Category: Paternalism
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Oh, Mayor Bloomberg–you make writing a book about libertarian paternalism and nudges too easy. (Thanks!) But seriously, you help show why it's important to write this book, that's it's not just some pie-in-the-sky idea that lives only in the ivory tower, but one that affects the real world. Yesterday The New York Times reported that…
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Mark D. White In this morning's New York Times, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel writes about the presentation of nutritional labels on food packaging. He begins: Research suggests that consumers spend only about one second looking at nutrition information when making myriad choices. A parent dashing through the grocery store aisles with kids in tow has…
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Mark D. White In his column in this morning's New York Times, Mark Bittman reiterates his call for regulation of the amount of sugar Americans consume, such as taxing sugary foods and adding them to the list of items for which food stamps cannot be used–nothing new there. (I've discussed Bittman before here.) After presenting…
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In today's New York Times, food writer Mark Bittman continues his call for regulation of food choices through a comprehensive scheme of taxes and subsidies. While he takes pains to point out the savings in health care costs this would bring forth, he does not hide his desire to engage in social engineering, reorienting the…
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Mark D. White Last night I read a wonderful and concise article by Jillian Craigie (King's College London) from the latest issue of Bioethics (25/6, July 2011) titled "Competence, Practical Rationality and What a Patient Values." The abstract follows: According to the principle of patient autonomy, patients have the right to be self-determining in decisions…
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Mark D. White Carl Bialik at The Wall Street Journal has an article in today's edition and a blog post from last night, both very evenhanded, about the attempts by governments to measure the happiness of its citizenry, and the skepticism of some regarding the efficacy of this. For a critical look at the theory behind happiness studies,…
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Mark D. White An article from The New York Times reports on changes in the food industry's labelling standards with respect to calories, salt, fat, ands sugar, which presumably are intended not only to provide better information to consumers but also to encourage food manufacturers to lessen such aspects of its products (as Wal-Mart agreed to do not…
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Mark D. White As I noted earlier, on December 6 and 7 the blog Truth on the Market hosted "Free to Choose?", an online symposium on behavioral law and economics, the contents of which appear below the fold, followed by an excerpt from Josh Wright's introductory comment.
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Mark D. White When it rains… As the New York Times and many other news organizations have reported, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg (together with New York State governor David Patterson) are petitioning the U.S. Department of Agriculture for permission to block the city's 1.7 million food stamp recipients from using the funds to…
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Mark D. White Not long ago, in my chapter for Essays on Philosophy, Politics & Economics: Integration & Common Research Projects, edited by Christi Favor, Gerald Gaus, and Julian Lamont, I wrote the following as a cautionary tale regarding the political implications of "libertarian paternalism" (or "nudges"): Suppose the members of a local election board,…
Mark D. White 