Thursday, November 10, 2011

Nudging Back

Henry Farrell (a graduate of UCD Economics, as it happens) raises reasonable questions about the conflict between democracy and the technocracy inherent libertarian paternalism.
Libertarian paternalism is seductive because democratic politics is a cumbersome and messy business. Even so, democracy is far better than even the best-intentioned technocracy at discovering people’s real interests and how to advance them. It is also, obviously, better at defending those interests when bureaucrats do not mean well.
On a side note, Cass Sunstein is married to an Irish woman and is therefore entitled to citizenship. I wonder if the Royal Irish Academy might learn something from the FAI in this regard.

1 comment:

Kevin Denny said...

I fully expect Trappatoni to engage Sunstein to provide behavioural initiatives to strengthen the mid-field in advance of the Estonia game.