In the world of ideas, there?s a battle currently underway between forces that, No 1, believe the brain is often best left with minimum interference to figure out what?s in its own best interest, and No 2, believe the brain needs to experiment with better ways to intervene and shape what is being decided.
What?s new is that support for view No 2 is now coming from some of the strangest places. Like University of Chicago. For decades, it has been a stronghold of laizze-faire capitalism. It was the hangout for the world?s most influential modern spokesperson for market economics, Milton Friedman, who had an unshakable faith in the market?s [solutions]. Here?s a sample of Friedman?s bias on the subject: ?What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself.?
Bingo! The battle is joined! Do guns kill people or do people kill people?
Now come two U of Chicago faculty members who are insistent that policymakers acknowledge that humans are imperfect decision-makers. And that in many instances, humans need a little nudge, without coercion, to make decisions that will leave them or people they are charged with helping better off. ?Nudge? is really the operative word here. Law prof Cass Sunstein and business prof Richard Thaler [have written a book] called Nudge, all about their idea of ?libertarian paternalism? and the economics of nudging.
On his blog, Sunstein explains ?libertarian paternalism? this way: ?The basic idea is that private and public institutions might nudge people in directions that will make their lives go better, without eliminating freedom of choice. The paternalism consists in the nudge; the libertarianism consists in the insistence on freedom, and on imposing little or no cost on those who seek to go their own way.?
Dudley Lynch?s Blog
braintechnologies.com/blog/
