Over at Opinion Work Product, Justin Cox has a nice post entitled A Critique of Cass Sunstein on Risk. Here’s a taste:
The short form of Sunstein’s argument is that risk and regulation evaluations ought to be handed to technocrats insulated from political and public pressure because the public is bad at making accurate risk assessments. Kahan et all argue that the public must brought into these conversations, and insists that consensus can be built by crafting policy and rhetorical appeals that reaffirm the various worldviews that come into conflict over such things as gun control and the death penalty.
Sunstein seems to think that these various worldviews don’t have any role to play in risk assessments. He insists that a straight cost-benefit analysis is most appropriate, and that technocrats are the most appropriate people to make those judgments.
My question for Sunstein, then, is what values are to guide the technocrats? He seems to argue that values have no role to play and that our decisions ought to be guided by mere cost-benefit analysis. What he seems to ignore or sidestep, I think, is that a cost-benefit analysis is itself value-laden.