Robin, I don’t see any disconnect here. I certainly did not mean to suggest that parents shouldn’t be paternalistic towards their children. Of course they must be, though there is room for legitimate argument about how much paternalism is really necessary, and I think often less is better than more. The point of the post was simply to point out that people often disguise cruelty as justifiable paternalism, and that that’s bad. Same idea with government paternalism. I think there is a real necessary role for it, but it is susceptible to abuse. As I argued in our debate, in times and places where the abuse was very severe, we would have been better off getting rid of it altogether. But in decently well-functioning societies, that’s not the case. And if we got even better at limiting the abuses, I’d probably be in favor of even more paternalism.
With decent well functioning kids parents don’t need paternalism. With decent well functioning citizens governments don’t need paternalism. So how do we know when the parents and governments are more well functioning than kids and citizens?
It’s not that in well-functioning societies there’s no need for paternalism. It’s that in well-functioning societies the government can be trusted with enough power that they can carry out the kind of modestly paternalistic agenda that people like me favor. Similarly, in well-functioning families parents can be trusted with enough power to do modest, reasonable parental paternalism. Naturally, in poorly-functioning societies/families the government/parents seize power anyway, but we’re talking abut what’s legitimate, not about what actually happens.
Robin, I don’t see any disconnect here. I certainly did not mean to suggest that parents shouldn’t be paternalistic towards their children. Of course they must be, though there is room for legitimate argument about how much paternalism is really necessary, and I think often less is better than more. The point of the post was simply to point out that people often disguise cruelty as justifiable paternalism, and that that’s bad. Same idea with government paternalism. I think there is a real necessary role for it, but it is susceptible to abuse. As I argued in our debate, in times and places where the abuse was very severe, we would have been better off getting rid of it altogether. But in decently well-functioning societies, that’s not the case. And if we got even better at limiting the abuses, I’d probably be in favor of even more paternalism.
With decent well functioning kids parents don’t need paternalism. With decent well functioning citizens governments don’t need paternalism. So how do we know when the parents and governments are more well functioning than kids and citizens?
It’s not that in well-functioning societies there’s no need for paternalism. It’s that in well-functioning societies the government can be trusted with enough power that they can carry out the kind of modestly paternalistic agenda that people like me favor. Similarly, in well-functioning families parents can be trusted with enough power to do modest, reasonable parental paternalism. Naturally, in poorly-functioning societies/families the government/parents seize power anyway, but we’re talking abut what’s legitimate, not about what actually happens.