A ROBUST APPROACH TO A NEW VICE

Imagine that a new vice were to descend upon us. Maybe it is an innovative drug, a sexual practice, a form of wagering, or some exotic combination that targets all of our vulnerabilities simultaneously. OK, let's make it a drug. Call it “Cake.” Cake consumption is a thoroughgoing (though imaginary) vice, one that people find quite pleasurable. Along with the delights of Cake come the usual 3⅓ standard vice concerns of kids, addicts, externalities, and harms to nonaddicted adult users.

What sort of regulatory structure should be applied to Cake? The preceding chapters have argued that we should use the robustness principle as our guide toward appropriate vice policy and hence toward Cake control. The robustness principle states that a vice regulatory regime should work well irrespective of the precise extent of rationality or addiction reflected in vicious decision making. Policies that offer assistance to addicts or to those confronting self-management shortcomings can be (perhaps must be) part of a robust package, as long as such policies do not impose too profoundly upon rational adult consumers. Application of the robustness criterion is not automatic, as it requires judgments about, for instance, the extent to which adult decisions can be constrained in the interests of protecting children, and at what point a control becomes too burdensome upon rational adult vice participants.