We Don’t Make the “Right” Choices, Apparently

iDave has been reading a book, which is dangerous for a politician to be doing…

Stick a bowl of cashew nuts in front of your dinner guests and they might eat so many that they spoil their dinner.

Take the bowl away and they’ll thank you. This is one of the devastating insights offered in a book called Nudge, which is, apparently, the biggest idea to hit Cameron and his cronies since the Big Society.

The essence of this nudge idea is that we don’t make the right choices, so all we need is someone to nudge us in the right direction, to make the appropriate choices – the approved choices, no doubt.

Nudge first caught Cameron’s attention when it was published two years ago, and was swiftly placed on a recommended (but not, one assumes, compulsory) reading list for Tory MPs. Now that he’s safely ensconced in Downing Street, he can give the idea its due: a whole “behavioural insight team”, which includes that new political must-have, a smart young academic. The academic (who, like all political advisers these days, looks very much like a Miliboy) is a man called David Halpern who’s written papers on “Personal Responsibility and Behaviour Change”. Because that, of course, is what it’s all about.

Now, as someone of a libertarian bent, I am well aware of things like personal responsibility. I do, however, suspect that what I want to do and how I want to live my life isn’t quite what iDave means by his big society guff. And, be assured, if I detect someone trying to manipulate me, I don’t thank them for reducing my choices. That said, I don’t stuff my face with pre-dinner snacks though, either.

When Thaler plonked the bowl in front of his guests at a dinner party, watched them stuff their face and then, worrying that his haute cuisine would be wasted, whisked it away, he appears to have undergone a eureka moment. His guests thanked him for his intervention and then (being economists) mused on how it was possible to be happier now that their choices had been reduced.

Jeebus! That’s a pretty pathetic response. If you really want to get the message across, let them stuff their faces and realise for themselves why it was a bad idea. Or is that just too simple?

Some of us (particularly those of us who, if faced with a barrel of kettle chips, would probably eat them until we literally dropped dead) have no problem at all understanding why his guests would be happier once released from the prison of their dinner-wrecking greed, but these, we must remember, were Americans.

All it tells me is that people have become so conditioned to behaving like lab-rats that they have lost all sense of independence – I wouldn’t stuff my face with kettle chips, either. Neither will I be taking any part in this big society nonsense, no matter how much politicians try to nudge me.

This was the land of the free (and the freedom fry), the land where it’s more important to be able to carry a gun than to have fewer people murdered, and it’s more important to be free not to pay for healthcare insurance than to help keep millions of your low-income neighbours alive.

Nice little strawman side-swipe at the USA there Christina, and completely irrelevant to the point being made.

This, presumably, is why the rather obvious point that people don’t always make brilliant choices, and it’s possible to give them a little “nudge” in the right direction, without resorting to anything as Stalinist as state intervention, is presented as if it were the Lost Symbol that humanity has, since Eve wolfed down that lovely braeburn, been awaiting.

The underlying arrogance is pretty astounding, frankly. Who, precisely, decides what are optimum choices? Who, precisely decides when people have made the “wrong” choice and need nudging? The conceit is palpable. How dare these puffed up people deem themselves so much better than the rest of us that they feel empowered to nudge the rest of us. I’ll make my choices and will abide by the outcomes; good or bad. I’ve had a lifetime’s practice doing both, frankly. I will not be nudged by anyone, let alone someone so low down on the food chain as a politican.

These are certainly tricky issues. But when 24-hour licensing was introduced, in an attempt to nudge us into more continental drinking habits, the Brits only took it as a challenge.

Which probably suggests that nudge is fatuous nonsense that only appeals to the terminal control freak. And, hopefully, is doomed to failure.