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" The liberty principle does not give any individual or group a moral right
to exercise power as pleased over other people, including husbands over
wives, political officials over citizens or parents over children.
" Independently of the liberty principle, though for similar reasons, general
expediency dictates that society ought to encourage individuals and groups
to perform voluntarily many acts beneficial to other people, rather than
rely on government provision of the benefits.
These practical precepts clarify how the liberty principle may be most
expediently applied, without in any way contradicting the simple statement of
it. Expedient application of the liberty maxim is essential to expedient
application of its logical complement, the social authority maxim, and vice
versa.
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GENERAL I SSUES
In the remainder of this chapter, some further remarks are offered, to
combat the view that Mill s doctrine is simplistic, or otherwise fatally flawed,
for practical purposes.
Isn t it unreasonable to demand a complete ban
on paternalism?
An obvious implication of the liberty principle is that paternalism is unjustified,
where paternalism refers to any interference with the individual s liberty of
self-regarding action. The only possible purpose of such interference is to
prevent the agent from directly causing himself perceptible injury, or to make
him do something that he does not want to do for his own good. His self-
regarding act is harmless to others. Strictly speaking, it is also harmless to
himself. The individual wishes to cause injury to himself, or to act in ways
others dislike. But harm is perceptible injury suffered against one s wishes.
Paternalism in Mill s sense is a form of coercion, allegedly for the individual s
own good. It involves meddling with his freedom to choose among his self-
regarding acts as he pleases, because others allegedly know better than he does
what is best for him in his personal affairs.
Mill s absolute ban on paternalism in this sense is often presented in a
confusing way, because different meanings are placed on the term in the
literature.4 Hart suggests that any departure from economic laissez-faire is
paternalistic, for example:
[P]aternalism  the protection of people against themselves  is a perfectly
coherent policy. Indeed, it seems very strange in mid-twentieth century
to insist upon this, for the wane of laissez-faire since Mill s day is one of
the commonplaces of social history, and instances of paternalism now
abound in our law, criminal and civil.
(1963, pp. 31 2)
But government intervention in the market for the purpose of preventing harm
to others, or providing positive benefits to them, is thereby conflated with
intervention against a self-regarding act solely for the agent s own good. There
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THE LI BERTY DOCTRI NE I N PRACTI CE
is a crucial difference between prohibiting an informed person from consuming
a drug that is harmless to other people, for example, and preventing him from
producing pollutants that pose a risk to others health, or preventing him from
misleading others into buying dangerous products or bogus  medicines . Similarly,
there is a crucial difference between meddling with his self-regarding
consumption, and forcing him to obey regulations and pay taxes so that
government might provide public benefits and services which are more
expediently provided through voluntary associations.
Mill, of course, favoured a general policy of laissez-faire (though with
important exceptions), and he discouraged inexpedient expansions of government
power. But his principle of absolute liberty of self-regarding conduct must not
be conflated with those measures. Moreover, Hart compounds the problem by
suggesting that so-called paternalistic government regulations are often clearly
desirable (ibid., pp. 32 4). Indeed,  Mill carried his protests against paternalism
to lengths that may now appear to us fantastic (ibid., p. 32).
Feinberg s treatment of paternalism is also perplexing from a Millian
perspective. He recognizes that talk of paternalism is pointless if there is no
self-regarding realm of conduct harmless to others:  all  paternalistic
restrictions, in that case, could be defended as necessary to protect persons
other than those restricted, and hence would not be (wholly) paternalistic
(1984 8, Vol. 3, p. 22). From his perspective, such a realm is apparently
comprised of acts that do not wrongfully set back others interests or cause [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]