Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Sunstein, working for and with right-wing deregulatory think tanks, published a piece called "The Arithmetic of Arsenic", arguing that everyone needs to stop being so emotional about these things. We can't decide whether arsenic should be in our water based on fuzzy-wuzzy arguments about not killing people. No, we need to be hard-headed realists and decide exactly how much a human life is worth and whether filtering arsenic is worth the cost. In short, we have to do cost-benefit analysis.

Open Left diary

If you're a bit sleepy, Sunstein can seem quite reasonable when he's advocating the gentle nudge of a benevolent government. No one wants to be pushed around. Everyone wants good governance. They want to see it pursued with cost effectiveness, a light touch and soothing bromides. Mmm, most people could live without the bromides. In practice the ethic he espouses amounts to selective minimalism and malign neglect, both of which are weighted to shake out beneficially for concentrations of protected, privileged private power. Both of which he supports through narrowly focused jurisprudence. He labels his philosophy "libertarian paternalism". Love and oxymoronic nonsense will find a way. It's all about Benevolence and Pragmatism. Private power won't seek to regulate your snack breaks, within reason, and certainly not at the federal court level, except as needed to defend productivity, workplace harmony and possibly employee insurance costs; you won't thwart liberty through hysterical regulation of toxic dumps.

The diarist notes that it would be easy to dismiss Sunstein as an ingenuous, blinkered ivory tower type -- if he weren't about to take charge of regulatory oversight in the Obama administration. What can I say? He's right.