Multiple selves、パターナリズム、コース

●Glen Whitman, “Against the New Paternalism: Internalities and the Economics of Self-Control”（Policy Analysis no. 563, Cato Institute, February 22, 2006）

In short, the old paternalism said, “We know what’s best for you, and we’ll make you do it.” The new paternalism says, “You know what’s best for you, and we’ll make you do it.”

The internalities approach is clever. Even the staunchest skeptics of government intervention will usually concede that government is needed to prevent people from harming each other. By treating the individual as a multiplicity of selves, the new paternalism invites policy analysts to import the theory of externalities into the realm of individual choice.

・・・（略）・・・

I will take the idea of multiple selves as given−for argument’s sake−and then argue that the analysis of internalities is seriously incomplete. In “translating” the concept of externalities, internality theorists have drawn on economic theory that is at least 40 years out of date. In his famed 1960 article “The Problem of Social Cost,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase started a revolution in the economic analysis of externalities. His approach showed that externalities need not always produce inefficient outcomes, because both institutions (such as private property rights) and market exchanges can deal with them. The application of Coase’s ideas to internality theory casts serious doubt on the new paternalism.

Division of Labour経由。時間見つけて読む。

（追記）

multiple selves論への内在的な批判であり、Tyler Cowenの論文 “Self-Constraint and Self-Liberation（pdf）”（Ethics（January 1991）, Vol.101(2), pp.360-373）と問題意識ならびにアプローチの点で多くを共有している。

（追々記）

ちなみにGlen Whitmanのブログは以下。

Agoraphilia
http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/

Whitmanの以下の文章も面白かった。

●“Slavery, Snakes, and Switching : The Role of Incentives in Creating Unintended Consequences”（Library of Economics and Liberty, May 7, 2007）