The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics and Libertarian Paternalism.

AuthorAnomaly, Jonny
PositionBook review

* The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics and Libertarian Paternalism

By Mark D. White

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Pp. xv, 185. $25 paperback.

The Manipulation of Choice is an important book on a timely topic. Over the past decade, an increasing number of academics and policymakers have argued that it is morally legitimate for the state to use its coercive power to steer people's choices--to "nudge" people to do what government agents believe is best for them--as long as they are free to opt out of the specified choice at a relatively low cost (see Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, "Libertarian Paternalism Is Not an Oxymoron," University of Chicago Law Review 70, no. 4 [Fall 2003], p. 1162). Examples of libertarian paternalism include requiring shops to place soda and cigarettes at the back of the store rather than near checkout stands and encouraging citizens to save for retirement by automatically opting them into a specified investment plan. The idea is that because some people act impulsively at the grocery store, and others are too myopic or financially illiterate to set aside enough money for retirement, governments can alter the options so that people are more likely to act in ways they would act if they were relatively well informed and free from cognitive biases.

Mark White spends little time reviewing specific policy proposals that libertarian paternalists have advanced and instead challenges the moral foundations of the entire research program. His two main arguments against libertarian paternalism appeal to the epistemic limitations of planners and to the ethical problem of giving governmental authorities the power to use information about people's cognitive biases to manipulate their choices. The first is a problem of knowledge (whether planners have the ability to infer people's interests from their behavior or from general principles of psychology); the second is a problem of morality (whether planners have the right, even if they solve the knowledge problem, to use their power to change people's choices).

White suggests that the "nudges" advocated by libertarian paternalists require an unjustified presumption that policymakers, armed with data from behavioral economics, have privileged access to people's interests. Although we typically have some idea of why people act--why, for example, they tend to choose caffeinated drinks in the morning and decaffeinated drinks at night--White maintains that "there is no way for an...

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