I'm delighted to announce the publication of my new book, Killjoys: A Critique of Paternalism. You can download the PDF for free. Hard copies and Kindle will be available from Amazon soon. If you want it sooner the IEA are sending out free copies to anyone who donates £10 or more this month (UK and Ireland only). Incidentally, we were going to send out free Killjoy lighters out as well but it turns out that there's a law against sending lighters in the post. I rest my case.
So what's it about? You can probably work it out from the title. It's about liberty and the limits of government intervention. I start with John Stuart Mill and the mainstream economists and move on to nudge theory, coercive paternalism and 'public health' paternalism. I look at the moral and economic arguments used by the 'public health' lobby to justify interfering in people's private lives and then look at the consequences of their interventions. Finally, I provide some suggestions about how a government that respected individual liberty would regulate risky lifestyle products and behaviours.
I've written a blog post about it for the IEA and Dick Puddlecote has kindly written a rapid response after picking up the book at the launch party on Wednesday night.
Download Killjoys.
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