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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Surely the rhetoric of (ii) is misleading. Agreeing that there are Peters in that circumstance is a very diffeent thing that asserting that the government knows who those Peters are.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I see two issues here (and note that this is not a meta-comment unfortunately, but goes to the meat of the debate). The first is whether, in general, government paternalism would help with regard to the specific issues where the paternalistic policies apply. Does it really make people better off on average for them to be forbidden to use certain recreational drugs, for example? Are most people benefited by the forced savings imposed by the Social Security system and similar programs in other countries? I think you can make a decent argument that most such policies do have positive effects.

The second issue is larger, and it asks whether paternalism is wise even if we stipulate that specific paternalistic policies improve social welfare. This includes questions about the effects of losing personal autonomy and responsibility; and possible pernicious implications of having a larger and more intrusive government, which may go beyond paternalism into oppression and domination. That's a much more difficult area to consider because of the size and scope of the questions raised.

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