This chapter shows how enslavers were adept at assessing the temporal rhythms of the life cycle and adapting to the demands of embodied time in shaping their workforce. It shows how this flexibility stemmed from economic self-interest and a desire for dominance, and the severe cost of this for enslaved elders and the wider Black community. It first shows the types of jobs expected of elderly workers, and perceptions of managing a transition away from more active labors, before emphasizing how proslavery claims of a leisurely “retirement” for elders were rejected by the enslaved themselves. Enslaved elders could neither refuse nor deny the power of their enslavers to force them to continue their labors. Work, even if reduced, still had to be done upon pain of punishment, and enslaved people understood that the desire for profit that drove antebellum enslavers was enormously harmful to Black elders. As Lewis Clarke acidly recorded, “they hunt and drive them as long as there is any life in them.”

Having addressed exploitation and violence towards elders, the book moves to consider how some enslavers chose the less physical – but no less cruel – route of abandoning, selling, or simply neglecting enslaved people once they had become “old and broken.” Chapter 2 covers manumission laws and the efforts of enslavers to work around these; the significance of age to the dynamics of, and experiences in, the internal slave trade; and the tragic consequences of neglect for elders deemed unproductive by those whom enslaved them. Proslavery claims of “retirement” or of care from cradle-to-grave were no match for the economic self-interest of enslavers, small and large, and the driving force of slavery revolved around taking the “best years and the best strength” from enslaved people. This chapter shows how enslaved people understood this exploitative dynamic, and the horrifying consequences of it for Black elders, all too well

Proponents of the harm principle often appeal to a notion of personal sovereignty in setting out their position. This notion helps to fix the application of the harm principle. Critics of the harm principle seize on this point and argue that, once a principle of sovereignty is introduced, it can do all the work that needs doing. Appeals to harm become otiose. Further, the critics contend, the harm principle cannot explain the impermissibility of certain “harmless” wrongs, such as those involved in harmless trespass. This chapter assesses this sovereignty-centered critique of the harm principle. It argues that neither the harm principle nor the sovereignty principle enjoys priority over the other. The two principles complement each other with neither meriting a privileged position. The chapter then discusses the content and stringency of the sovereignty principle, and its relation to the Volenti Maxim, which holds that a person is not harmed or wronged by that to which they consent. The critical discussion of the Volenti Maxim, in turn, reveals limits to the sovereignty principle.

Chapter 2 argues that the anarchist theses can be derived from a single meta-principle that limits which moral theories qualify as theoretically acceptable. This posited moral tyranny constraint holds that a theory of duties is acceptable only if full compliance with that theory (and the demands of morality more generally) would not allow any person to unilaterally, discretionarily, and foreseeably act in a way that would leave others with less advantage than they would have possessed given some other choice by the agent. After explicating the constraint, the chapter defends its plausibility, arguing that it should be accepted on both foundationalist and coherentist grounds. The chapter then explains how the constraint entails three of the posited anarchist theses (the consent theory of legitimacy, the Lockean proviso, and luck egalitarianism’s responsibility component). Finally, it addresses three potential objections that might be raised against the moral tyranny constraint.

The chapter focuses on how the behavioural insights discussed in previous chapters affect policy, and how policy can use behavioural incentives to be more effective. It offers examples of policy interventions that have been successful in settings around the world. It provides some history and context for the proliferation of behavioural economics-related efforts in policy and in heath policy specifically. It describes four of the frameworks used to describe policymaking with behaviour in mind; MINDSPACE, COM-B, EAST and BASIC. It includes examples from international contexts where behavioural health policies have been enacted.

John Bell’s work consistently interrogates why legal systems are the way that they are. French legal cultures drew out the importance of understanding a system’s legal culture(s). In a joint project with David Ibbetson, European Legal Development, a broader methodology and programme for comparative legal analysis emerged. Their focus was twofold: to shift analysis from legal rules towards their direction of travel over time and, crucially, to provide insight into the specific factors, perhaps distinct between systems, that accounted for a given national narrative. In this chapter, using a core problem in medical liability, an Anglo-Germanic case study of Bell and Ibbetson’s methodology is provided. First, the German system, which Bell and Ibbetson did not consider in relation to medical liability is examined. Second, through a reassessment of key English sources, a plausible alternative to their suggested narrative of homogenous development is constructed. Finally, their assumptions about the relationship between legal and social change and identify key questions for future applications are reflected on.

In this chapter, I address cross-cultural encounters of two (or more) sets of sensory scripts. These encounters are evident in the wider literature on colonialism, migration and other local–foreign interfaces. In doing so, it serves as an important reminder for one to take heed of multiple axes of sensory similarities and differences, in addition to a merely the East–West core axis of difference. I also turn the lens around by showing how local populations on the reverse, discern colonial or foreign communities through their sensory faculties as a counterpoint. The focus lies in demonstrating how sensory interfaces arising from these processes and movements of people are theorised using the notion of sensory transnationalism. I map this notion onto colonial–local sensory encounters and propose four modes of sensory engagement: reception, rejection, regulation, and reproduction. These modes collectively show how sensory encounters, stemming from contrasting power positions, lend a different understanding of empire and its everyday lived constructions, including how colonial impositions of modernity through sensory regulatory schemes are also met with resistance. Consequently, categories of colonisers and colonised are unsettled instead of being deployed as inherently asymmetrical categories.

The principle of party autonomy in international arbitration rests upon the premise that individuals are rational maximizers of their own welfare. However, the reality sometimes differs and a number of parties suffer from weaknesses. Such weaknesses may originate from imperfect information, from insufficient expertise of the parties in testing information against their own preferences, or from the lack of bargaining power or financial means to implement their choices in practice. There is a risk that strong opportunistic actors exploit such weaknesses for their own benefit. In a worst-case scenario, this may result in undermining the weak parties’ fundamental right to access to justice

This book is the third of a trilogy of books that I wrote on the past, present and my preferred conception of the future of the field of behavioural public policy. The first book was titled ’The Origins of Behavioural Public Policy’, and the second ’Reciprocity and the Art of Behavioural Public Policy’. This Introduction summarises the content of those two books to remind the reader where I have got to in the trilogy, and then briefly details some of the main arguments in the current book, to signpost to the reader where I am about to go.

This chapter concludes the book. In it, I summarise the principal arguments I made in all of the other chapters, before offering some final words as food for thought. Ultimately, I conclude that there are two arms to my political economy of behavioural public policy. The first arm is for policy makers to allow people a great deal of individual autonomy, while at the same time shaping the general institutional environment so as to nurture people’s almost intrinsic desire to cooperate and reciprocate with others. The second arm recognises that some people will act on their selfish, egoistic inclinitations when afforded a great deal of freedom, and thus in those circumstances where people implicitly or explicitly use the behavioural influences to serve themselves and to harm others, the policy maker has an intellectual justification to intervene in their actions and behaviours.

In this chapter, I argue that there is no role for manipulative or coercive government paternalism over the private domain of decision-making. Followers of the liberal economic tradition contend that the competitive market is the best means by which to foster social cooperation. However, I maintain that we cannot ignore the fact that the competitive market harbours significant incentives for egoism, particularly in the provision of goods and services that are associated with market failures and where there is scope to exploit the behavioural influences. That said, private decisions that impose unacceptable externalities can be regulated against if needs be, and importantly, in the realm of private decision-making, where people ought to be free to pursue their desires – which includes entering competition with others if they so wish – the need to protect autonomy outweighs the arguments to disallow the competitive market. Moreover, the competitive market offers a means to protect people from poor goods and services by there being alternative suppliers. However, I note once again that governments do have a role to play in nurturing the reciprocal instincts.

In this chapter, I challenge the confidence that has been placed in hard and, in particular, soft paternalistic measures in the field of behavioural public policy. I consider the four limitations that have been proposed to human reasoning – i.e. limited imagination, willpower, objectivity and technical ability – but ultimately conclude that these are insufficient justification for paternalistic intervention, for two principal related reasons. First, it is impossible for a policy maker to discern what people desire in their own lives, and second, so long as they are not harming others, people should be free to pursue their own desires. The vision for the future of behavioural public policy that I propose here is thus consistent with classical liberal, and in particular, Millian thought: i.e. aim to educate people on the pros and cons of their actions and inactions so that they are better equipped to live the lives they wish to lead, but do not interfere directly in guiding them towards any particular end.