Posted on 06/01/2015 6:35:58 AM PDT by OK Sun
Classical economics went wrong at its first turn, say Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. Man is not homo economicus, the rationally calculating actor that the dismal scientists from Adam Smith down through Milton Friedman supposed our species to be. No, we are emotionally driven, contextually influenced, socially conditioned: Humans, not Econs.
Sunstein and Thaler famously lay out their Human vs. Econ divide in Nudge, their 2008 bestseller that popularized a new sub-discipline, behavioral economics. Behavioral economists recognize that people make hasty decisions for non-rational reasons, relying on rules of thumb, heuristics, and past experiences that bias their judgment and prevent them from maximizing their gains. “Unlike Econs,” say Sunstein and Thaler, “Humans predictably err.” And if you can predict what errors they will make, you can wall off temptations and set Humans up to succeed.
What predictable mistakes do we Humans make? We procrastinate on important decisions such as enrolling in retirement accounts, hate losses more than we love comparable gains, fall for cravings like sweets even when we know they’re unhealthy, and stick with default settings. Nudgers can exploit these systematic flaws in our thinking, automatically enrolling us in retirement accounts until we say otherwise, imposing fees that discourage bad behavior, hiding desserts in the back of the cafeteria and prominently displaying salads at the front, and setting organ donation as the default unless we opt out. By “nudging” people towards the best outcomes, “choice architects” massage the social atmospheres in which we decide to make it easier for people to make the right, rational choice.
(Excerpt) Read more at mindingthecampus.org ...
Cass Sunstein = Joseph Goebbels
The only thing worse than stupid individuals making decisions for themselves is bureaucrats making stupid decisions for millions.
At least the stupid person can learn from their mistakes.
The bureaucrat is not affected by his mistakes, and cannot learn.
And, it is anti-freedom to presume anyone else SHOULD make decisions for you.
And lets not forget Sunstein is married to UN Ambassador Samantha (Lets invade Israel) Power.
Just glancing at this excerpt, it appears that these theorists mistake the woeful plight of contemporary humans — for actual human identity.
Yet, the "right, rational choice" appears to be nothing more than those choices which conform to the author's arbitrary value preferences. The whole theory is premised on the assumption that their values are "rational" and any other values are "mistakes".
George Orwell would understand.
Ping!
They’ve taught this for decades: Advertising 101.
When choices are left to individuals, the correct and most profitable path will likely be taken on a MACRO level. While there will certainly be people who choose to walk down the ditches of that path and wander into the woods, the society as a whole will progress in a profitable direction. People will not only learn from their own mistakes but from the mistakes of others.
On the other hand, when you shield people from the natural negative consequences of their actions, the society is not guided in any direction at all (other than the one in which the government leads it).
This is the philosophy behind the nanny state in a nutshell.
ObamaCare was the opening salvo under these idiots.
Excellent points.
The fly in the ointment though is that the government has been so involved in our lives in the last say 40-50 years, they’ve created a huge dependent class needing to be “nudged”.
We are also importing reinforcements for that class by the millions.
ONE of the problems is that those who will be deciding what the “best outcomes are” most likely will have a vested interest, just like the politicians of today. I don’t believe this is anything new socialist educators have been in bed with socialist politicians for a long time.
they need Nudging............
At no point in history has any government ever wanted its people to be defenseless for any good reason ~ nully's son
Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
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