Nudge: improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and
Happiness
By Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
(Yale University press, 304 pages, $26)
In a seminal 1962 episode of the Twilight Zone alien visitors
enrapture humanity with platitudes about intergalactic
fellowship, advanced-technology solutions to earth’s most
intractable problems, and, finally, offers of an all-expense-paid
trip to a utopia among the stars. By the time a skeptical
cryptographer translates the extraterrestrials’ guidebook beyond
its warm and fuzzy title, To Serve Man, and realizes it is a
cookbook, not a socialist manifesto, hordes of human cattle have
already schlepped willingly off to the great slaughterhouse in
the sky.
That campy cautionary tale came to mind recently as I perused
Nudge, a new book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein—of the
University of Chicago and Harvard Law, respectively— in which the
eminent professors argue for a more sophisticated, subliminal
Nanny State led by a less draconian nanny. Or, as they frame it,
“thoughtful ‘choice architecture’ can be established to nudge us
in beneficial directions.”
This is not to accuse the authors, both informal advisers to
Barack Obama, of surreptitiously selling cannibalistic recipes.
If anything, Nudge reads like an innocuous attempt to cash in on
popular Tipping Point/Freakonomics-style “transformative concept”
books. Fear not, friends, you shan’t be eaten on the glorious
planet Hope-monger. Yet “beneficial direction” manifestly lies in
the eye of the beholder. After all, was it not most beneficial
for the hungry alien to nudge his human wards skyward? When two
men with significant voices in the national conversation commit
to paper sentences like “Choosers are human, so designers should
make life as easy as possible,” readers are left to wonder of
what extraction our self-appointed “designers” consider
themselves. The evolved elite? Benevolent herders?
Thaler and Sunstein prefer libertarian paternalists. They’ve come
to influence, not decree, the pair admirably insist, even while
remaining blissfully unaware that they’ve cut the heart out of
the libertarian carcass they’re prancing around in. Sure, the
authors cautiously acknowledge the virtues of school choice, tort
reform, and non-authoritarian solutions to other social problems.
Fantastic. Dreamily musing that a carbon tax might lead to “the
funding of Social Security and Medicare, of the provision of
universal health insurance,” however, is about as philosophically
libertarian as positing, “When people have a hard time predicting
how their choices will end up affecting their lives, they have
less to gain by numerous options and perhaps even by choosing for
themselves.” Which is to say, not very.
Libertarians who believe the tax system should not be used to
redistribute wealth or that corporate managers’ paramount duty is
to maximize profit for investors or that the government has no
constitutional mandate for social engineering are dismissed by
the authors as “ardent” or “extreme.” This only shows that these
brilliant scholars, who begin sentences in Nudge with “As
libertarians…” or some variation, have, bizarrely, no conception
whatsoever of what constitutes mainstream—the term is employed
lightly here—libertarian thought.
The explicit, if mostly rhetorical, support for freedom of choice
is welcome, of course, and preferable to Clintonism, neo-New
Dealism, etc. Without respect for those doing the choosing,
however, the security of that freedom is tenuous at best.
Individual liberty granted as a political herding tactic rather
than out of philosophical conviction is doomed. How many nudges
do you believe self-described paternalists will allow us to
ignore before acting in what is so obviously our best interest?
It’s a matter of disposition. There is a reason Milton Friedman
called his book Free to Choose and not Less to Gain.
Granted, a private sector “nudge” is, indeed, non-coercive.
Little decals of black flies in Amsterdam urinals, Nudge relates,
have given men something to aim at, reducing “spillage by 80
percent.” Wonderful! This baby is on board. But public/ state
“nudges”? That’s a different story. Thaler and Sunstein believe
the government designing choice architecture is a good use of
taxpayer funds. I disagree. The IRS is not known for relying on
persuasion, thus I presume my participation/donation will be
coerced. Coercion for my own good equals libertarianism? Sorry.
Nein.
For authors with such a low baseline belief in individuals’
self-determinative ability—“Should pedestrians in London get hit
by a double-decker bus to teach them to ‘look right’?” they snark
at one point—Thaler and Sunstein are supremely confident of their
ability as “choice architects” to properly guide our decisions
from above. Nudge is sprinkled with the requisite examples of
faux self- effacement and invocations of societal level “we,” as
in: “We all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases
that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders
in education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and
credit cards, happiness, and even the planet itself.” Hey, these
guys feel our pain!
Nonetheless, the authors’ sense of elitism nevertheless seeps out
occasionally, despite their best efforts. “If you want to nudge
people into socially desirable behavior, do not, by any means,
let them know their actions are better than the social norm,” the
duo write, advising our societal vanguard on how to play our
soft, pliable little brains like an orchestra of fiddles. Thaler
and Sunstein dismiss fears of politically empowered nudgers
slouching toward Oceania out of hand (“If our policies are
unwise, then it would be constructive to criticize them directly
rather than to rely only on the fear of a hypothetical slippery
slope”), fretting instead over how the little people (“somewhat
mindless, passive decision makers”) will react to nudges, warning
that “choice architects” must understand how to “encourage
socially beneficial behavior, and also how to discourage events
like the one that occurred in Jonestown.”
Keeping our budding national cult away from fatty foods and
saving for retirement without any neo-lemmings wandering off to
the refrigerator for a cool glass of cyanide-flavored Kool-Aid is
the cross choice architects must bear. What a portrait that
paints of the average American.
So, tell us again, what do you mean we, Kemosabe?
In a strange twist of journalistic serendipity, I began reading
Nudge the same week the simmering destructive campaign of my
year-old pug Benny erupted into a merciless disembowelment of our
sofa. My ever-charitable wife diagnosed this behavior as
“separation anxiety,” and in search of a cure I purchased Paul
Owens’s The Dog Whisperer.
Lo and behold, mesmerizing dogs isn’t all that different from
nudging the human hoi polloi. Here’s Nudge, for example, on the
war between our dual-personality inner selves, The Planner (“the
Mr. Spock lurking within you”) and The Doer (“everyone’s Homer
Simpson”): The Planner is trying to promote your long-term
welfare but must cope with the feelings, mischief and strong will
of the Doer, who is exposed to the temptations that come with
arousal.
And here’s The Dog Whisperer: From a dog’s perspective, there is
no such thing as a problem behavior. He’s doing what he’s doing
because it feels good.
Again, Nudge: Self-control issues are most likely to arise when
choices and their consequences are separated in time.
The Dog Whisperer: In order to get the message across to [your
dog], you have to give him your signal of approval virtually the
exact moment he sits. If you walk into a room three seconds after
your dog has eliminated on the carpet, there’s no use even
commenting on it.…As far as he’s concerned, you’re yelling
because of what he’s doing at that exact moment— lying quietly on
the floor.
Nudge: The bottom line, from our point of view, is that people
are, shall we say, nudge-able.
The Dog Whisperer: You can shape virtually any behavior you want
from your dog, including wagging his tail at various speeds, a
very fast or very slow sit, sneezing three times in a row, or
nodding his head yes and no.
During a recent interview with Denver Magazine, Barack Obama
admitted his two young daughters “definitely don’t think I’m a
rock star” and that they so far had little interest in the
presidential race. “Their main focus is getting a dog after the
campaign.”
I see the potential for a real Obama family bonding experience:
The girls can learn to train the pooch while watching Thaler and
Sunstein—The Man Whisperers—teach Daddy how to properly train the
nation.
Shawn Macomber is a contributing editor to The American
Spectator.
