Those who live in liberal democracies might gasp at China’s new laws limiting the time children can play videogames and banning private tutoring. These laws are what we call paternalistic: they limit personal freedoms with the justification that they promote the good of the individual. But before we dismiss such laws as the product of authoritarianism, we need to recognize that even liberal democracies allow for paternalistic laws. We make children go to school, ban them from drinking alcohol, and force adults to wear seatbelts. The problem  then isn’t paternalism itself, it’s whether paternalistic laws actually benefit people or not, argues Sarah Conly.