Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Your stance on chocolate is a little too Platonic for me. People like what they like. But I perceive you’re using that as some kind of parable for the fact that people could be living better lives than they are, like the wastrel in your example. I agree about that, and also that we shouldn’t…

In reply to <a href=”https://prosociallibertarians.com/2022/12/14/government-actions-arent-pareto-optimal-they-are-paternalist/comment-page-1/#comment-275″>T Boyle</a>. T Boyle, you’re mistaken. Marginal analysis is helpful here. In a prisoner’s dilemma the highest payoff to A comes from A defecting and B not defecting. Cooperation results in the highest _joint_ payoff not the highest payoff to A. Coercion from the mob boss can come in three different…

In reply to <a href=”https://prosociallibertarians.com/2022/12/14/government-actions-arent-pareto-optimal-they-are-paternalist/comment-page-1/#comment-278″>Andrew Jason Cohen</a>. Andrew, I’m not 100% sure whether your chocolate comment is serious, but I’ll assume it is because it illustrates a very important concept. There is no such thing as objectively better chocolate. All taste is subjective. The most one could say is something along the lines of: 1)…

In reply to <a href=”https://prosociallibertarians.com/2022/12/14/government-actions-arent-pareto-optimal-they-are-paternalist/comment-page-1/#comment-275″>T Boyle</a>. This seems right. I am nonetheless of the view that the coercion is unacceptable. Hence my rejection of the second syllogism (C).

In reply to <a href=”https://prosociallibertarians.com/2022/12/14/government-actions-arent-pareto-optimal-they-are-paternalist/comment-page-1/#comment-277″>Aeon J. Skoble</a>. Oh, I find it pretty much unfathomable that there isn’t objectively better chocolate. And I simply see no way to argue that there aren’t objectively better ways to lead a life. A rich kid might be able to lead his entire life getting stoned everyday without causing any…

But Andrew, here’s where I am with Dan – your examples about objectively good beer or chocolate don’t work; those really are completely subjective, and that’s the sort of thing that pro-coercion types run with. If there’s objectively better chocolate, then we get a slippery slope about all sorts of things the state knows better…

In reply to <a href=”https://prosociallibertarians.com/2022/12/14/government-actions-arent-pareto-optimal-they-are-paternalist/comment-page-1/#comment-274″>Aeon J. Skoble</a>. I agree, but I take the third objection to include that. I’ll think more about it. This is a case where I would definitely like to be wrong!

You may be making this too hard. Consider the classic Prisoners’ Dilemma: if a third party (the mob boss) coerces both of them into cooperating with each other, they are both better off than they would have been without the coercion. This is the standard example of a collective action problem: at the margin one…

The 2nd premise in (A) trades on an ambiguity – the coerced could better off in some narrow sense but the objection to coercion is that it’s harmful in some other sense. E.g., being coerced to wear a seat belt does make you safer if there’s an accident, but that doesn’t mean it’s not bad…

In reply to <a href=”https://prosociallibertarians.com/2022/12/14/government-actions-arent-pareto-optimal-they-are-paternalist/comment-page-1/#comment-272″>Aeon J. Skoble</a>. Aeon-We agree, but I don’t think we agree with Dan. That freedom is an objective component of well being is why we reject paternalism (and the syllogism in C) but it doesn’t make the first syllogism (A) sound. Or am I missing something?