I think I overstated slightly. And I’m focusing on the rationale for taking away options as much as the taking away itself. I’d restate to something like: taking people’s options away for their own good, because you think they will make the wrong decisions for themselves, is almost always bad.
There’s a discussion further down the thread about arms race dynamics, where you take away options in order to solve a coordination problem, where I accept that it is sometimes a good idea. Note that the arms race example recognises that everyone involved is behaving in a way that is individually rational. But the idea that politicians and regulators, living generally comfortable lives, know better than poor people what is good for them is something I really object to. It reminds me of the Victorian reply to the women’s rights movement: that male relatives should be able to control women’s lives because they could make better decisions than women would make for themselves. Ugh.
To the specific sex example, yes it’s unpleasant to be in that situation, everyone agrees. The problem is that banning payment in sex forces people into situations they find even worse, like homelessness. I would prefer governments to solve these problems constructively, like by building more housing, and said so in a footnote to the main post, but in the meantime we should stop banning poor people from doing the best they can to cope with the world that actually exists.
taking people’s options away for their own good, because you think they will make the wrong decisions for themselves, is almost always bad.
But it can make sense to take away options they probably wouldn’t want to take anyway (yes, you may be wrong here) but if they exist, it is too tempting for a third party to navigate them into situations where they would be forced to take this option.
To give a specific example, I am happy that I am legally prevented from selling myself into slavery. I’d really hate to do it accidentally, just because I missed something hidden among dozen pages of fine print when signing a phone contract or something like that.
Or, imagine a sleazy landlord, renting a room to an inexperienced poor girl. Suppose she wants to pay with money. But if he is sufficiently smart, he can easily create a trap, when at some moment, using some bullshit contractual penalty, he takes away all her money… and then generously offers that she can pay the next month with sex instead, rather than go homeless. From a near-sighted perspective, yes, having such option is better than automatically going homeless. But the larger picture is that having such laws dramatically increases the motivation of the sleazy landlord to create this trap in the first place, so I would expect such situations to happen often, as some of the landlords would likely create an anonymous online forum to share advice.
I think I overstated slightly. And I’m focusing on the rationale for taking away options as much as the taking away itself. I’d restate to something like: taking people’s options away for their own good, because you think they will make the wrong decisions for themselves, is almost always bad.
There’s a discussion further down the thread about arms race dynamics, where you take away options in order to solve a coordination problem, where I accept that it is sometimes a good idea. Note that the arms race example recognises that everyone involved is behaving in a way that is individually rational. But the idea that politicians and regulators, living generally comfortable lives, know better than poor people what is good for them is something I really object to. It reminds me of the Victorian reply to the women’s rights movement: that male relatives should be able to control women’s lives because they could make better decisions than women would make for themselves. Ugh.
To the specific sex example, yes it’s unpleasant to be in that situation, everyone agrees. The problem is that banning payment in sex forces people into situations they find even worse, like homelessness. I would prefer governments to solve these problems constructively, like by building more housing, and said so in a footnote to the main post, but in the meantime we should stop banning poor people from doing the best they can to cope with the world that actually exists.
But it can make sense to take away options they probably wouldn’t want to take anyway (yes, you may be wrong here) but if they exist, it is too tempting for a third party to navigate them into situations where they would be forced to take this option.
To give a specific example, I am happy that I am legally prevented from selling myself into slavery. I’d really hate to do it accidentally, just because I missed something hidden among dozen pages of fine print when signing a phone contract or something like that.
Or, imagine a sleazy landlord, renting a room to an inexperienced poor girl. Suppose she wants to pay with money. But if he is sufficiently smart, he can easily create a trap, when at some moment, using some bullshit contractual penalty, he takes away all her money… and then generously offers that she can pay the next month with sex instead, rather than go homeless. From a near-sighted perspective, yes, having such option is better than automatically going homeless. But the larger picture is that having such laws dramatically increases the motivation of the sleazy landlord to create this trap in the first place, so I would expect such situations to happen often, as some of the landlords would likely create an anonymous online forum to share advice.