Ethics and Economics Education
Moral foundations, economic principles, & critical thinking
Paternalism can be defined simply as the use of coercion (force) against someone for that person’s own good. For instance, slapping a cigarette out of someone’s hand while yelling, “Smoking is bad for you!” would be an exercise of vigilante paternalism. John Stuart Mill argued in On Liberty that paternalism of this kind is wrong. A person’s own good is […]
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My last post on whether generous action is an enforceable moral duty leads naturally into the question of whether there can be “rights to do wrong.” To recap, Adam Smith says that being a generous, beneficent person is a good way of living that an impartial spectator approves of. If you never do good things for people, you haven’t committed […]
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