Paternalistic Power—Thompson

 Essentially a decision is not free—it is limited by something or someone

 They exercise power over a person whose welfare is promoted, and the power is
directed to the same end, and limited to the specific purposes of the intervention
 Government takes on the character of a benevolent individual, using its power for
agreed-upon ends and intervening only from time to time to promote those ends
 Paternalistic Paradigm: Liberal paradigm of paternalism
o Power is assumed to be directed towards ends that both parties can be known to
share and the unequal power between parties is assumed to be limited to
specific purposes of the intervention
 Problem:
 Contestable
o The power is contestable that there is often fundamental
and reasonable disagreements about the ends it should
serve
 Systematic Character
o Its effects reach beyond the scope of intervention itself
(including enforced inequalities)
 Voluntary Transactions
o Argument:
 These transactions that appear voluntary are actually paternalistic
o In turn, this affects how we interpret the criteria that warrants an intervention
 Solution
 A criteria must be formulated to resolve the disagreement about
interventions to control structural consequences
 A more political understanding should influence the application of the concept and
criteria
 The Concept of Paternalism
o Definition: Paternalistic decision/policy places constraints on the liberty of
persons to protect and promote good
o Solution: Reconcile paternalism with liberty by formulating a criteria of justifiable
paternalism to be consistent with the principle of liberty
 Points to three problematic elements
 Locus of the constraints
o Refers to a relationship between those whose liberty is
restricted and those who restrict it
o Relationship: Parent & child
 Raises Question: how does one determine who has
the right to restrict a child’s liberty—parents,
guardians, state?
o Relationship: citizens & the state
 Paternalism is confused with certain kinds of state
power
  Issues between democracy & paternalism (legal &
presidential spheres of power)
 Restriction of liberty remains paternalistic despite
voluntary restriction
 Form
o Concept: Does paternalism always involve a restriction of
liberty
 Unequal power in relationships: imposes a
conception of good by limiting actions a person
may wish to perform
o Positive Concept of Liberty Argument: Restrictions on
individuals for the purpose of making them better off
could not count as constraints on their liberty
 Purpose (promotion of protection of a person’s good)
o Argument: paternalism should not encompass the benefits
or harms that he person may bring to others or society in
general—otherwise no distinction is made between
moralism and paternalism
o Argument: Paternalism refers to class of reasons that we
may use to justify or condemn restrictions even on actions
that affect other people as well as the person being helped
 Claim: inequalities that are independent of paternalistic intervention
affect its character and may in turn reinforce inequalities
 Justification of Paternalism
o Claim: hard to maintain that a person’s good is not a justification for the
restriction of a liberty
o Solution to restrictions caused by Paternalism:
 The requirement that the intervention be limited
 Seek a restrictive formulation of the purpose of paternalism
 Claim: almost any kind of contract involves a sacrifice of future liberty
 Claim: Paternalistic legislation (which applies to an entire society) cannot be tailored to
the settled preferences or life plans of particular individuals
o Certain goods are less valuable for persons who would create a society with
different primary goods. – this all depends with our conception of the good.
 Claim: Citizens disagree about the ends of paternalistic intervention—as such, they
should have the chance to regularly and openly choose and review the ends that
paternalistic policies and practices impute to them and their citizens.
o Be involved in choosing a life end or goods that makes room for as many life
plans as possible.
 The Paternalism of the Professions
o A profession’s superior knowledge makes him positioned to take a paternalistic
approach to the relationship – recognizing paternalistic power in the relationship
between professionals and clients
 o Claim: Professionals may claim certain rights to control how they do their job,
but a such, institutions are likely to prove necessary to correct impairments
 Distribution of Public Welfare
o Medicine
 Use of medicine to be effective and safe
 This is a paternalistic act—assuming the state can intervene from
free choice of an individual and imposing a restriction on a person
 FDA as such seeks to meet criteria for justifiable paternalism
 Conclusion: institutions that implement justified paternalism should be
also designed to inhibit paternalism that is not—thus seek to recognize
and protect the legitimate claims or seek exemptions from general
prohibitions
 Regulation of Safety
o Safety legislation can be justified as necessary to prevent harm to others or
pursue social goals efficiently
 Anti-paternalism
o Argues for a conception of power
 Resist paternalism in regulation reinforces the idea in society that each
member owes nothing to the other
o Solution: public benevolence and anti-paternalism
 As long as public benevolence does not impose unfair burden on other
members of society
 Conclusion
o Solution: not eradicate paternalism but to locate its justifiable limits by:
 Take into account contestable and systematic power in institutions; that
is practiced by public officials and professionals in and out of public office

Robert Nozick- State and Utopia

 Ultra-minimal state
o Maintains a monopoly over all use of force except that necessary in immediate
self-defense, and so excludes private retaliation for wrong and exaction of
compensation but provides protection and enforcement only to those who
purchase its protection and enforcement policies
 Night-watchman state
o Redistributive aspect
 Compels people to pay for protection of others
 Compulsory Medical Treatment
o Claim: uses the law to prohibit specific actions either by forcing benefits on
people or by imposing sanctions if they act contrary to what others consider to
be their own good
 o Governmental claim: government in effect institutionalizes the interventions of
professionals OR government acts as professionals themselves using law or
admin process to enforce their expert judgements about the welfare of citizens
 Moral Constraints & Goals
o Moral concern is a function of a moral goal
o Claim: Utilitarianism doesn’t properly take rights and their non-violation into
account but leaves them in a derivative example
 Punishing innocent man to save a neighborhood from vengeful rampage
o Claim: proponent of ultraminimal state assumes that his goal is to minimize the
weighted amount of the violation of rights in a society, and should pursue his
goal even through means that themselves violate people’s rights
 Solution: ultraminimal state will be consistent if his conception of rights
hold that your being forced to contribute to another’s welfare violates
your rights
 Side Constraints
o Claim: The rights of others would constrain your goal-directed behavior. It
forbids you to violate moral constraints in pursuit of your goal
o Counterclaim: the view whose objective is to minimize the violation of these
rights allows you to violate these rights in order to lessen their total violation in
society
 Why Side Constraints
o Principle that individuals are ends and not merely means—they may not be
sacrificed or used for the achieving of other ends without their consents.
Individuals are inviolable
o Claim: side constraints express the violability of others in the ways they specify
o Claim: express inviolability of other persons—cost is borne for the sake of a
greater overall good—why wont people bear the costs of other persons for an
overall social good?
 Why not? People are individual
 End State-view
o Expresses the view that people are ends and not merely the means—minimize
the use in specified ways of persons as means
o Act in such a way that you always treat humanity whether in your own person or
in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time
as an end.
 Libertarian Constraints
o Claim: No moral balancing act can take place among us—there is no moral
outweighing of one of our lives by others so as to lead to a greater social good
 There is no justified sacrifice of some of us for others
o Reason for Claim: moral side constraints declare that different individuals with
separate lives may not be sacrificed for others
 Conclusion
 o Claim: there are distinct individuals each with their own life to lead to be the full
libertarian constraint  have their own life to lead
 Prohibits sacrificing one person to benefit another
 Paternalistic aggression: using or threatening force for the benefit
of the person against whom it is wielded
o Solution: formulate different constraints on response to innocent threats

Blocked Exchanges—A Taxonomy by Judith Andre

 14 blocked exchanges: things that cannot be bought or sold out of the concern over
domination
 Claim: different kinds of goods carry with them different criteria of distribution—overall
idea: limiting the market is good.
 Walzer, Raidng Anderson:
o Claim: protect human flourishing by shielding nonfungible property from the full
force of the market
o Claim: lessen oppression by using different grounds for distribution in different
spheres of life—markets have characteristics that can be destructive
 Exchange
o Claim: A transfer or exchange depends on words or symbolic actions and what is
essential is the set of rights, duties and liabilities that pass from one person to
the next
 Blocking Exchanges
o 4 different kinds
o What Cannot/should not be Owned: concern things over which legal rights are
not possible
 Friendship or love: cannot be willed or guaranteed
 Divine grace: we cannot sell it because we don’t own it
o Ownability
 Conclusion: nothing can be owned unless it is something over which laws
can be effective OR things that cannot be confined to any individual or
group (air rights/water rights)
o Things that Could be Owned but Should Not Be
 Human beings should not be owned—should respect people’s purposes
 Power over people is ordinarily indirect
o Ownership
 Property/Humans
 Property is relationship among people about an object—titles are
effective because of threat of legal punishment influences the
choices people make
 Slaves
o Limited what nonowners could do and not what owners
could do—example: legally helping slaves escape
  Conclusion: people/humans can be owned, people can use some
of the power of the state to persuade others to act
o Forms:
 Contracts
 Status: parents and children
 Alimony
 Property/Objects
 Claim: for the good of the community, some things must be
limited or prohibited
o Example: Declaration of Independence: ownership should
not resolve to full ownership
 Blocked Exchange: things that cannot be owned (legal control)
and others that should not be (humans)
o WHAT CANNOT/SHOULD NOT BE ALIENATED
 Alienation: cease to have or disconnect
o COULD BE BUT SHOULD NOT BE
 Claim: People should be invincibly armored against the state and other
potentially oppressive agents—independence and equal worth
 Claim: states should provide everyone with what is essential for life and
growth
o SHOULD NOT BE EXCHANGED FOR GAIN
 Concerns:
 Concerns about what is sold or traded
 Concern about who is doing the trade
 Anti-Consequentialism
 Kant: Human beings should not be treated as means only—
assumes that humans have no intrinsic value—understood as
actions inconsistent with valuing people in themselves
o MONEY ADDS PROBLEMS
 Money—highly abstract and makes fully ordered set
 Three dimensions
 Prices are fully ordered: price is equal to, les than, or more than
 Money accumulates, it is a form of power, as are the physical
strength, talent, legal status & social standing—money can be
accumulated endlessly
 Money accumulates unevenly
 Purely instrumental—adds instrumentality and gives value to be
treated as a means
 Provides diminishing marginal utility
 Seller and buyer need only be moved by their own self-interest
o WHEN ACTIONS ARE FOR SALE
 Focused on desperate exchanges: breaking law, degrading work
o THE MORAL CONSIDERATIONS of Sale of Actions
 Claim: Employment contracts are blocked as dangerous and degrading

work out of fear of injustice & exploitation
 Claim: use buying and selling to lament extinction of something good but
to rebuke self-interest for the other
 Money is the capital occasion for selfishness because of its
instrumentality as there is no appreciation for someone’s intrinsic
value
o CONCLUSION
 QUESTION: proper scope of the market
 Money is powerful that borders need to be established
 HIS Perspective: many reasons why some sales cannot or should
not take place:
o Ownership, morality of ownership, alienation, impact of
the market, impacts, money and its effects