Consumer competence
Gary Becker, famous U. Chicago economics professor, and Richard Posner, famous U. Chicago “law and economics” professor and federal appellate judge, discuss the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The agency is to protect consumers from misrepresentation (and bad personal judgment) when it comes to financial products (e.g. sub-prime mortgages). Their lucid discussion is especially interesting as an example of how economists and “law and economics” scholars think about policy questions.
-Jake
Wipes away wrinkles . . .
. . . beats erectile dysfunction, and keeps you alive for ever, too!
The federal Food and Drug Administration recently censured dermatologist Dr. Leslie Baumann for promoting a cosmetic drug before its FDA approval. According to the New York Times, this marks the first time the FDA has warned one of the investigators who oversees the clinical trials that lead to FDA review and, in some cases, approval for use by the public.
Depending on how you look at it, the Food and Drug Administration is either a basic requirement for exercising individual liberty, or the ultimate expression of the Nanny State. Which one is it? Read more
Can government ban fast food?
After writing this week about the perfectionism-neutrality debate, I came across an interesting and related article in the Washington Post on a lawmaker that wants to prohibit Prince George’s from issuing new licenses to fast food restaurants in areas with high disease rates. Not surprisingly, opponents argue that what people eat is a matter of personal choice. But supporters claim that there are clear connections between poverty and fast food eating and between fast food and obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. The article cites a state study that found nearly 40% of Prince George’s county children under 11 were overweight and that most came from lower-income families. Indeed, one third of children in Prince George’s eat three or more fast food meals a week.
So, should government get involved in determining what food options are available? And if so, is it possible to make the case on a neutral basis?
Government incentives revisited
The perfectionism-neutrality debate
Last week I wrote about government’s use of taxes, tax credits, fees and regulations, and legal punishment to incentivize and disincentivize personal behavior, such as the homebuyers tax credit, taxes on alcohol, parking meter fees and speeding tickets. As I noted, one of the key public philosophical questions that arises is “to what ends may government incentivize/disincentivize behavior?”. This question gets at the core of a philosophical debate over whether the state should promote certain conceptions of the good life (“goods”). One side of the debate - perfectionism - claims that the state can and should promote goods. Neutrality, on the other hand, argues that the state can and must refrain from promoting the good and instead promote only “the right.”
NYU Law Professor and sometimes public philosopher, Ronald Dworkin, posits that this debate ultimately sets liberalism, which Dworkin believes is grounded in neutrality, apart from other political theories. Other liberal theorists, such as Rice University philosopher George Sher, believe perfectionism can be compatible with liberalism. In this post I want to elaborate on this debate, though within the space limitations of a blog I will just get to skim the surface. Read more
Dealing with death
The New York Times has a nice update to an issue I discussed months ago - end of life decisions in health care and the angst that accompanies them. Official guidelines call on doctors to begin “the conversation” (about how a terminally ill patient would like to spend their final days) at about 1 year away from estimated death. But it seems that there are diverging opinions on the viability of these guidelines; this “conversation,” after all, is perhaps the most difficult a person will ever face and such emotionally taxing questions are sometimes as difficult for doctors to broach as they are for patients to digest.
One one hand, there’s our desire to remain hopeful as long as possible, if not to the end. Many patients - even when faced with dire forecasts - demand that doctors continue chemotherapy and other intensive (and expensive) treatments even when their effectiveness has worn off. They want to live like Sisyphus, knowledgeable of their unwinnable predicament yet committed to fighting ’till the end.
But of course, fighting costs money, time, and diverts resources away from others, and when patients request major surgeries and experimental treatments in the face of extremely low or impossible odds, utility seems to demand that they be overridden. Can we do so, however, without succumbing to the “death panel” argument? Is there something just inherently wrong about telling the terminally ill to give up?
The existentialist in us says that we can come to terms with our finality without falling into despair, but something tells me that doctors don’t read Camus in medical school.
-Colin
Montana allows assisted suicide
Last Thursday, the Montana Supreme Court found that there is no law prohibiting patients from seeking physician-assisted suicide, making it the 3rd state to allow the practice (after Oregon and Washington). The Court focused not on finding a right to assisted suicide, but on failing to find a legal prohibition against it in Montana law. Assisted dying, they argued, can be seen as an extension of patient autonomy and personal responsibility for crucial, life and death decisions.
Two judges dissented, however. Here’s Justice Jim Rice:
Until the public policy is changed by the democratic process, it should be recognized and enforced by the courts. In my view, the court’s conclusion is without support, without clear reason, and without moral force.
This is a Scalia-esque argument for judicial restraint on difficult moral questions. But sometimes rhetoric about “judicial activism” acts as a smokescreen for smuggled-in moral assumptions. When speaking of basic “rights” (and liberals are often inclined to think that the right to die is among them), it’s convenient to use the language of established public policy when it’s in your favor and protest “overreaching activism” when the perceived rights are not currently recognized. Meanwhile, actual moral argument regarding the demands and limits of autonomy when it comes to end-of-life decisions is pushed aside.
But perhaps that’s a good thing - Justice Rice would likely suggest that we ought to hash the issues out in public, through the political process, and in this way morality is not swept under the rug for the ease of legalistic maneuvering. The spectre of Roe v. Wade haunts us still!
-Colin
Can one act “as if” there were free will?
Julian Sanchez has some lucid thoughts about an ongoing discussion at the Daily Dish regarding free will:
We can say something similar about the folks who weigh in with dire concerns about what the rejection of free will means for moral judgment. Our particular intuitions about its content may benefit from theoretical reflection, but it’s just backwards to suggest that the “wrong” answer to a metaphysical question about agency or the nature of the mind could somehow require us to throw out the whole language of value and meaning. And while it would require a long post of its own to really cash this out, I think it’s a good sign that something’s wrong with your value theory if it does depend in this crucial, systemic way on the answer we give here.
-John
Personal responsibility and the nanny state
Helping people help themselves
Some Republicans have recently seized on small provision of health care legislation under consideration in the Senate:
For critics of the Democrats’ $849 billion health care bill, this may be the ultimate irony: millions of dollars set aside so the government can help teach citizens how to handle their own money better.
The funding is part of a broader, $375 million program aimed at promoting responsible lifestyles - a five-year plan to fund state efforts to educate adolescents on abstinence, contraception and other “adult preparation subjects” such as healthy relationships, increased child-parent communication and “financial literacy.”
Critics like Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) say that “Personal responsibility is a good principle — but not the government doing it.” Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) sarcastically calls it “a wonderful nanny state.”
This is an old, but important debate. Read more
Free market journalism
Do we need a “public option”?
Much has been made lately about the media’s incessant coverage of relatively unimportant matters (”Balloon Boy,” Sarah Palin’s new book, Tiger Woods’s affairs, Michael Jackson’s death) as compared to pressing policy debates (Afghanistan, global warming, health care reform, unemployment).
This phenomenon isn’t exactly new. The zealousness of the mainstream media for hype, controversy, and celebrity has been a well-worn punching bag for people like Jon Stewart for years. And from a broader vantage point, ridicule for the “mass diversions,” whether they consist in sports, gossip magazines, or low-brow comedy, is probably a cultural mainstay.
But some say that we are facing a crisis in journalism. Well, that’s what I say anyway. As large media companies and papers such as the New York Times and Washington Post fire thousands of employees, close bureaus, and migrate to the internet, it is becoming harder and harder to do the job. Meanwhile, the relative success of Fox News, which regularly outperforms almost all other cable news networks combined, is driving its competitors to emulate the Fox model - hot blondes, flashy headlines, and an emphasis on controversy over depth or accuracy.
This might all be traced back to basic market forces. Detailed, responsible journalism just doesn’t sell as well as polarized, simplistic coverage. Sure, the New York Times might do better work than The Drudge Report (I should hope so), but people want Drudge. Hemingway might be better reading than Danielle Steele, too, but I haven’t seen anyone carrying The Old Man and the Sea on the subway.
Exit strategy or “No Exit”?
Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass (who was also the State Department’s Director of Policy Planning under George W. Bush) likens our commitment to Afghanistan to Sartre’s play, “No Exit,” in which the characters cannot seem to escape one another.
“Hell is other people,” one says. Why is this relevant? Because in both Iraq and Afghanistan, America finds itself involved (some might say trapped) in difficult situations (some might describe them as hell) where its ability to exit successfully depends largely on its local partners.
In order to successfully “sell” this war to an increasingly war-weary public, the administration has emphasized its intentions to leave the region sooner than later. Unfortunately, Haass reminds us, “conflicts are easier to get into than out of.”
-Colin
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