>
> <http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228376.500-nudge-policies-are-another-name-for-coercion.html>[....]They
> argue that wise decision-makers should tweak the options and information
> available so that the easiest choice is the right one. For example, this
> can guide people to donate their organs if they die unexpectedly by making
> organ donation an opt-out rather than an opt-in choice. And it can
> encourage people to plan for their pensions by making pension contributions
> automatic for everyone who does not explicitly opt out of the system.
>
> "Nudging" is appealing because it provides many of the benefits of
> top-down regulation while avoiding many of the drawbacks. Bureaucrats and
> leaders of organisations can guide choices without dictating them. Thaler
> and Sunstein call the approach "libertarian paternalism": it lets people
> "decide" what they want to do, while guiding them in the "right" direction.
>
The dirty secret that this author and the libertarian critics are avoiding is that no default option is value free. I'm not a fan of this approach, except for what it exposes about libertarianism of the free market variety. Namely that it's proponents like to imagine that said market is guided by some sort of natural law rather than a Skinner box of coercive mechanisms. On the other hand, the evidence they look at in the book is more of the variety of people's stated preferences not matching up with their practices. People say they'd like to contribute more to the IRA, but they never find the time to navigate the paperwork, turn it in, etc. and so the default--no contribution--remains in place.
If this is coercive, it is only so in so far as people don't act in the ways libertarians claim they should: carefully examining every possible choice in every possible realm of human existence and rationally calculating, ordering preferences, freely choosing every goddamn thing under the sun, regardless of how intentionally obfuscatory the choice panel is (e.g. choosing private health insurance providers, which is effectively choosing which mob to pay for protection money.)
In any case, the fact that Sunstein tries to convey to the delusional libertarian cult is that we live in a complex society and decisions are made by the way choices are constructed at almost every turn. The idea of a completely unmediated form of freedom is a fantasy that is largely the province of older white christian heterosexual middle class men who remember (or imagine) a time when all of the possible choices on offer were ones that inevitably benefited them.
None of this is to deny that technocrats don't mess up or that there isn't an urgent need for a myriad of forms of democratic oversight into this process. But the libertarian critique of this reeks of all the false populist propaganda of the tea party movement. e.g.
> This points to the key problem with "nudge" style paternalism: presuming
> that technocrats understand what ordinary people want better than the
> people themselves. There is no reason to think technocrats know better,
> especially since Thaler and Sunstein offer no means for ordinary people to
> comment on, let alone correct, the technocrats' prescriptions. This leaves
> the technocrats with no systematic way of detecting their own errors,
> correcting them, or learning from them. And technocracy is bound to
> blunder, especially when it is not democratically accountable.
>
The technocrats in question are inevitably GOVERNMENT technocrats. The CORPORATE technocrats who have far more of a role in shaping the so called democratic system get a free pass because, hey, people get to CHOOSE what brand of poison they are absorbing there. If it happens that they generally choose the default, the so much better for the oligopoly.
> As political scientist Suzanne Mettler, from Cornell University in Ithaca,
> New York, argues, libertarian paternalism treats people as consumers rather
> than citizens.
Pretty sure this transformation is almost fundamental to US culture, certainly for most of the last 30-40 years. As Adam Curtis points out in his documentary "The Century of the Self" (and numerous other more substantial theorists have, well, substantiated) treating people in the US as consumers instead of citizens was the stated goal of most all of the PR and manufacturing system in direct response to what was seen as the perils of democracy run wild in the interwar period, e.g. FDR, new deal, etc.
It either fails to tell people why choices are set up in particular ways,
> or actively seeks to conceal the rationale. When, for example, Obama's
> administration temporarily cut taxes to stimulate the economy, it did so
> semi-surreptitiously to encourage people to spend rather than save.
>
This is very true. On the other hand, it exposes the big lie at the center of the libertarian, neo-classical homo economicus. If people were so super-rigged to respond like rats in a cage when presented with slightly different economic incentives--if tax cuts would so automatically create spending and growth, which is the basic narrative of the batshit maniacs in charge of the opposition--then Obama would need to say nothing at all: lower taxes = more spending. If it requires some deep narrative of the proper behavior then it is no longer a science in the "we're like physics and math" kind of way: it's an ideology like any other ideology.
> Mettler uses experiments to show how ordinary people can understand
> complicated policy questions and reach considered conclusions, as long as
> they get enough information. This suggests a far stronger role for
> democratic decision-making than libertarian paternalism allows. People
> should be given information, and allowed to reach conclusions about their
> own interests, and how to structure choices to protect those interests. By
> all means consult experts, but the dialogue should go both ways.
>
I am truly happy to hear that libertarians (again of the free market variety) are embracing democratic decision making. Now if they'll just admit that there is the slim possibility that this democracy might eventually favor the abrogation of private property rights--once people had all the information. Unmentioned here--or in Sunstein or Thaler--is the overriding problem of the democratic paradox (pace Mouffe). Perhaps this is why the standard bearers of libertarian ideology can find little positive to say about the consensus processes going on in OWS. No, sorry. Fuck perhaps. (A stupid rhetorical tick I have!)
>
> Results from agent-based modelling, evolutionary theory, network theory
> and experiments in group decision-making also support Mettler. Take the
> "diversity trumps ability" theorem of Scott E. Page, from the University of
> Michigan at Ann Arbor: groups of agents with diverse understandings of the
> world will solve difficult problems better than narrowly focused groups
> with higher expertise.
>
Now we are getting into territory that, for all his problems, Sunstein has tried to do some careful reading. His conclusions are, unfortunately, way to Hayekian and technophilic (Wikipedia will save the world!) but his books on this (Infotopia, Going to Extremes, and Republic.com 2.0) are full of contentious exploration of this question. In fact, much of the above sentiment is replicated almost exactly in his celebration of prediction markets as being better than experts at predicting (very narrowly focused, transparently right v. wrong) answers to questions. In any case, we don't actually have any institutions for this kind of democratic decision making--except of course for the glorious market, of which, see above. Whether people would be inspired to undertake these kinds of projects to decide, democratically, what the best contribution to their IRA might be or how to lay out the cafeteria to encourage people to eat better, is a really excellent question. But since the point of Thaler and Sunstein is to talk about a form of (free market) libertarian paternalism, the key thing those citizen caucuses would need to remember is that all of the really tough questions had already been answered (capitalism, free trade, economic over democratic power, and all the transfats, ice cream, soda, cars, war, and guns you want, but none of the abortion, unions, or health care [present election results excepted].)
> And models of evolutionary search, starting with the "genetic algorithms"
> of John Holland, also at Michigan, suggest higher diversity per se makes it
> easier to find paths to new fitness peaks. Research into the sociology of
> networks also finds innovation is most likely at points where different
> views intersect.
>
> All this suggests democratic arrangements, which foster diversity, are
> better at solving problems than technocratic ones. Libertarian paternalism
> is seductive because democratic politics is a cumbersome and messy
> business. Even so, democracy is far better than even the best-intentioned
> technocracy at discovering people's real interests and how to advance them.
> It is also, obviously, better at defending those interests when bureaucrats
> do not mean well.
>
> While democratic institutions need reform to build in dialogue between
> citizens and experts, they should not be bypassed. By cutting dialogue and
> diversity for concealed and unaccountable decision-making, "nudge" politics
> attacks democracy's core. We should not give in to temptation - and save
> our benevolent meddling for family reunions.
>
>
Please no! It's the neolib-libertarians who are the worst at this!
sean