So I've been umming and ahhing about whether to do this for a day or so now, and have finally decided to offer my university work up for the harsh judgement of SOLOists.
The following is an assignment on 'Paternalism' that I have just handed in. Please have a read and give me your ideas as to where I may have gone wrong. Be honest, I won't cry.

What is ‘paternalism’? Under what circumstances, if any, is it justifiable for the state to constrain human freedom on paternalistic grounds?

Paternalism is all around us. Once a place where pioneers came to settle, prosper and gain a bit a freedom from His or Her Majesty, New Zealand has become a nation of sheep, doing what they’re told, when they’re told by a government that further infantilises them with each day that passes. Paternalism in New Zealand, instead of being implemented in a fatherly manner as the definition suggests, has morphed into the stern nagging voice of a Nanny; “don’t smoke”, “don’t do drugs”, “don’t eat fatty foods”, “don’t drink”, “put folate in your bread”, “cross at the crossing”, “don’t smack your children”, “wear a helmet”, “wear a seatbelt”, “don’t renovate your own property without approval from your local council bureaucrat.” The basis of all of the decisions to ban or coerce the sheep is that Nanny State Government knows best and that the rules are being made and enforced for your own good, whether directly or in a roundabout way through the conveniently vague “public interest”. It will be shown that no matter what the reason for this pure and simple paternalism (however well meaning), state imposed limits on an individual’s freedom are not only never justified, but are downright evil.

Paternalism is defined as “the system, principle, or practice of managing or governing individuals, businesses, nations, etc., in the manner of a father dealing benevolently and often intrusively with his children.” While it is often exercised with the best interests of an individual in mind, a key assumption of paternalism is not only that a group of government bureaucrats can know better what is good for a man than he himself knows it, but that said group of bureaucrats has the right to use physical coercion to force the man to do/not do what is “best” for him. Examples of paternalism are seen with bans on drugs (most recently with the banning of BZP), the latest so called “anti-obesity bill”, and the new requirement for bakers to put folate in their bread. Paternalism/Nanny Statism tends to be seen in a negative light by the public, so governments usually attempt scare tactics and campaigns as justification for passing paternalistic laws such as those cited above.

The doctrine of Paternalism stems from an assumed governmental right to control people to prevent harm, either to themselves or others. This is often called the “harm principle”. While it is definitely a legitimate function of government to prevent harm to an individual’s life, liberty or property (private harm), the harm principle has been used to justify limitations on the liberty of individuals in order to prevent harm to the “public interest” and harm in the form of “offence”. These extensions of the harm principle to anything other than the protection of private individual rights require the assumption that private individuals are in some way subordinate to not only the government, but “the public” as a whole. It may seem to the reader that the individual should be subordinate to “the public interest”, but in reality there is no such thing, and limitations placed upon private individuals in the name of the non-existent “public” are just that; a violation of individual rights. As Ayn Rand says:

‘Since there is no such entity as "the public," since the public is merely a number of individuals, any claimed or implied conflict of "the public interest" with private interests means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interests and wishes of others. Since the concept is so conveniently indefinable, its use rests only on any given gang's ability to proclaim that "The public, c'est moi"—and to maintain the claim at the point of a gun.’

Much of the argument in favour of paternalism is made by disputing the importance or necessity of freedom of choice, or by attempting to come up with a merger of paternalism and freedom. However most of those in favour of paternalism appear to be limited in their understanding of what freedom is and why it’s good. Given this problem, freedom and its importance must be explained, as the main argument against paternalism is the argument in favour of freedom:

Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state—and nothing else.

It can be objectively proven that freedom is good by the demonstrable ability that humans have to make decisions for themselves. Individuals have values, and they also possess the intelligence and ability to rank those values and pursue them accordingly. Values differ from person to person, and as such individuals must be left free to make decisions in pursuit of their own happiness. The key here is that man must be left free from compulsion to pursue his own happiness, because if he is not free he does not own his life.

"The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own private, personal, individual happiness and to work for its achievement, so long as he respects the same right in others. It means that Man cannot be forced to devote his life to the happiness of another man nor of any number of other men. It means that the collective cannot decide what is to be the purpose of a man's existence nor prescribe his choice of happiness."

Paternalism prevents individuals from making decisions in pursuit of their own happiness by imposing the values of a member or members of the bureaucracy upon them in the name of their or society’s “best interests”. The doctrine of paternalism ignores the fact that adult humans are capable of making their own decisions for their own benefit and instead sets about infantilising a population by prescribing values and rules which have as their purpose the ultimately subjective “for your own good” or “the public interest”. As J S Mill states:

“… the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over a member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”

Another argument in favour of paternalism is that it enables a government to make rules to secure the long term welfare of individuals because the individuals would not otherwise look after themselves. An example of this is the prohibition of smoking in bars, cafes etc. However again this argument rests on the arrogant assumption by government that they are not only better informed to make a decision for Joe Bloggs than he himself is, but that they have the right to compromise not only Joe’s liberty, but that of the bar owners who are no longer able to let whoever they like into their private establishments. Before anti-smoking laws, people who did not wish to suffer from the still debatable effects of second-hand smoke had the freedom to choose not to enter bars that allowed smoking indoors. But now the freedom of publicans to exercise their property rights has been compromised, which is unacceptable.

The argument for paternalistic interference in activities like smoking is often justified from another angle by citing the burden that sick smokers place on the public health system. However this argument is incredibly perverse as the existence of the public health system (the government’s virtual monopoly on the medical profession) is an example of paternalism in the first place. By virtually cornering the healthcare market with its almighty spending power in the name of the “public interest”, the government is preventing the freedom of choice of private individuals (many of whom are smokers) to select private health care that would not place a burden on a public health system. It’s an example of two paternalistic wrongs most definitely not making a right.

All of the arguments in favour of paternalism are a result of the lack of understanding of the importance of individual freedom, and in many cases the arrogance of government bureaucrats and politicians believing that they know what is best for the population. To highlight the lunacy of allowing governments to place restrictions on our personal freedoms, consider the following possibilities: a ban on: skinny white boys from playing rugby; rugby altogether; women from going out by themselves after dark; sky-diving; bungee-jumping; skateboarding; fireworks (oh wait…); fishing; beer-bongs; doing a tequila hard-man; drinking more than two ‘V’ cans per day; dihydrogen monoxide; and the many many more activities or substances that could cause serious injury or even death? The only limits are the imaginations of the politicians and the ‘public feeling’ at the time. This is why clear limits must be placed on a government’s power to encroach on the individual’s right to freedom.

While there are conclusive arguments against paternalistic actions towards adult individuals, children are a different story altogether. There are legitimate arguments in favour of laws to protect children, such as those preventing the sale of liquor, tobacco, drugs, etc to children. However, laws must always be tested for their consequences because adult individual liberty/freedom of choice is paramount and if this is compromised – such as with restrictions or bans on “junk-food” advertising on television in the early afternoon – then alternative methods of protecting children should be found. In many current instances there are no moral grounds for state intervention to protect children and the responsibility should fall on the shoulders of parents. For example, the state and/or its agencies has no business censoring advertisements, such as those for Charlie’s Juice and Hell Pizza, because it is an clear restriction on freedom of choice.

An individual’s ability to make logical choices in his own self-interest is the basis on which freedom is deemed to be objectively good, however governments around the world are not only increasingly disregarding the fundamental human right to liberty – and its extension; freedom of choice – but they are taking less and less notice of the fact that individuals do actually have the ability to make their own choices. Many patronising, power hungry politicians now see it as not only their right, but their duty to act as the overbearing parent to their constituents who would supposedly have no way of making a decision for themselves without the rules of the state guiding their every move. This stifling collective treatment of the private individuals in a society prevents men from being free, and as such is simply and unjustifiably wrong. The bottom line is it is not the government’s right, much less its duty, to be setting restrictions on an individual’s pursuit of his own happiness. The consequences of not allowing individuals to decide for themselves how to obtain their respective values results in the infantilisation of society, signs of which can be seen in our nation of sheep today.

Note: references are available upon request, I just couldn't post them without the site having a spastic fit.