New on Paternalism and Public Policy

Bill New's (1999) thoughtful paper has performed the valuable service of clarifying the meaning and the policy implications of paternalism. His careful formulation delimits the domain of justified state paternalism. Having argued successfully, in our view, for a narrow ambit, New proceeds to identify situations that justify paternalism. This comment is written in the spirit of a friendly reformulation that refines and improves the specification of when paternalism is justified. Our argument is twofold. First, we argue that New's formulation, properly understood, will not readily permit the paternalistic interventions he argues are justified. Second, we identify a class of potentially justified interventions that have paternalistic aspects, but which are neither strictly paternalistic nor market-failure remedies. New defines paternalism as the non-consensual interference in the self-regarding decision making of an autonomous person, which is intended to further the person's welfare, where autonomous persons are adults not incompetent, incapacitated, nor under coercion (1999, p. 65). New's definition excludes as non-paternalistic the following kinds of policies: