Parentalism, Blame and Risk Aversion

In Parentalism and Unalienability Glen Whitman argues that the 'parentalism' posited by James Buchanan as a motivation for the widespread support of socialism could perhaps be reduced to not having an exit option from a life management deal. While the question of several rights is highly interesting in itself, I don't think having such an option really nails down what parentalism is all about.

The way I see Buchanan's comment is that parentalism is essentially driven by a psychological mechanism. When people are free, they bear full responsibility for their own actions. This has a couple of implications. First, you have to exert effort to make the right choices since nobody is choosing for you anymore. Thinking is hard work and it calls for some mental discipline; most people would rather do as they feel and not think too much about it.

Second, if you choose badly you're the one to blame and the usual private sanctions that are part and parcel of how the civic society conditions people to act sensibly now get aimed at you. For example, if government social security ends up wasting your savings it's not really your fault even if you voted for bad policy, but if you waste your savings under a private arrangement, people will rightly think you're irresponsible. You'll feel sorry, which is also the point -- negative emotions are one of the most important mechanisms which maintain order among social animals, people included. People don't want to feel sorry...

If you combine these two you'll soon get the sort of fatalistic attitude towards life so characteristic of homo sovieticus. You no longer see life as a spectrum of choices open to you, but as a planned, immutable, branchless path you just have to walk. Since most good things in life are your own doing, you'll rightly feel good about them, but at the same time you get to socialize many of the emotional costs of self-inflicted hardship. The broader societal costs you simply don't think about, because that's not profitable to you as an individual. If you don't like to think too much and are extremely risk averse, the path suddenly seems much nicer than the uncertain, burdensome alternative which makes you face the real costs of your actions.

I think this precise emotional mechanism is what drives fatalistic religions, and that in Buchanan's own constitutional economics terms, the partial veil of ignorance provided by constitutional and communal decision making help risk averse individuals generalize this ideal to the society as a whole.