The Knowledge Problem of New Paternalism

Mario Rizzo posts at ThinkMarkets:

Glen Whitman’s and my article, “The Knowledge Problem of New Paternalism” has been published in The Brigham Young University Law Review, 2009, no. 4. The theme is that the project of the new/soft/libertarian paternalists to make us better off by our own standards fails because the paternalists lack sufficient knowledge of the circumstances of time and place that affect the welfare and decisions of agents. The analysis is quite comprehensive and should be of interest to many of our readers here.

This article should be viewed as a companion piece to our “Little Brother is Watching You: New Paternalism on the Slippery Slopes” published in the Arizona Law Review a few months ago. It was also summarized in eight posts at TM by Glen Whitman. The latest one can be found here.