Title: Nudge, nudge | The Economist
Headings: Nudge, nudge
Paternalism and the English language
Nudge, nudge
Content: In "Nudge", the 2008 book by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler that brought the Orwellian terminology of "libertarian paternalism" to a popular audience, "libertarian" was used, sensibly enough, to mean "choice-preserving" and "paternalism" was used with such flagrant disregard of conventional meaning that it was made to include everything that might help anyone ever make a good decision. For example, in the "Nudge" scheme, signs on men's and women's restrooms would count as paternalistic "choice architecture" simply because they structure choices in a way that helps us do what's best by our own lights—in this case, not mortifying ourselves barging into the wrong restroom. But that's just muddle-headed. Helping others make good decisions by pointing them in the direction they want to go is called "being helpful", and has nothing to do with paternalism. Paternalism has to do with making people go in a direction they don't want to go. The gist of paternalism is that it takes away choices other people think are bad for us to make. By definition, "choice-preserving" policy is not paternalistic policy. By definition, paternalistic policy is not libertarian. If "libertarian paternalism" is stipulated to be a programme of "choice-preserving decision architecture", to use Messrs Sunstein and Thaler's barbaric jargon, then "libertarian paternalism" is nothing but a profoundly confusing, completely superfluous synonym for anti-paternalism. In that case, there can be no debate between the "libertarian paternalist" and the anti-paternalist, and one side cannot win it "in theory", while the other side comes out ahead "empirically".