Cae

(Note: I read the final edition published in 2021 which is 339 pages, not 260)

I must admit that I only knew of this book because of Guy Standing's The Precariat and with figureheads like Lawrence Mead for paternalism, I was already not keen on it. I think this book wouldn't have enraged me so much if they had just re-written or cut out the terrible intro. In fact, they should re-write everything. The style the authors have chosen to write this book in is horrendous to read. It is deeply demeaning with all its false equivalences and logical fallacies and I can't help but wonder if they wrote it that way on purpose. Not just because they clearly have inflated egos (have fun hearing about them constantly but somehow never about any of the work sunstein did for the us gov), but because they wanted to trick readers into thinking that they are being hysterical by being worked up by the concept brought to the table.

The ultimate failure present throughout the book is how much of a non-term “nudge” is. It represents grouping like things together for organizational purposes, gps systems suggesting a route to take you to a destination YOU determine, creating intuitive designs based on pattern-recognition, pink paint that dries white that “nudges” you into covering the entire ceiling, campaigns to inform people about things that should concern them, defaults, automatic enrollments, choices that are between defaults or complicated personally-decided plans, taxes, ect. It's the type of term you come up while tripping and go “woah it's all connected” despite it being a really contrived term that doesn't work. Whenever they find a flaw in their more complex usages of nudge that matter the most legally, they backpedal into their simpler “restaurant meals, cafeteria, gps” schpiel. I fail to believe that these “academics” don't know what they're doing when they do this.

The logic of this book is so flawed that mentioning all the times this book falls flat would be a gigantic essay I am not willing to write but here's a few good ones:

-> Propping the swede stocks as the only case against giving information to people and letting them choose (despite admitting that lowering the amount of choices from the 465 might help too). Which doesn't acknowledge that not engaging in stocks is not detrimental to people, people as stockholders will be more interested in companies they care about the success of, & there are plenty of people that just aren't interested in stocks.

-> You can't argue for regulations & simultaneously pretend your concept is libertarian. A “cooling-off period” forcing people to wait is neither libertarian or a nudge. Calling it a mild intervention while admitting that it was detrimental for women seeking abortions is contradictory. There are several times that argue that something is just a nudge, not a “shove”. They mention the “nudge” of taxes on cigarettes, when taxes on drugs have proven to not deter addicts—just force them to take drugs over a meal. “Harm” is subjective. “Cost” is subjective. “Nudge” is a non-term. Therefore, there is no eliminating “sludge”.

-> Deciding that people should be taking HD health insurance plans and if they don't they are making a mistake purely by the amount of cash spent in total is ridiculous & purely economic. Someone so invested in psychology & behavior should understand the context behind WHY people were making the decisions they were, not just that they were. Why were people passive in all the situations sunstein and thaler listed? Leaving it at inattentiveness isn't good enough for a book that pretends to be research-extensive.

-> Telling people that they should accept chosen defaults for them because they couldn't possibly understand is ridiculous. In their “The Complaints Department” they pretend to agree about increasing education towards topics such as insurance, retirement plans, mortgages, etc, and then go on to say that one study showed that people didn't retain what they learned, so just throw in a few classes when the time comes and consider it good! “We don't expect people to be their own physicians” Maybe we should. Maybe people are owed the tools to easily educate ourselves without being told that these topics are simply out of our understanding!

A book written by economic students for sure. Nobel Prize winner & government official and they whip out a book like this. It has to be intentional.