The Crucial Importance of Interests in Libertarian Paternalism

Abstract

There has been a resurgence of late in support of paternalism, due primarily to recent findings in behavioural science that cast doubt on the ability of individuals to make choices reliably in their best interests. The most popular form of paternalism currently is libertarian paternalism (or ‘nudge’), which advocates subtle changes in the presentation or framing of options to steer persons in the direction of better choices. A key issue with libertarian paternalism (as well as more coercive forms of paternalism that share similar goals) is the nature of people’s interests and the state of policymakers’ knowledge about them. In this chapter, I argue that this issue has been neglected in recent scholarship defending paternalism along behavioural grounds. In particular, I dispute claims that paternalism of means can be meaningfully separated from paternalism of ends, and argue that modern paternalism does not respect people’s true interests but instead adopts a perfectionist or objective conception of well-being.