Category: Paternalism
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Mark D. White Last week I submitted the manuscript for a book that argues that all measures of well-being or happiness are arbitrary and reflect the judgments of those who designed them, rather than the interests of the people whose well-being is ostensibly measured. (A precis of sorts for the book appeared in this article,…
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Mark D. White Recently it was David Brooks, today it's Peter Reiner writing at Slate, reporting that people are less opposed to nudges the more they align with their interests, and interpreting this as weakening the case for autonomy. Using the crowdsourcing website Mechanical Turk, we polled 2,775 people, asking them to what degree they…
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Mark D. White In today's New York Times, David Brooks comments on libertarian paternalism in "The Nudge Debate." There is not a lot in his article that is surprising or unreasonable, but it does suffer from some vagueness and misunderstandings. For instance, Mr. Brooks conflates interventions of a paternalistic nature (such as nudging people into…
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Mark D. White At Psychology Today, I respond to the defense of paternalism offered this morning by Professor Sarah Conly (author of Against Autonomy) in her New York Times op-ed "Three Cheers for the Nanny State"—you can read my post here.
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Mark D. White It is no surprise that The New York Times columnist Mark Bittman laments the judicial rejection of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's ban on large sodas. Unfortunately he resorts to slander when addressing its opponents: The argument that preventing us from buying 32 ounces of liquid candy in one container somehow…
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Mark D. White Earlier today, a state judge overturned New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's ban on large sodas, citing their arbitary nature, copious loopholes, and uneven consequences. Of more significant concern are the ethical ramifications of such a ban, as I describe in The Manipulation of Choice–we can only hope that this played a role…
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Mark D. White In the latest issue of The New York Review of Books, law professor and former OIRA chief Cass Sunstein reviews Bowdoin philosophy professor Sarah Conly's recent book Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism. I have not yet read Conly's book; while I am very interested in what Conly says, I am even more interested in what…
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Mark D. White New today from associate editor Brian Fung at The Atlantic is a piece on an experimental nutritional labeling system modeled on traffic lights. In use in the United Kingdom (where it was instituted by the British government's "nudge unit"), the revised nutrition labels would have color-coded icons for fat, calories, and other…
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Mark D. White In a New York Times op-ed this morning, Daniel E. Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, makes a strong case for our strong attraction to sugar, but a weak case for paternalistic action on the part of the government to limit our consumption of it. The problem is captured by the question he…
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Mark D. White That was fast–in a "Room for Debate" feature that went online Saturday evening, the New York Times asked "What's the Best Way to Break Society's Bad Habits?" The contributors, predictably, take the question at face value and answer accordingly. But the question is nonsensical and the answers beside the point. "Society" does…
Mark D. White 