In this book I will detail the ethical and practical problems with the well-being approach to government policymaking, especially in economists'' sense of welfare economics. In my book The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics and Libertarian Paternalism (Palgrave, 2013), I explain that libertarian paternalist ''nudges''--subtle changes to choice sets made to influence decisions in people''s own interests--fail to deliver on their promise because policymakers do not have access to people''s true interests. Instead, they rely on assumptions supported by the impoverished models of individual choice used by economists--even behavioral economists, who have expanded on the traditional models in some ways but not the most important ones. In short, these models fail to recognize and appreciate the breadth and complexity of interests, which can incorporate not only one''s own well-being but also the well-being of others, as well as personal principles and societal ideals, all combined in ways that can change with the circumstances of a specific decision context. Even though our knowledge of our own interests is imperfect (as behavioral psychologists have shown us), we still have much more information about them than policymakers or economists do, and those interests are best promoted to the extent free choice is allowed.But it is not just relatively inconsequential nudges that suffer this problem--all policymaking shares this difficulty insofar as it relies on conceptions of well-being such as economic welfare, GDP, or happiness. This book will explore the implications of this for policymaking, introducing the main ideas behind welfare economics to the intelligent reading public and suggesting a preferable alternative.This project was inspired by the growing interest in using measures of happiness (or subjective well-being) to influence policy.

While happiness could, in theory, incorporate more of a person''s interests than narrower measures like wealth or preference-satisfaction, there are numerous definitional, conceptual, and practical difficulties with measuring happiness--not to mention ethical problems with basing policy decisions on such a problematic concept. At the core is the same issue that arises with nudges: even if we can get past the myriad difficulties with measuring happiness, policymakers cannot know that their particular conception of happiness--or even happiness in general--is what represents people''s actual interests and therefore should drive policy decisions.But once again, these problems are not unique to happiness; they plague any conception of well-being used to drive policy and which cannot capture the breadth and complexity of people''s actual interests. This includes economic welfare (based on preference-satisfaction), wealth, economic output (GDP), index of health outcomes--any measure of well-being designed by policymakers who presume to know people''s true interests (as libertarian paternalists do when they design nudges). Instead, governments should recognize that the best way to maximize people''s interests is to allow them to make choices in their own interests to the greatest extent consistent with all others doing the same.Given these practical and ethical difficulties with basing policy on well-being, I propose an alternative that is respectful of people''s own interests and choices and leaves the government free to tackle specific problems with focused, targeted policy solutions. Instead of trying to measure and influence an arbitrarily chosen measure of well-being that bears no resemblance to people''s actual well-being, governments should structure laws and institutions to promote the maximum mutually consistent free choice of all. This would require a re-examination of the way the government conducts fiscal and monetary policy, designs and implements regulation, and administers its legal system--most all of it greatly streamlining the functioning of government.

This would free up scarce resources to target specific problems--problems that present themselves instead of being ''discovered'' in data on well-being--using focused solutions. This also addresses the broader question, grounded in political philosophy, of why a government should be concerned directly with the well-being of its citizens rather than allowing them to pursue their own interests with the indirect support and protection of their government.