I yesterday spoke to the Mont Pelerin Society about paternalism as a threat to liberty. The presentation is embedded below; it looks best in full screen. Hit the "more" button at the bottom to get the full screen version. The link is here should the embedded version fail.
I argued that dodgy cost studies have pushed out the demand curve for paternalistic policies by making them seem more necessary; at the same time, 'nudge' policies have served as a supply shock reducing the perceived cost to liberty of paternalistic policies. The policies are far less beneficial and are more costly than voters expect.
Being at Mont Pelerin has been awesome; I'm very grateful for having been invited.
I'll put up the conference paper sometime down the track after I've incorporated the excellent comments I there received.
