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“Libertarian paternalism” is idiotic

This concept of “libertarian paternalism” is possibly the stupidest thing I’ve heard since some self-described libertarians suggested that Rudy Giuliani had a libertarian molecule in his body. It is so stupid because it is a metaphysical impossibility. Tim Harford of the Financial Times seems to be largely amenable to the idea. He gives us some background:

There is no idea so good that it cannot be spoilt by politicians, and such a fate is now befalling libertarian paternalism—recently rebranded as “nudging”.

I don’t know how this idiocy came to be widely (even somewhat, remotely widely) thought of as a good idea, and I sure as hell don’t see why re-branding it as “nudging” makes it any worse. “Nudging” sounds more direct, less camouflaged by patently incorrect and oxymoronic language, to me.

Libertarian paternalism is a conscious effort to help people make better choices without forbidding anything.

Anything, that is, except peacefully seceding from your monopolistic government, leaving you to have all the fun with it that you wish, and governing ourselves peacefully and voluntarily. You know, giving us the same privilege and respect that we would give you, if only you’d stop pointing your guns at us and threatening enslavement and murder while reminding us you’re only here to help.

It embraces anything from assuming that you would like to contribute to a company pension unless you say otherwise, to placing the doughnuts in a quieter corner of the supermarket.
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The real justification for libertarian paternalism is that it is a failsafe system to guard against bad decisions. Most of those bad decisions come from government: you and I almost certainly know our own preferences and interests better than any government bureaucrat. That is the case for individual freedom of choice.

Yet our inner Homer Simpson occasionally rears his head, meaning that we sometimes make choices that we regret later. The classic example is saving for a pension: most people want to, but some procrastinate, do not start saving early enough and stop again whenever they move jobs. Thoughtfully designed pension rules—say, an automatic opt-in—can help us do what we always intended to do and in retrospect are glad we did. That is the case for paternalism.

Once again, we find that the arguments Statists make and the scenarios they present actually turn out to favor freedom more than Statism. Herbert Spencer was right when he wrote, “The ultimate result of protecting men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” Why can’t people be allowed to judge things for themselves and learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of others, and WHY ARE YOU SO MUCH FUCKING SMARTER THAN THE REST OF US?!

Why are your “nudges” always going to be best for everyone? You, after all, do not suffer one iota if your “nudges” turn out to be costly, unjust, or deadly. Do you and the criminals you elect purport to be immune to the follies that befall the rest of mankind? You are not. On the contrary, it is a truism that the type of people who are enamored of power and control over others, who are attracted to the prospect of wielding the violent, deadly police power of the State, are the most despicable and base creatures known to man. History has shown that their attempts to help, guide, cure, and improve others have resulted in the most heinous injustices imaginable.

The two together [freedom of choice, government paternalism] back each other up. If the government default does not suit you, you choose something else.

Oh, well, good! The government does not suit me; I’ll choose services to buy and companies to buy them from on my own, and let you go about your merry way, thank you.

If you cannot make a good decision for yourself, hopefully you will end up sticking to the government default. That makes two chances to do the right thing.

Funny how no advocates of this absurdity even countenance the possibility of the government’s decision being a bad one, ever, for anyone. Harford goes on to criticize other forms of “nudging,” apparently the kinds being proposed by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and supporters, but for some reason he doesn’t see that they are absolutely identical in principle.

So far, so good, but now the marketing has taken over. Libertarian paternalism is now “nudging”, as described by Professors Sunstein and Thaler on this page last Wednesday. I asked Professor Thaler to tell me about his favourite nudge and his first response was to describe the urinals in Schiphol airport. They bear etchings of black houseflies, which apparently serve to reduce “spillage”.

I am no more in favour of spillage than the man standing at the urinal beside me, but how is this libertarian paternalism? “We recognise your right to wet your shoes, but in case that is not your objective we will structure your choice environment to help you.”

If even my non-libertarian readers aren’t scared by that fascist, Orwellian language (“we will structure your choice environment to help you”), then I don’t know why I spend so many hours blagging every week.

The housefly trick is a good idea. But it is not a platform for government and unfortunately nobody has told that to the Conservatives, who have rushed to embrace nudging.

I don’t know why it’s so much worse to embrace public urinal gimmicks than to force companies to offer their employees certain types of pension plans or whatever other financial “nudges” you’ve got up your sleeve. I think I’d argue that while we’ve got a bloated and stupid government, I’d rather it spend its resources on harmless nudges like that one than on important life-altering decisions such as how companies should be run or what you and your employer should do with your money.

Some of this is good policy, some is bad policy, some is old-fashioned posturing and none of it has anything to do with libertarian paternalism. Nudging is now an excuse for doing little when something serious must be done —for instance, on climate change, where a broad-based, credible carbon tax or permit-trading scheme is the only sensible policy. It is also a nice excuse for nannying in areas that are none of the state’s business.

I guess that’s about as libertarian as European economists are very likely to get these days. “The State shouldn’t be nannying us day and night, but we should put the government in charge of every environmental issue imaginable, thereby usurping the private property rights and common-law precedents that could have taken care of pollution rather better over the centuries.”

Libertarian paternalism is the brainchild of Profs Thaler and Sunstein, but nudging is not. Nudging is good architecture, good design or good marketing and most nudges have been invented by private sector companies. Prof Thaler’s best policy idea—a pension plan called Save More Tomorrow—was tried by a manufacturing company rather than a government.

Effective nudges are so common in the private sector that politicians should be asking themselves why. What is it about competitive markets that produces such clever wheezes?

The answer has been obvious for a long time: the market is a machine for producing good ideas, promoting experimentation and scything down concepts that fail, all the while giving the customer the power to choose.

See, he’s almost there, he’s almost there… Or he’s just posturing for the “free market” when he really has no interest in promoting real freedom. The politicians obviously have no interest in promoting real freedom. And I still don’t see the qualitative difference between Thaler’s and Sunstein’s vision of “libertarian paternalism,” which Harford embraces, and the Conservative Party’s “nudging,” which Harford’s column was supposed to explain and discredit. The State doing things it should vs. the State doing things it shouldn’t, I guess.

Guhh. This is one of the most hare-brained and unrealistic State programs I’ve ever heard of. Of course this will be abused by power-hungry criminals, who will never suffer for their transgressions, and of course these good intentions will be used to justify ever more encroachments against our individual sovereignty. What, exactly, did you assume would be different about these government programs compared to every other government program in the history of the world?

Tim Harford sort of dances around but does not emphasize that point: Politicians and bureaucrats will abuse any mandates for “libertarian paternalism” by overstepping their bounds and coming up with all sorts of specious justifications for every type of “nudge” they want to implement, and furthermore if this idea of paternalistic nudging becomes popular they will label any and all invasions of our sovereignty as such, in order to fool the public into acquiescing.

The aspect of this that irks me the most is not the fact that the proposed State activities are potentially harmful and are perfectly well left to free individuals and companies. That is true of all State activities. Well, I mean, except the murdering and terrorizing and so forth; those shouldn’t be done by anyone. What really irritates me is the use of the word “libertarian” for these government activities. First, obviously no one who describes government activities as “libertarian” or “libertarian paternalism” has any clue what libertarianism is. But even worse, they use this terminology to help justify things that would be harder to justify under more accurate labels. Back when Kelly had his own blag, he wrote about the sudden popularity of claiming you were a libertarian when you were nothing of the sort. Politicians and other people with evil machinations now consider it fashionable to brand themselves and their schemes as “libertarian,” possibly in an attempt to appeal to our individualist instincts. They’re using our word for evil ends!

I think there is a silver lining to this trend: it indicates that libertarianism—whatever is meant by that word in a given person’s mind—is popular and desirable and people (even politicians, who barely count as people) know that individual sovereignty is a good thing. If we can get the message across that libertarianism is fundamentally opposed to any and all monopolistic government, and that this is a very good thing, even better than their current impression of “libertarianism,” then that’ll be a great accomplishment.

From reading this one column of his, I don’t direct much of my ire at Tim Harford. Oh, his advocacy of “libertarian paternalism” is stupid, all right, but I think he is just a misguided smallish-government advocate who doesn’t have the balls to denounce the State entirely because he still thinks it has certain positive and necessary functions in society. He also doesn’t understand the meaning of the word libertarian, and so he shouldn’t brand any of his Statist policies with that word in order to make them more appealing to the individualist in all of us.

I have been tempted a few times lately to create a new category for our blag posts called “Stupid.” This finally pushed me to do it.

Posted in Fascism, Rants, Stupid, Unrealistic