Erik Matson on Adam Smith, David Hume, and the New Paternalists

The Great Antidote

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Erik Matson is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Deputy Director of the Adam Smith program. He recently released a new book, New Paternalism Meets Older Wisdom: Looking to Smith and Hume on Rationality, Welfare, and Behavioral Economics. Today we talk about paternalism, and how new paternalists differ from classic paternalists and how this arose. We talk about the difficultly of knowing one’s own preferences and how important freedom and choice are to the discovery of the good life and how to obtain it.

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Chapters

1. Erik Matson on Adam Smith, David Hume, and the New Paternalists (00:00:00)

2. [Ad] The Middle American (00:17:40)

3. (Cont.) Erik Matson on Adam Smith, David Hume, and the New Paternalists (00:18:22)