Libertarian Paternalism2003

Another very short piece. I like to read two or three pages of other papers when I am reading a longer, more difficult one.

There is some useful propositions here that would be helpful to central planners who wish to remain non-coercive. In this respect, small examples are given of how to steer people gently and ways to modify behavior that do not seem to impact too much on the liberty of the participants of social organization. The argument is mostly amde to show that arguments against paternalism are not satisfactory. There is some discussion on how choices are not rational, and how this rationality is violated all the time when placed under scrutinity.

There is an example given of a cafeteria, where the paternalistic decision is to place the healthy food at the beginning and deserts at the end, since people´s choices are affected by the ordering. Then, another example is given here, in that maybe the deserts whould be placed in another table, to increase the transaction cost. This is a more intrusive intervention, but they argue it remains libertarian, since choice is not really constrained. I liked the bits about how there is bias for status-quo. However, the framework remains within the biggest status-quo of them all, market allocations and revelaed preferences, welfare, and so on. We cannot judge this paper too hard as it is only a discussion piece.