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Stephen Diamond's avatar

You can open stores for banned products, but people whose sole fault was to be born stupid will shop there and get hurt.

Do the stupid themselves tend to favor or oppose paternalistic regulation? If they favor it, is it because they realize they need extra protection? Anyone know?

[Edit.]Impulsive is more apt here than stupid. What I'm getting at is this. Jon Elster proposed a justification for one form of paternalism as a rational way to deal with impulse control problems. The idea is that we can agree to use the state to curb our tendencies toward impulse gratification.

I don't know that Elster addressed the issue of impulsive minorities. But a critical question is whether those minorities want this protection. (Some might say they're too stupid to know what they want - which may carry some weight if stupidity rather than impulsivity were the issue.)

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sd's avatar

Actual teenagers typically report that access to weed is easier than booze.

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