Reading with the President

After coming across a reading list that our president had constructed for himself and our staff in time magazine six months ago, I thought it would be very cutting edge of me to begin reading along with the leaders of our nation. I began with, and have just finished Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The two claims of the book are that

"Seemingly small features of social situations can have massive effects on people's behavior; nudges are everywhere, even if we do not see them. Choice architecture, both good and bad, is pervasive and unavoidable, and it greatly affects our decisions. the second claim is that libertarian paternalism is not an oxymoron."

The book addresses many aspects of our social lives, from our eating habits, to our energy use, to organ donation and shows how little adjustments to context, presentation, and default options can positively or negatively effect the choices we make. Simple things like making us aware of how our energy use compares to our more efficient neighbors can substantially reduce our consumption, to more serious decisions of changing the default of organ donation to automatic consent (that requires opting out of instead of into) enable us to save thousands of lives.

The method is not a paternalistic mandate that requires legislation but is a creative way of actually increasing our capacity to chose in ways we really desire to (libertarianism). Of course the libertarian part of me easily conjures up images of politicians trying to manipulate my choices, but after a few examples, I am encouraged that the current administration might be taking a more holistic psychological view of effecting change in our society. Leaving people to chose for themselves might seem "American", but we often don't chose how we actually desire to. I don't know if changing the default option on a person's retirement account to having to opt out rather than opt in where the employer matches one's contributions, is any more controlling than having the default position be no to require no savings and so no employer contribution.

I suppose for some it might come down to wanting to have the freedom to be able to consume as much as they want, save the least that they can, and not contribute toward the common good. It sure seems like too many of us already have taken advantage of this freedom and need all the help we can to choose differently.