This statement strikes me as a bit sloppy. By what metric is such a plan proven or disproven? If we use government continuity as a metric, then monarchy is clearly proven. If we take territory conquered as our metric then empire is the clear winner. I doubt Jim means these but what then? Perhaps the metric is general material prosperity in which case we could chose from several alternatives–dictatorship, democracy, or various flavors of totalitarianism. If, however, the metric is the amount freedom and self-determination the population has then the statement becomes self-contradictory.

But there is a darker aspect to this statement, one which I think gets to the heart of the matter. The great insight of the anarchists is that the state is an instrument of organized political violence. So, when people say that the government needs to solve a problem, they are saying that the problem must be solved by violence. This means liberals too, there is an iron fist behind the bleeding heart. Anarchy is the form of organization that rejects violence as a means of solving problems (except in a limited, always defensive way for criminal acts). From this perspective, therefore, Jim’s statement reads that “ceasing to use violence is unproven as a plan for human betterment”.

On a side note, it saddens me that most people think of libertarianism as an economic system rather than first and foremost a rejection of violence. The free market is an effect not a cause.

Unfortunately, as far as I know, it does nothing to improve the nanny-state measures already in place. Maybe someone knows more, but it seems it would just add these “libertarian paternalist” schemes to that which is currently free of government intervention. Would Thaler and Sunstein allow for opt out Social Security or FDA restrictions?

The basis for their libertarian paternalism is that people suffer various cognitive biases that prevent them making rational, informed choices. But their fatal flaw (apart from their normative and somewhat controversial assertions that, for instance, smoking is irrational, period; well, so is having anonymous sex without a condom, I suppose - yuppie biases!) is that they don’t extend this insight to the government agents themselves. This is probably the best critique I’ve seen, what Will Wilkinson calls the ‘fallacy of asymmetry’.

Having said that, Obama could have a worse crop of advisors I suppose, and hopefully this “opt out”/libertarian angle will catch on with the next generation of liberal regulatory hopefuls.