This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 12, 2013. I'm Caleb Brown.

Cast Sunstein is no longer at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, but he's continuing

to make a case for less regulation.

It's better known for a concept known as Libertarian Paternalism.

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Walter Olson explains.

Kast Sunstein is one of the more interesting figures in the Obama administration,

and he's also known as the great popularizer of the Nudge theory, which it kind of distinguishes,

if I may, put words in his mouth between a soft and a hard paternalism.

The hard paternalism, which agrees gives him pause is when you

the government is just trying to run people's lives. It knows better than they

what will make them happy. It's going to prescribe sobriety to the drunks,

and it's going to prescribe chastity

to the people who want to sleep around and all the rest of it.

He says, that's not the only kind of paternalism.

And please don't judge all of we paternalists by the excesses of the

prohibitionists and the others.

The distinction he makes is between so-called ends paternalism and means paternalism.

Now, let me try to explain what he's getting at.

Ens paternalism is the bad kind or the bad cop.

It is the one that second- the whole meaning that people assigned to their lives.

It accuses you of being too lazy if you value leisure heifly and it says the government should stop that.

If you believe in a hedonistic approach to food or drink, it says you shouldn't enjoy that

...