Cass Sunstein: “Preferences and
The phenomenon of endogenous preferences casts doubt on the notion that a democratic government ought to respect private desires and beliefs in all or almost all contexts. [157.1]
Endogenous means “inside the system”. Endogenous preferences are preferences that are considered open to change through the workings of the political system. So, this is like Rousseau’s view of human needs as determined by socialization, rather than Locke’s view of society as itself the product of humans with already fixed preferences (that is, they are exogenous, or “prior to” (outside) the political system, and not open to alteration by its workings.
1: Against Subjective Welfarism [157.2]
Subjective Welfarism:
On this view, the government, even or perhaps especially in a democracy, should attend exclusively to conceptions of welfare as subjectively held by its citizens. [157.2]
Subjective welfarism, even as a political conception, is unsupportable by reference to principles of autonomy or welfare, the very ideas that are said to give rise to it. [157-8]
That is, the standard view is that the government should do the bidding of the people for the reasons that so doing
(a) is in the best interests (welfare) of the citizens, and
(b) will allow them to be politically free (autonomous)
Sunstein disputes both these claims. His objections to subjective welfarism are as follows:
1. Impossibility of taking preferences “as they are”
Whether people have a preference for a commodity, a right, or anything else is in part a function of whether the government has allocated it to them in the first instance. ... Government must not only allocate rights to one person or another; it must also decide whether or not to make the right alienable through markets or otherwise. The initial allocation serves to reflect, to legitimate, and to reinforce social understandings about presumptive rights of ownership, and that allocation has an important causal connection to individual perceptions of the good or right in question. [158.1]
Sunstein’s examples: right of employees to organize, women having right to be free of sexual harassment, etc.
My
example: second amendment right to a gun. People in
RESPONSE of subjective welfarism: grant the point that initial allocations will affect preferences, and say that “okay, after the initial allocation, preferences are exogenous”
Sunstein’s further points:
2. A commitment to welfare doesn’t commit us to leaving current preferences alone. What if current preferences are impediments to overall welfare? (E.g., I like really bad food and will die soon if I keep eating it, a government committed to my welfare will try to change my tastes.)
With respect to welfare, then, the problem posed [for subjective welfarism] by the enogeneity of preferences is not the origin of desires but their malleability. [158.2]
That is, because preferences can be changed, a commitment to welfare requires that we try to change some of them:
Respect for preferences that have resulted from unjust background conditions and that will lead to human deprivation or misery hardly appears the proper course for a liberal democracy. [158-9]
[BUT – Clockwork
Thus society should encourage commitments to valuing the environment, anti-discrimination, et. al [159.1]
3. Autonomy does not entail satisfaction of any preferences, just respect for
decisions reached with a full and vivid awareness of available opportunities, with reference to all relevant information, and without illegitimate or excessive constraints on the process of preference formation. [159.1]
Thus, the government may be justified in interfering with existing desires in the name of autonomy because of problems with the origins of those desires.
His e.g.: “a decision of a woman to adopt a traditional gender role because of the social stigma attached to refusing to do so” [159.2].
What would conservatives say of this? Is this “forcing someone to be free”?
Sum:
One goal of democracy...is to ensure autonomy not merely in the satisfaction of preferences, but also, and more fundamentally, in the process of preference formation. [159.2]
Cautionary note:
Of course, there are serious risks of overreaching here, and there must be some constraints (usually denominated “rights”) on this process. Checks laid down in advance are an indispensable part of constitutional government. [160.1]
Checks include, guarantees of political liberty and personal security.
2: Democratic Rejection of Revealed Preferences: A Catalogue [160.2]
A: Collective Judgments and Aspirations [160.2]
Often, political choices just don’t reflect an aggregation of
individual self-interested choices. For
example, people who only watch sitcoms support funding for more highbrow stuff,
and in the
The choices people make as political participants are different
from those they make as consumers.
Democracy thus calls for an intrusion on markets.
The difference between the choices of consumer behavior and the choices of political behavior might be explained by influences distinctive to the context of politics:
1. Consumers might seek to implement aspirations that they would not seek in private consumption (they might have higher aspirations for their society than themselves).
2. Individuals might be more altruistic in their political guise than as consumers (e.g., approve of taxes for welfare but not give much to charity).
3.
4. Precommitment: for example, weak-willed dieters who all want donuts could agree amongst themselves to police each other, so their agreement prevents them backsliding (as they would if they were just allowed to do what they currently want). A constitution is a kind of precommitment.
Explanations [161.2]
Qualifications [162.2]
B: Excessive limitations on opportunities or unjust background conditions [163.1]
C: Intrapersonal collective action problems [165.2]
3: Examples [166.2]
A: The frontiers of free speech law [166.2]
The Fairness Doctrine [167.1]
Campaign Regulation [167.2]
Violent Pornography [168.1]
Proportional Representation [169.1]
4: Conclusion [170.1]