Bart Hinkle over at the RTD gives a wink and a nudge towards Cass Sunstein’s newest book:
Cass Sunstein, who has previously argued essentially that all rights are granted to us by government, argues in a new book, Nudge, that people should be allowed to make choices, as long as they are directed to make the right choices.
…
They are, then, “libertarian paternalists,” or perhaps paternalistic libertarians.
Perhaps they say it with a wink. Because it’s a little like being an establishmentarian revolutionary, or an Islamic-jihadist agnostic.
Precisely. I’ve offered my thoughts on this soft paternalism when it reared it’s head in the UK Economist, but it seems as if the ill-conceived idea of the “avuncular state” is picking up steam.