Kinder, Gentler Paternalism: Why Restricting Consumers' Choices Can Be Good for Them
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- Synopsis
- Is it ever appropriate to restrict people's liberties to protect them from their own bad decisions? One of the advantages of the nineteenth-century economic view of human nature is that it leads to straightforward answers to these kinds of questions. To almost any policy problem, the believer in rationality replies: leave it up to the market. But unfortunately, the freedom of personal choice has proven not to be the cure-all that its proponents claim it to be. Even when people know what they want out of life, they often lack the decision-making competence to obtain these goals. In this chapter, Ubel describes the efforts of behavioral economists to challenge the traditional economic view that society faces an all-or-nothing choice between liberty and coercion. This chapter is excerpted from "Free Market Madness: Why Human Nature Is at Odds with Economics--and Why It Matters."
- Copyright:
- 2009
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- Publisher:
- Harvard Business Publishing
- Date of Addition:
- 08/02/16
- Copyrighted By:
- HBS Press
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Nonfiction, Business and Finance
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.