This story wasn’t the main point of the post, but its purpose was to illustrate that it’s pretty easy to imagine something in between purely voluntary and coerced at gunpoint. People can be manipulated into “voluntarily” doing things that hurt them, even if they are not tricked or lied to. This merely raises the possibility of beneficial paternalistic intervention; it certainly doesn’t establish that the benefits of such intervention outweigh the costs. Here are some old posts on that subject, for whatever interest it may have.
This story wasn’t the main point of the post, but its purpose was to illustrate that it’s pretty easy to imagine something in between purely voluntary and coerced at gunpoint. People can be manipulated into “voluntarily” doing things that hurt them, even if they are not tricked or lied to. This merely raises the possibility of beneficial paternalistic intervention; it certainly doesn’t establish that the benefits of such intervention outweigh the costs. Here are some old posts on that subject, for whatever interest it may have.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/03/heres_my_openin.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/03/disagreement_ca_2.html