A recently published book makes a provocative claims that fits with some general points I like to make when we begin both 2305 and 2306 (though I'm not sure I do a good enough job). What is government for? And in order to tie this into political conflicts involving ideology - which tend to contain predisposed opinions about whether the public or private sector (government or the individual) can best make decisions - we sometimes wonder what the "liberal" and "conservative" approach to certain problems might be.
The book I'm referring to it is Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism and it makes the case that we are far more irrational than we realize, and despite the value we place on individuals making decisions on their own, some limits ought to be placed on those types of decisions. The state - or more accurately, the collective decision we make as a democratic society and then impose on everyone - may be justified in being paternalistic in certain areas. Of course the state already does: Think about laws regarding drug and prostitution, and those of you who are under 21 - and rational - but can't legally drink alcohol. But this provides a more thorough justification for this behavior that is explicitly based on human irrationality rather than rationality.
Full disclosure: I haven't read the book yet, but I've some provocative reviews of it that outline and critique the argument in the book. Here's a good one. This reviewer points out that research has demonstrated multiple places where human rationality fails. Where we are fooled or make errant judgments. Some examples:
- Present Bias: We tend to focus on issue important to us today and ignore tomorrow.
- Probablity: We tend to not understand the actual likelyhood of different events occurring. Often we over estimate harms associeted with something that occured recently (like the recent meteor explosion) event though they are less likely to be repeated than other events.
- Optimism: We overestimate the likelyhood that we wil suffer consequences from any risky behaviors we engage in.
In a succinct sentence the books author states that “We are too fat, we are too much in debt, and we save too little for the future.” And we are due to the choices we make. Society as a whole suffers from these collective choices, so a degree of paternalism is justified.
This could be worth a class discussion.
In the meantime it suggests to me that I modify some of the slides I've put together detailing the role rationality plays in establishing governments based on the individual. The rationale still holds, but some nod to what research has told us about our actual ability to think rationally seems necessary.
