Libertarian Paternalism
●Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler（2003）, “Libertarian Paternalism Is Not an Oxymoron（pdf）”（The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol.70(4), pp.1159-1202）
●Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, “The dramatic effect of a firm nudge”（FT.com, August 12, 2008）
Libertarian Paternalismへの批判は以下を参照のこと。
●Tim Harford, “Nudges are for markets not nations”（FT.com, August 21, 2008）
Libertarian paternalism is the brainchild of Profs Thaler and Sunstein, but nudging is not. Nudging is good architecture, good design or good marketing and most nudges have been invented by private sector companies. Prof Thaler’s best policy idea – a pension plan called Save More Tomorrow – was tried by a manufacturing company rather than a government.
Effective nudges are so common in the private sector that politicians should be asking themselves why. What is it about competitive markets that produces such clever wheezes?
The answer has been obvious for a long time: the market is a machine for producing good ideas, promoting experimentation and scything down concepts that fail, all the while giving the customer the power to choose.
●Glen Whitman, “The Truth About "Libertarian Paternalism" ”（Agoraphilia, May 26, 2007）
●Glen Whitman, “When Nudge Comes to Shove”（Agoraphilia, August 25, 2008）
（追記）
●Mario J. Rizzo and Douglas Glen Whitman, “Little Brother is Watching You: New Paternalism on the Slippery Slopes”（NYU Law and Economics Research Paper No. 08-15, April 8, 2008）
Our thesis is that the new paternalism’s claim to moderation is not sustainable. A recent literature has rehabilitated slippery-slope reasoning by examining the specific processes by which slippery slopes occur, as well as the circumstances under which slippage is most likely. Applying the insights of the slippery-slope literature to new paternalist policies suggests that these policies are particularly subject to expansion. We will argue that is true even if policymakers are rational. But perhaps more importantly, we will argue that the slippery slope threat is especially great if policymakers are not fully rational, but instead share the behavioral and cognitive biases attributed to the people their policies are supposed to help. Consequently, accepting new paternalist policies creates a risk of accepting, in the long run, greater restrictions on individual autonomy than have been heretofore acknowledged. Inasmuch as new paternalists claim to be interested in preserving autonomy, this surely must be counted as an unrecognized or unacknowledged cost to be balanced against any possible gains from their policies.
Libertarian Paternalismを実際の政策として具体化する場合の問題を、滑り坂（slippery slope）論あるいはくさび論に基づいて指摘。実際の政策は、Libertarian Paternalistの意図を超えて、よりパターナリスティックな色彩を帯びることになりがちであり（パターナリズムの坂をsoft paternalismからhard paternalismへ向けて転げ落ちていく）、一般の人々ばかりではなく、政策立案者もまた同様に、認知バイアスを抱えているとすれば、その可能性はより大きい、とのこと。
一般の人々は（認知バイアスを抱えているという意味で）不合理的である一方、政策立案者は（認知バイアスを抱えていないという意味で）合理的である、との想定のもとで議論を進めることは、暗黙のうちに、ある種のハーヴェイロードの前提に立っていることになるであろう（政策立案者は、認知バイアスから自由であるという意味で、一般人よりも賢明であると想定していることになるから）。Libertarian Paternalismの政策の是非を論じる際には、政策立案者もまた不合理的である*1との想定に立つほうが、よりまっとうな態度であろう（Rizzo, Whitmanは、政策立案者が認知バイアスを抱えていないとしても、パターナリズムの坂を転げ落ちる可能性を指摘しており（政策立案者が認知バイアスを抱えているとしたらなおさらのこと “Irrationalities grease the slope.”）、それ故、Libertarian Paternalismへのより強力な批判となっている）。
（追々記）
It might be objected that the existence of a gradient from soft to hard paternalism is just a fact, and the new paternalists cannot be faulted for pointing it out. But the gradient in fact results from the conceptual framework that the new paternalists have adopted and urge the rest of us to adopt. The main problem with the framework, in our view, is that it defines paternalism (and libertarianism) in terms of costs of exit, without any attention to who imposes the costs and how. An alternative framework, one that is more consistent with the typical usage of words like coercion and choice, would focus on whether rights of person and property are abridged by a given policy. On this approach, a restaurateur’s decision about dessert placement and a government’s decision about whether to allow helmetless motorcycle riding simply would not be on the same continuum. The former is both private and non-coercive, the latter public and coercive. This is the sort of framework that the new paternalists encourage us to reject in favor of theirs.（Mario J. Rizzo and Douglas Glen Whitman, pp.15）
Libertarian Paternalismが滑り坂論の入り込む余地を生み出すのは、ある政策がパターナリスティックがどうかを判断する際に依拠される通常の基準（国家による強制的な干渉かどうか）を転換していることにある。Libertarian Paternalismによれば、特定の政策から離脱するコスト（特定の政策がデフォルトとして提示する選択肢とは異なる選択を行う際に負担せねばならないコスト）の高低が政策のパターナリズムの程度を決定するとされる（離脱コストが高いほど、よりパターナリスティック）。パターナリズムの間に連続性（あるいは比較可能性）が持ち込まれる*2ことによって、滑り坂論の入り込む余地が生まれる（continuity vaguenessに基づくGradientsの出現）。
