Is a Nudge a Push? (And why does it matter?)

Working with nudges, and discussing these ideas more broadly always leads to inevitable questions. Questions such as “isn't it just paternalism?”, “Shouldn’t people be allowed to do what they want?”, “Doesn’t this stuff just lead to Statism?”

Unfortunately many on the receiving end of these criticisms are far too quick to pass them off as the rantings of anti-government extremists. This only gives more fuel to the fire and leaves the impression that a Nudge is really a push in disguise. Many critics (for example this reviewer at mises.org) believe that a Nudge is just a more socially acceptable way of forcing people to do what the government wants. Undoubtedly some in the Nudge movement are quite interested in bending others to their will. Believing their preferences for health care, diet, savings plans and so on are the absolute right choice but in my opinion they are a minority. 

The Failure of Prohibition

Before I explain why I think this, lets consider what is at stake here. The greatest expansion of human welfare occurred during the 19th and early-20th century. People went from rural peasants to relatively wealthy urbanites in a few short generations. Public health, wealth and education skyrocketed and arguably the poorest of the poor saw the biggest gains in these times. Concurrent to these developments where the liberalisation of trade, the relative destruction of the landed gentry, the privatisation of land ownership amongst peasants and the abolition of slavery. In other words everything become modernised. From a behavioural perspective the environment shifted and began rewarding capital accumulation. All of sudden it became desirable and necessary to accrue money because there were more places to spend it. Education went from a privilege to a necessity. Literacy became a useful tool - not just an aristocratic fancy, the desire to better oneself (a relatively novel idea to the poor) became a goal. No longer were we satisfied with the status quo.

This was both a blessing, and a curse. There are deep inequalities in our society - and I don’t mean inequalities in outcome which are to be expected in a free society - I mean inequalities of opportunity. There are real, systemic, unavoidable behavioural impediments (call them anti-nudges!) that keep people from achieving what they could. These impediments are more often than not accidental. For example the social housing projects were designed before it was properly understood what effect the environment had on behaviour, and so the utilitarian ideal used as the inspiration for them had the opposite effect intended and destroyed communities, alienating individuals and driving the anti-social behaviour problems we see today. The welfare state serves as another example. B. F. Skinner himself was opposed to the welfare state since he understood that, contrary to intention, the welfare system merely reinforces the behaviour that leads to it. We see this today with systems that, far from helping people, traps them in a cycle of dependency. It raises questions about our society that for many are terribly uncomfortable. It leads people to take positions like hard paternalism, or anarcho-capitalism.

This leads me to my point; what is at stake is our political - and by extension, economic and personal - future. It is clear, I believe, that changes will have to be made. But the direction of those changes is far from decided and currently we lurch from right to left, politically, with each election. Many argue that more freedom is needed, whilst many can't see why a bit more intervention (or maybe absolute intervention) is such a bad thing. Some, however, argue that there is an untapped middle ground that gathers the best of both worlds.

Those who argue that we can have the best of both worlds are finding a home in Libertarian Paternalism. The idea is that any policy made by the government to elicit behaviour change (or any systemic change made by a private business) should maximise the long term, rational happiness of the individual (that’s the Libertarian part) but equally recognise that the government can’t NOT influence behaviour (even in a free-market the government is doing SOMETHING), so they should make efforts to pick defaults or arranges contingencies in such a way as to make people better off (that’s the paternalism part).

Nudgers - or Libertarian Paternalists - believe that there can be no “opt-out” of the behaviour change process since our behaviour is consistently being changed whenever we come in contact with an environment. However they also recognise that the future does not lie in greater state control or top-down influence, and instead the future of behaviour change lies in the equipping the individual to make the right choices when they need to. A “push” - or a move to hard paternalism - is anathema to the goals of a Nudger. Consider the example of alcohol prohibition. Rightfully seen as an example of out-and-out hard paternalism it had the exact opposite effect it intended. Rather than change peoples behaviour they merely found a way to circumvent the restriction. It led to crime, unsafe alcohol, and social upheaval. It was relatively swiftly repealed and the whole thing levelled out. Nowadays alcohol consumption is on the decrease, despite mass-availability and enormous variation. How can we explain this? The hard paternalists can’t (or won’t), but Nudgers can, and quite readily. A shift in cultural attitudes - engineered through changes in advertising laws and public health campaigns linking drinking with bad outcomes - has done far more to curb individuals drinking behaviour than outright banning ever did. The reason for this is that a ban does not remove the motivation, it just increases frustration. Cultural changes, however, alter motivations for behaviours; if you don’t want to do something, unless you’re under considerable pressure of penalty, you won’t, but when you increase motivation to change, the change comes much easier.

From a purely pragmatic point of view hard paternalism is ineffective. It’s a knee-jerk response to problems that are far more subtle. Nudgers can - and hopefully, will - affect the sort of change that preserves the autonomy of the individual and allows them to live a dignified, respectful life - whilst also making the necessary changes to make sure our society becomes stronger and more stable and it’s not just those with the greatest economic means who achieve the sort of happiness we all should be able to pursue.

Image from http://november.org/Prohibition/ originally. I do not own or anyway have a stake in the site or affiliated messages or images.