Nudge: It’s All for Your Own Good
“Paternalism” is usually a dirty word in political philosophy: the nanny state passing regulations that restrict us for our own good, banning smoking and skateboarding because they’re unsafe, or former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg trying to limit the size of sugary sodas sold in New York City—“the Big Gulp Ban.” Now, a nudger wouldn’t try anything so crass. If you ordered a soda in nudge-world, you would get a medium cup, no questions asked; you’d have to go out of your way to insist on a large one. Not only that, but diet beverages would probably be the ones displayed most prominently in nudge-world and served without question unless the customer insisted on getting the classic version from under the counter.
.. Thaler and Sunstein talk sometimes of “asymmetric paternalism.” The guiding principle of this approach
is that we should design policies that help the least sophisticated people in society while imposing the smallest possible costs on the most sophisticated.
This is a benign impulse on their part, but it is not a million miles away from the condescension that worried Bernard Williams.
.. Sunstein is well aware that many will see the rigging of choice through nudges as an affront to human dignity: I mean dignity in the sense of self-respect, an individual’s awareness of her own worth as a chooser.
.. Sunstein does acknowledge that people might feel infantilized by being nudged.