The question is not how many people die because of the FDA, but how many people would die if the FDA did not exist. Would deaths go up or down? (And, from another angle, would people prefer the system with FDA or without?) I can make convincing-sounding arguments either way on both cases, but do we have any evidence to decide?

The inertia paternalist would say that we should take each case on a case by case example and determine whether the existing status is on balance positive or not. If not, then they would agree to replace it, perhaps after trying to modify it. But they would not agree to elimination of all paternalism at once, without the case by case debate. This recognises the complex integrated nature of human society and its systems, it may seem like it is a no brainer to eliminate, say, the FDA, but until we do we can’t say whether it is actually a good idea (because of second and third order effects).

It is true that I would not hire Nick. I don’t smoke and I don’t want to be protected from myself. The thing about that scenario though is that people are actually choosing Nick, just as people can choose to limit their freedom through other contracts like marriage or non-disclosure agreements. Stirner is one of my significant influences, but I think this post from Will Wilkinson at Happiness & Public Policy on the “Stirnerite fallacy” (and the Virginia Postrel review of “Paradox of Choice” it links to) do a decent job of explaining how we do choose to limit our choices or commit to things. Many of the paternalistic things the government does we could do as well, like Odysseus having his men tie him up. We don’t because we don’t want to. The government is enacting these policies not on people who have requested them for themselves (even different versions of selves) as in the Nicotrel commercial, but on people who don’t want it. For a government that considers abortion to be a constitutional right, claiming that they are protecting the senior citizen me who will get diabetes but cannot speak for himself due to his current (and possibly permanent) non-existence rings hollow.

Judging from some of his other posts here, I doubt Robin Hanson would concur with your faith in professors / University departments. They aren’t so much a market for advice/information as prestige/credentials and once in government aren’t a market at all. I suppose I have less confidence in the first X names in the phone-book than William Buckley but they would still have many advantages over the faculty of Harvard for reasons discussed in The Wisdom of Crowds. The nature of the Harvard faculty would of course also change (as would the American Economic Association) if it were made into a governing institution, making the random phone-book page more attractive.

I think that corporations serve to dilute aspects of responsibility asymmetrically, often in order to encourage relatively consequentialist behavior. Employees can be obliged to do things that they might otherwise not have the stomach for, some of which need to be done.

Sadly, no time to go into detail into my institutional ideas.

I agree that the “self” is a fiction. I would not say that we have multiple “selves” though. What is actually “self-like” about us is the continuous stream of consciousness, but the idea we have of agency is an illusion (in fact the “I” itself is simply a thought which is believed in, which is what Buddhism means by anatta).

I still don’t see how this actual lack of selfhood means that treating each individual person as an autonomous agent is worse than relying on government agents to make all the decisions they care to make about how everyone should live. That is the part of your thesis I think is not well developed, and the one that historically governments have made a complete hash of. . . E.g. consider cost/benefit studies of the FDA, and how many lives it costs through drug delays vs. lives saved by keeping bad drugs off the market. . .

Your proposal is very interesting, and I have some questions.

What are ‘system one’ errors, I’m not familiar with that term?

Also, isn’t this what we do with old people, when they begin to have what we see as diminished capacity, we children try to persuade them not to drive, and the state takes away their licenses, etc, though of course there it is the children who have a legal? right to restrict the behavior of their aged parents, as well as minor children being restricted by their more competent parents, as you point out. As you also point out, in loco parentis is used in college, before the children are 21.

But you seem to be proposing such a scheme for those between 21 and 65, right?

if I read you right. I see why you say that the law is a system of this kind, but I am puzzled what you mean when you refer to the corporation, what do you have in mind there?

As far as business opportunities, I guess life coaches, psychotherapists (often with licensing requirements), and similar professions are voluntary systems along the lines you have in mind. I wonder if a system more aligned with modern norms might be developed along the lines of discussion groups, things like men’s groups ( in which I participated for a while some years ago, and got some excellent advice based on other’s life experiences, etc.), and other voluntary social groupings.

Please let me know the what you think about these questions.

I think Robin Hanson’s question along with Stuart Armstrong’s proposal goes right to the heart of the matter

– how can we decide paternalism vs. the libertarian alternative on an empirical basis, instead of bloviating hot air? as I have been doing –

and let me propose an answer to the question: Where do we find the most unbiased and knowledgable advice market?

I bet you see where I’m going already… IT’S THE PROFESSORS! That’s why they give us tenure, right? And by way, if you have spent some time in the bowels of government, as I have (as an outsider at DARPA, ONR, AFOSR, US Forest Service, mostly) did it seem to you, as it did to me, like nothing so much as a University Department, inside of which I spent several decades: it’s full of seminars, and papers, and reviewing papers, and discussion groups, and committees and subcommittees (the only thing missing is the teaching, but there are a lot of add-ons, like annual day long refresher courses on defensive driving, and mandatory training on Total Quality Management, etc). I’ve spent only a little time in business environments, but not ones that function as advice markets, so I can’t say anything useful about those.

I suppose though that Professors shouldn’t be trusted to give advice on things in which we have a possibly biased self interest, like University Governance — but wait! Isn’t that exactly the thing they do ask us to give advice on? Oh Dear.

As I read this over, it sounds like it might be interpreted as ironic, because there may be an ironic edge to the writing, but be assured I am serious, I do think the Professors are the best advice market available. And I’m not saying that with an ironic edge, though I can see that people who are not Professors might wonder …..