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Doesn't all this assume that there's a paternalistic authority who can reliably deliver an objective and demonstrably "correct" choice? In the real world, most persistent public policy problems don't have obvious solutions and, in any case, I don't see anyone standing above petty partisan politics who could ever be trusted to make the right choice.

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Limiting democracy for paternalistic goals is exactly what we the German xonstitution does.

There are certain elements in the constitution, notable human rights, that can not be changed from within anything the constitution envisions.

Similarly for other checks and balances, also in other political systems.

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The deep rooted unspoken political popularity of paternalism (and deep rooted, unspoken unpopularity of libertarianism) lies is deep preferences to remove personal accountability from ones decisions. When it then comes to consequences/ outcomes, "its not my fault, because i didn't decide".

When it comes to group decision making this underlying issue increases further. Some significant fraction of people prefer to huddle within the comfort of a bad group decision (for which their personal accountability is very low - eg probability of my marginal vote etc.....) that has (roughly) equal negative consequences for everyone instead of the le horreur of individual differential outcomes due to differences of individual decisions and those individuals then being accountable for the consequences/ outcomes of those decisions

Thus group decision making via voting is not about some form of actual utility optimisation. Its about minimisation of *my* personal accountability for consequences.

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One argument for paternalism is that in the current world we live in, it’s often not just the individuals that see the costs, it’s society/everyone. In the smoking example, how much have taxpayers paid for preventable lung cancer? Not saying that’s ideal by any means, but if a tax or ban prevents a lot of future costs, is that more worth doing?

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I see the parallel in the arugment. I wouldn't normally call this paternalism. Rather than everyone gets to vote and hardly anyone is totally satisfied, I like the model of smaller states run in whatever way they want and people can migrate.

An odd thing to me is that the group that emphasizes the importance of minority rights also emphasizes the importance of Democracy. Democracy is the majority overpowering the minority. Thankfully, people don't vote entirely on religious or racial lines, but are motivated by their ideology.

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