 2008), which emphasizes the use of nudges (interventions that de facto influence our choices, but without reducing our freedom of action), whereas other leading writers, such as Conly (2013) and Le Grand and New (2015), are open to, or even prefer, more direct forms of paternalism
Recent years have seen a resurgence in defenses of government paternalism
It will be argued that while the idea of means paternalism is understandably attractive, it is a position that hinges on being able to articulate a notion of ends against which our everyday choices can be contrasted – but a worry is that this move will be undermined by the very literature in psychology and behavioral economics that these contemporary defenders of paternalism tend to appeal to

Summary

Introduction

The most well-known approach here is the libertarian paternalism developed and defended by Thaler and Sunstein (2003, 2008), which emphasizes the use of nudges (interventions that de facto influence our choices, but without reducing our freedom of action), whereas other leading writers, such as Conly (2013) and Le Grand and New (2015), are open to, or even prefer, more direct forms of paternalism One thing uniting these writers is that they tend to take recent findings in behavioral economics and psychology as a starting point (Pickett 2019: 301), and where these empirical results are often taken to show that we are prone to make a variety of mistakes in our everyday choices – mistakes which the right kinds of policy-making can compensate for. It is an approach that might be dubbed generic means paternalism, since it is based in a conception of primary goods, the kinds of things that tend to be useful for most of us most of the time

Promoting People’s Own Ends

The Deep Problem of Indeterminacy

Already Existing Ends and the Idea of Primary Goods

Concluding Remarks