Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
In a new book, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein describe surprising opportunities to improve the world today, and in doing so, they show how to make a future of accelerating change more livable for poorly informed human beings. The information and concepts have changed my way of thinking about a range of important issues.
Poor information leads to bad, even disastrous personal choices (about medicine, finance, car purchases…), but in a complex world exploding with new choices, we will all be poorly informed. Indeed, live in such a world today. What is to be done?
The paternalistic answer is that father knows best: Mandate good choices, forbid bad choices, and thereby improve human well-being. The libertarian answer is that society knows best: Allow free choices and responsive social organization, and people will find better choices than any central committee could devise. In the real world, policy makers employ a blend of both approaches.
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein advocate more use of a third approach, which they term “libertarian paternalism”: changing the way in which choices are presented, that is, changing what they term “choice architecture”. The research results (some of them theirs) are fascinating, and the principle has surprising power (underline, exclamation point). It’s time for fresh, creative thought on how to exploit it.
In light of all this, I was glad to hear that Cass Sunstein has been appointed to a White House post as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. I hope they’ll have a suggestion box. [Correction: He has been selected for the post by the Obama administration, but is pending Senate approval as of 1 December 2009.]
The book is Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. It’s a good read too.
{ 2 comments }
Hi Eric,
You’ve piqued my interest in reading this book, but it comes on the heels of my reading this:
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/01/10/cass-sunstein-anti-regulation/
Apparently, among other things Sunstein has advocated looser restriction on clean air and water. But this especially stood out for me,
“Urged the federal government to devalue senior citizens in calculating the benefits of federal regulations because “A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.” This is a concept dubbed the “senior death discount,”.
I’d like to hear your response on that, and if you found this utilitarian, but dehumanizing thinking in Nudge.
Paul, thanks for the link to the post; I haven’t looked into Sunstein’s views beyond the contents of the book, and I recall no discussion there of the topic you mention. The focus is on improving means for policy implementation, rather than on policy as such.
{ 2 trackbacks }