Paternalism is often criticized as an unjust restriction of liberty. On the other hand, libertarian attitudes are often criticized for ignoring human fallibility. In this post, I propose a system of voluntary paternalism, where people can select their own paternalistic constraints when they are rational.
I’ve proposed THIS here: Alienable (not Inalienable) Right to Buy!
Thanks to your post I now have a better name for it! I love “Voluntary Paternalism”!
Every sentence you write gets from me 💯💯💯.
We should feel sad that our posts don’t get more upvotes—as it’s exactly an important idea!
It addresses not only inividual well-being but also democratic buy-in to our market system that evilly over-tempts us with stuff we cannot well enough resist to and that commoners—at least superficially—often hate, and that makes people cynical about economy and society and, in the democratic cases, democracy, I’d wager from anecdotal evidences.
You might btw find interesting another post I’ve written that touches upon: Why paternalism anyway, even the non-voluntary one. I start with a weird-seeming trip re what ‘self’ actually is when we really are skeptical observers rather than naive believers in what we feel, but you can even disregard that a bit, but it ends in an argument as to why the fact that there’s simply no reason to treat “you” now and “you” in 30 years as a fully integrated “single entity” in a most fundamental way; if you’re myopic in your view and not careful for the future, there’s no reason to keep the you-in-30-years unabatedly hostage by your current you; we must intervene. Your own fully pragmatic ‘it’s simply better to intervene’ can suffice, fwiw here that extended (implied) argument pro paternalism: Relativity Theory for What the Future ‘You’ Is and Isn’t
(would be keen to read also your potential agreement or disagremeents).
I think btw while even our LW co-smarties seem to underappreciate the relevance of the thing—call me biased—tech will of course help us solve it at least partly. The bank account that let’s you easily pre-program what you can and cannot spend on is surely just around the corner, tbc.
Another consideration regarding suicide paternalism: the way we do things now, people considering whether to commit suicide are disincentivized to talk it through with friends and therapists, since it may lead them to being involuntarily committed to a mental hospital (which can sometimes lead to other negative events like their being fired from their job). If on the other hand people had the chance to talk through their suicidal tendencies without fear from these repercussions, many of them might not end up attempting suicide after all,