"Hamilton wrote in Federalist 12 that a tax on whiskey 'should tend to diminish the consumption of it'..."

"... and that 'such an effect would be equally favorable to the agriculture, to the economy, to the morals, and to the health of the society. There is, perhaps, nothing so much a subject of national extravagance as these spirits.'"

From Clay Risen's "How America Learned to Love Whiskey, Attempts to control the fermentation and sale of alcohol are older than the republic itself."

"Control" is harsh. Isn't the right word "nudge"?

"Madison committee to consider paying employees to bike to work."

Ha. That's very funny to me because just this morning, as Meade was driving me to work, we were observing the people on bikes and I said, "It's almost all young white males. All these bike lanes and other amenities, paid for with our tax money? It's almost all for white males. Oh, how it would pain Madison liberals to admit it!"

And now, here are these Madison liberals planning to give cold cash money to the white males.

The Sustainable Madison Committee will begin a discussion Monday on the potential for reimbursing city employees for giving up their parking spots in favor of biking, walking or taking a bus to work.

Oh, it's only for giving up your parking space? Then I guess you collect even if you've got a husband who drives you in, so it's not just about biking.

[T]he idea makes fiscal sense because the city provides employees with parking spaces that could command market prices, providing cash that could provide employees with an incentive to bike — or walk or bus — as well as give the city additional revenue.

At the university, we're expected to pay for parking spaces, so anyone — like me — who forgoes parking gets an economic benefit. If city workers get free parking, then why not let each worker collect the value of the space he gives up? But they're not just saying that.

"You create a system where you as an employer encourage folks to be healthier, and therefore they're more productive at work," [says Tom Klein, Dane County director of the Bike Federation of Wisconsin]. "Research suggests they take fewer sick days than people who don't bike or walk to work."

Some folks are just older or have pre-existing conditions and cannot bike. You're advocating discriminating against them? And what of those who have children that they need to drop off at day care on the way to work and pick up on the way home? What of those with family responsibilities who need to do errands and shop for food? It's easy for young, healthy, single people to think it's great to nudge others to ride bikes to work, but there are good reasons to drive cars, especially in a cold climate. When I first arrived in Madison, I biked to work. But the first day there was ice, the first time I braked, I instantly hit the pavement. There's no way anyone but the strongest, least risk-averse youths can bike year 'round. To pay money to those who do discriminates against women, parents, the un-young, the disabled, and the careful.

It's sexist, ageist, ableist, and ridiculous.

Nudging in the U.K.: labeling stairwells in public buildings with calorie counts.

"Using a dedicated website and app, people will be able to scan 'smart signs' on stairs and track their number of calories burnt over time."

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said: “Anything that gets people more active and helps tackle obesity is a good thing in my book. This initiative is a great mix of old fashioned common sense and smart technology to track and incentivise.”

Anything?

StepJockey got a £50 million government grant for that website and app. Its founder Helen Nuki says:

"The world is a gym and we aim to label it as such. It has the added benefit of cutting carbon emissions by reducing the number of lift journeys."

Ah, these Brits, always leading the way. Shakespeare wrote:

All the world's a gym,
And all the men and women merely gymrats:
They have their sidewalks and their stairwells;
And one man in his time burns many calories...

"Men Should Pay for Maternity Care Because BABIES."

Headline at DoubleX about babies, written in babytalk. Here's the argument:

The long-term prosperity of the U.S. depends on healthy citizens, men supply the sperm, it’s just a genetic lottery that made you a man and not a woman, and think of your mother who had to bear you!

But even if you don’t care at all about the women bearing the children, you should care about live human babies that are going to be born regardless of whether their mothers get adequate prenatal care. And really, really bad things happen to babies whose mothers don’t get adequate prenatal care. 

At the point when you purchase insurance, the individual customer would like only to insure for things that are possible. Everyone at the point of purchase knows whether they are male and thus naturally and absolutely immune to the risk of pregnancy. So why can't they get a price based on what they need to insure? The argument at the link is coherent only if you concede that we are no longer talking about insurance. We're talking about taxation to pay for a welfare benefit. 

If we weren't so deeply embroiled in Obamacare, it might be interesting to talk about whether the government should subsidize all maternity care. To do so would nudge women away from abortion. Perhaps the government could use the opportunity to gather information about the quality of the parenting that is likely to ensue and to take stronger actions to protect the "long-term prosperity of the U.S."

Remember, women's bodies are the portals through which all future generations of humanity must enter the scene. Old-school feminism took umbrage at thinking about women as containers of babies, but today's feminists are more like old-fashioned wives, and the message is: Pay the bills!

"Dr. Ed Friedlander displays his tattoo with a medical directive to not use CPR."

Caption on a photo on an Atlantic article subtitled "An ICU physician on taking time to discuss with patients how they see their final days."

It is scary to ‘nudge’ a patient toward an end-of-life decision. But maybe that’s what it means to be a doctor — knowing our patients and helping lead them toward the decisions that are most consistent with their wishes. And nothing is scarier than the status quo.

Also new at the Atlantic website today: "Death Is Having a Moment/Fueled by social networking, the growing 'death movement' is a reaction against the sanitization of death that has persisted in American culture since the 1800s."

I've got a feeling death will be having a "moment" until the last of us Baby Boomers has departed.

"Government isn't an all-purpose social-utility machine just waiting to help us make better decisions..."

"... if only we'd be willing to give up our stubborn adherence to the principle of individual autonomy."

Even if we were to set aside all our cherished notions about how liberty is intrinsically good, it would still make sense to be skeptical of whether regulators know or care about the full consequences of their regulations.

And:

If helping people involves insulating them from the natural consequences of their actions, this could "nudge" them to be more irrational. For instance, everyone knows that students sometimes act irrationally: they procrastinate, they write substandard papers when they're capable of doing better, they turn work in late, etc. Given these realities, it's an open question how teachers should nudge students to do less of this kind of thing. The teacher who's willing to give any grade from an A+ to an F- might be more effective than the teacher who gives everyone a B+ or A-.

"Nudge" is in quotes because the author of the linked post — disclosure:  he's my son — is talking about an article — which we discussed recently — written by Cass Sunstein, who's made "nudge" his buzzword.

I wonder if the tendency to lean libertarian or fascist has more to do with how much you love autonomy or more to do with how much you trust government.

(Sorry about writing "libertarian or fascist." I know it's inflammatory. I was going to put "right or left," but it just didn't make sense. Some righties are out to control us, and some lefties — especially on some issues — love autonomy.)

Cass Sunstein reviews "Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism."

That's a book by Sarah Conly, published by Cambridge University Press. 206 pages, $95. $95! Fortunately, we cannot be coerced to buy that. I will exercise my autonomy and refrain from buying it. I'll just read Sunstein, for free, here.

[A] significant strand in American culture appears to endorse the central argument of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty....

the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or mental, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.

Sunstein refers to social science research that shows people actually aren't very good at making decisions for themselves. We have "present bias" (and don't pay enough attention to the future), we're bad at assessing probability, and we're "unrealistically optimistic."

Until now, we have lacked a serious philosophical discussion of whether and how recent behavioral findings undermine Mill’s harm principle and thus open the way toward paternalism. Sarah Conly’s illuminating book Against Autonomy provides such a discussion....

To Mill’s claim that individuals are uniquely well situated to know what is best for them, Conly objects that Mill failed to make a critical distinction between means and ends. True, people may know what their ends are, but sometimes they go wrong when they choose how to get them....

If the benefits justify the costs, she is willing to eliminate freedom of choice, not to prevent people from obtaining their own goals but to ensure that they do so....

A natural objection is that autonomy is an end in itself and not merely a means. On this view, people should be entitled to choose as they like, even if they end up choosing poorly. In a free society, people must be allowed to make their own mistakes, and to the extent possible learn from them, rather than facing correction and punishment from bureaucratic meddlers. Conly responds that when government makes (some) decisions for us, we gain not only in personal welfare but also in autonomy, if only because our time is freed up to deal with what most concerns us....

 As for Sunstein himself, he prefers a softer form of government manipulation, described in the article and in his book "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness."