Welfare Notions for Soft Paternalism

Paternalism, the interference with a person, against their will, for her own good, has longbeen held in disregard. Yet recently, new arguments for paternalistic governmentinterventions have been proposed. These arguments draw on two premises. First, theproposed paternalism is characterised as 'soft', hence distinguishing it from previous'hard' versions of paternalism. Second, the proposed paternalism justifies interventionsusing empirical findings of systematic biases and mistakes in reasoning, deliberation anddecision-making.[...]