The
state is looking after you
Apr 6th 2006
From The Economist print
edition
A new breed of paternalists is seeking to promote virtue and wisdom by
default. Be wary.
LIBERALS sometimes dream of a night-watchman state, securing property
and person, but no more. They fret that societies have instead
submitted to the nanny state, a protective but intrusive matriarch,
coddling citizens for their own good. Economists, with their strong
faith in rationality and liberty, have tended to agree. As many
decisions as possible should be left in the individual's lap, because
no one knows your interests better than you do. Most of us have gained
from this freedom.
But a new breed of policy wonk is having second thoughts. On some of
the biggest decisions in their lives, people succumb to inertia,
ignorance or irresolution. Their private failings—obesity, smoking,
boozing, profligacy—are now big political questions. And the wonks
think they have an ingenious new answer—a guiding but not illiberal
state.
What they propose is “soft paternalism” (see article). Thanks to years
of patient observation of people's behaviour, they have come to
understand your weaknesses and blindspots better than you might know
them yourself. Now they hope to turn them to your advantage. They are
paternalists, because they want to help you make the choices you would
make for yourself—if only you had the strength of will and the
sharpness of mind. But unlike “hard” paternalists, who ban some things
and mandate others, the softer kind aim only to skew your decisions,
without infringing greatly on your freedom of choice. Technocrats,
itching to perfect society, find it irresistible. What should the
supposed beneficiaries think?
Choosing not to choose
Most people would accept that a healthy diet is hard to achieve,
financial matters are confusing and cigarettes kill too many. The state
is tempted to step in, not only because of the harm that smokers,
lushes, spendthrifts and gluttons may do to others, but because of the
harm they are doing to themselves. In Scotland last month the
government banned smoking in offices, restaurants and pubs. In
Massachusetts, the state legislature has passed a bill requiring
everyone who can afford to buy health insurance to do so, on pain of
higher taxes.
This is hard paternalism. The softer sort is about nudging people to do
things that are in their best interests. The purest form involves
setting up systems for sinners to reform themselves: in Missouri for
instance, some 10,000 compulsive gamblers have banned themselves from
riverboat casinos; if they succumb to their habit (and are caught) they
face tough punishments. In most cases, though, soft paternalism means
the government giving people a choice, but skewing the choice towards
the one their better selves would like to make.
For instance, in many countries plenty of workers fail to enrol in
pension schemes and suffer as a result. The reason is not that they
have decided against joining, but that they haven't decided at all—and
enrolling is cumbersome. So why not make enrolling in the scheme the
default option, still leaving them the choice to opt out? Studies have
shown this can nearly double the enrolment rate. Lord Turner, head of
Britain's Pensions Commission, is the latest soft paternalist to
recommend such a scheme
Soft paternalists also want to give people more room to rethink “hot
and hasty” decisions. They favour cooling-off periods before big
decisions, such as marriage, divorce or even buying cigarettes. Some of
them toy with elaborate “sin licences”, which would entitle the holder
to buy cigarettes, alcohol or even perhaps fatty foods, but only at
times and in amounts the licenceholder himself signed up to in advance.
If people want this kind of customised paternalism, why can't the
market, in the shape of rehab clinics and personal trainers, provide
it? Soft paternalists argue that, without the power of the state behind
such schemes, they will often break down: the sovereign consumer can
always veto his own decisions. He can fire his personal trainer or
check out of the clinic. Long before the government took it upon itself
to ban opium from general sale, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Romantic
poet and drug addict, used to hire porters to bar his entry to
apothecaries. But he would later threaten to have them arrested if they
did not let him pass.
Letting the mice play
Soft paternalism has much in its favour. First, it is certainly better
than hard paternalism. Second, a government has to provide information
to citizens in order for them to make rational decisions on everything
from smoking to breastfeeding to organ donation. Even a government
reluctant to second-guess its citizens ends up advising them in one way
or another. What people decide they want is often a product of the way
a choice is framed for them—they take the first thing on the menu, or a
bit of everything. Even a truly liberal government would find itself
shaping the wishes and choices to which it earnestly wants to defer.
It's surely better to lure people into pension schemes than out of them.
Yet from the point of view of liberty, there is a serious danger of
overreach, and therefore grounds for caution. Politicians, after all,
are hardly strangers to the art of framing the public's choices and
rigging its decisions for partisan ends. And what is to stop lobbyists,
axe-grinders and busybodies of all kinds hijacking the whole effort?
There is, admittedly, a safety valve. People remain free to reject the
choices soft paternalism tries to guide them into—that is what is
distinctive about it. But though people will still have this freedom,
most won't bother to use it—that is what makes soft paternalism work.
For all its potential, and its advantage over paternalism of the hard
sort, this is a tool that transfers power from the individual to the
state, which only sometimes knows best.
Its champions will say that soft paternalism should only be used for
ends that are unarguably good: on the side of sobriety, prudence and
restraint. But private virtues such as these are as likely to wither as
to flourish when public bodies take charge of them. And life would be
duller if every reckless spirit could outsource self-discipline to the
state. Had the government deprived Coleridge of opium, he might have
been happier. Then again, there might have been no “Kubla Khan”.