Nudge versus Shove

Last week the British Medical Journal ran an article about nudging. Regular readers may recall that I'm in favour of nudging as defined in Nudge, partly because if the British government was to genuinely follow its doctrine of 'libertarian paternalism', it would be compelled to repeal a large swath of intrusive and illiberal legislation.

After flirting with Nudge a couple of years ago, the penny has now dropped amongst public health pro's that their agenda of limiting choice, raising prices and restricting availability cannot be dressed up as a friendly nudge. To highlight this, they show a table of nudges versus shoves (or velvet gloves versus iron fists, if you prefer). [Click to zoom]

Most of the so-called nudges would actually require regulation. Pubs are not going to, for example, serve drinks in smaller glasses because there is no demand for it. Others, such as "reduce cues for smoking by keeping cigarettes, lighters and ashtrays out of sight" would be enforceable even if regulated. And still others, such as "designate sections of supermarket trolleys for fruit and vegetables" are just stupid. Still, it gives you an idea of what these people would do if they could.

As for the shoves (regulations), most of them are already in place. Minimum pricing, a ban on trans-fats and raising the minimum age of alcohol purchase are the only policies to which the government has not yet capitulated. The rest would have to go under any government that took Nudge seriously.

The authors would like to see "regulations to limit the availability of alcohol" and "pricing interventions" on food. Since the desire to make it more expensive and inconvenient to eat and drink is at odds with a free society the Nudge agenda—coupled with the fact that the evil Tories have adopted Nudge to some extent—the demagogues of public health have gone off the idea. Their reasoning is that a system that has never been tried has never been shown to work.

Evidence to support the effectiveness of nudging as a means to improve population health and reduce health inequalities is, however, weak.

That's a bit rich coming from people who are still clinging to the belief that...

...increasing the price of tobacco may be more effective in reducing smoking among adults on lower incomes and in manual occupations than among those with higher incomes

There is a vast amount of evidence taken over decades to show that people on low incomes are the least responsive to prices increases. And there is increasing evidence that taxes in places like Ireland, Britain and Canada have already reached the tipping point at which smuggling and contraband make further tax hikes counterproductive.

It looks as if the attack on individual rights will be dressed up as an attack on the straw men of the drinks/food/tobacco industries in the future. And why not? It's a tactic that's been working ever since the Prohibition Party targeted the largely fictitious 'liquor trust' in the 19th century.

Without regulation to limit the potent effects of unhealthy nudges in existing environments shaped largely by industry, nudging towards healthier behaviour may struggle to make much impression on the scale and distribution of behaviour change needed to improve population health to the level required to reduce the burden of chronic disease in the UK and beyond.

This sounds to me like a door slamming. Farewell Nudge, we barely knew thee.

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Final thoughts on Nudge

The subject of Wednesday's Moral Maze was Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein. They argue (compellingly) that it would be nice if we could set society up so the things that 99% of people want to do were the default setting, but if you don't want to do them, it would be a piece of cake to opt out. For example, companies in the US (the authors are from America—this is important) might offer free health insurance but you have to opt in to claim it. Thaler and Sunstein suggest changing things round so you're automatically given the insurance but can opt out if you want.

Who could complain? Pretty much nobody, right? And who could complain at the idea of having sunbeds switch themselves off after 10 minutes in case you fall asleep under them, or driving license renewal forms that ask you if you would like to give your organs to someone who needs them should you perish prematurely?

I consider myself to be basically a libertarian and I can't muster up any arguments against these things, and this really is as far as Nudge (the book) goes. The authors spend several page fretting over whether governments have the right to force motorcyclists to wear crash helmets, for God's sake. These people would be considered virtually anarchists in Britain.

All this seems to have passed a lot of people by. It nearly passed me by. As I mentioned in my review of it in August, the very fact that 'nudging' has been adopted by the likes of Julian Le Grand was sufficient to put me off it for several years. I'm very pleased I finally relented since it's a good addition to the library of behavioural economics. It's also 95% libertarian and only 5% paternalism.

Whilst I would never be so indelicate as to suggest that not everybody involved with the Moral Maze on Wednesday night had read the book, the whole format did rather hinge on its co-author Richard Thaler being an authoritarian wolf in libertarian sheep's clothing.

This was apparent from the choice of guests. With the panel broadly splitting in half, with Portillo and Phillips roughly in the libertarian camp (yes, very roughly - don't write in) and Taylor and Longley roughly in the paternalism camp. Since Delingpole and I are fairly obviously with the libs, and the lady from the Roy Castle Foundation with the paternalists, to even up the numbers the other witness would have to be a paternalist.

The trouble was that the other guest was Thaler himself and—as very quickly became apparent—he is anything but. Accused of trying to change people's goals, he said:

"I don't think we could have possibly been any more clear that that's completely wrong." 

Lest that still not be clear enough, the sublimely incredulous Thaler responded to further insinuations of social engineering by saying:

"Absolutely not. There is nothing that could be wronger than that." 

Listening in the green room, I said to James Delingpole that I didn't think they were quite going to get the argument they wanted out of this discussion. (Towards the end of the show, Michael Portillo drily noted that Thaler "didn't stand for some of the things we thought he stood for.") Thaler went on to strongly deny wanting presumed consent for organ donation, and when asked about plain-packaging, explained once more that he didn't approve of bans at all.

There may be tea-partying parts of America where this sort of talk is considered paternalistic, but then Americans take their liberties a bit more seriously than we do. By the standards of British politics, let alone European politics, Thaler would be classed a loony libertarian. Nevertheless, the format of the show assumed that Delingpole and I would violently disagree with him and his supposedly authoritarian-by-the-back-door ways. This we could not do. Delingpole praised Thaler's sensible book and lamented the way it had been perverted by politicians. He also quite rightly picked Matthew Taylor up on his elitist assumption that the world is divided up into "sophisticated and intelligent" people who are capable of making informed decisions and a lumpen mass of imbeciles who are constantly manipulated by malign institutions for profit.

When it was my turn to be interrogated, Longley wondered with exasperation why I was so opposed to Nudge. I wasn't, I said, although by this time I was tempted to add "... but I can pretend to be if it would help things." Some readers of this blog noticed that I was interrupted quite a bit by Longley and Taylor (the latter chaired The Spirit Level debate at the RSA), something which is more apparent to me listening back than it was at the time. I can't say that I thought the questioning was any more aggressive than in the average Moral Maze. The whole point is to have a bit of an argument and for all three of us, this was more than a rhetorical contest.

Longley believed that the government had decided that smoking was abnormal and anti-social and was going to do something about it. Essentially, he espoused absolute democracy, in which once a government had been elected, it had a mandate to do whatever it wants. Obviously I disagree, since I believe in liberal democracy, which accepts that since democracy is imperfect, elected governments should work within limits (eg. unwritten limits in Britain, written limits in the USA). In any case, using the absolute democracy argument is particularly weak when talking about contemporary Britain where you have a government nobody voted for, made up of two parties which promised less regulation and the overturn of the tobacco display ban.

Anyway, you don't need me to explain what was said as you can listen here, but I hope that the message came over on Wednesday night that Nudge does not in any way justify the kind of lifestyle policies that all the main British political parties have been going along with in recent decades. The Nudge philosophy is totally at odds with every public health initiative that goes beyond giving accurate advice and information to people who want it.

'Nudging' is not a cute name for 'do what we say'. As Thaler and Sunstein consistently stress, any nudging must have a cost to liberty that is close to zero and a financial cost that is close to zero. In other words, goodbye smoking ban, farewell minimum pricing and adios fat tax.

If the coalition is serious about cutting regulation, adopting Nudge would be a sound textbook to work from. But as we have already seen from plain-packaging and the farce of the YourFreedom website, they have no intention whatsoever of doing that. So, if anyone in politics ever gets round to actually reading the bloody book, it much more likely to be farewell Nudge.

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Nudge and the Moral Maze

Tomorrow evening I'll be appearing on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze programme which will be discussing 'libertarian paternalism' and the so-called 'Nudge agenda'. Details are here:

How far should we go to stop people doing something that's bad for them?

We know cigarettes are very likely to cause you serious illness and could even kill you. The tricky thing is many people find them extremely enjoyable and they're perfectly legal. The government, frustrated that some people still persist in choosing to exercise their right to pursue a perfectly legal activity, despite decades of health education, bans on advertising and smoking in public places, are looking at forcing tobacco manufacturers to sell cigarettes in plain packaging.

The problem is that all those people exercising their freedom to smoke are then clogging up the NHS demanding that the rest of us pay for the treatment of their self inflicted illnesses. It's a question not just for smokers. How do you feel about a fat tax, or a minimum price for alcohol?

Tax is a bit of a blunt instrument and unpopular with voters, so it's not surprising that politicians have latched on to "nudge economics". Behind the doors of Number 10 there's a unit called The Behavioural Insight Team that talks about finding intelligent ways to encourage people to make better choices for themselves.

Is this an example of paternalist libertarianism - preserving people's freedoms while at the same time minimising their impact on the wider society? Or a worrying Orwellian development where politicians have given up trying to win the political argument and have instead just resorted to employing teams of psychologists and marketing executives to manipulate our behaviour?

If we're too stupid for our own good, why should we worry if politics becomes the equivalent of potty training? How far should we go to stop people doing something that's bad for them?

Expect plain packaging, smoking bans, temperance crusaders and other frequent offenders from this blog to get a mention.

I discussed libertarian paternalism in Chapter 14 of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist and also in the review of Nudge I wrote back in August. From the latter:

If politicians stuck to both the spirit and the letter of Thaler and Sunstein's philosophy, the nudge agenda would be largely benign and almost certainly beneficial. Far from supporting the kind of policies being pursued by the UK Faculty of Health, any British government that was genuinely committed to the Nudge agenda would have no choice but to repeal whole swaths of legislation that already cross the line between libertarianism and paternalism.

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A review of Nudge by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein

I first came across the term 'libertarian paternalism' in 2008 when Julian Le Grand proposed making smokers buy smoking permits. Le Grand was, and is, a classic Blairite—Eton-educated, champagne socialist, illiberal, wonk—and like all Blairites, he was obsessed with branding. Specifically, he was obsessed with finding friendly buzz-words to help sell unpleasant ideas.

Libertarian paternalism sounds better than authoritarianism. Nudging sounds better than shoving. And so it was that one of the least liberal public health policies imaginable was allowed to be prefixed with the word 'libertarian'. As I wrote in Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, this was an oxymoronic piece of doublespeak if ever there was one.

The idea did not go down well. As Julian the Great later said:

My e-mail inbox exploded. Mostly with pictures of Hitler, I have to say. People were very hostile to that sort of idea. So, although the nudge agenda, I think, does have possibilities I think care has to be taken that people don't feel that it's the nanny state, indeed the nanny state squared.

It is interesting that Le Grand has no voice on his shoulder telling him when he's crossed the line, and instead has to rely on the quantity of hate-mail he receives. Perhaps it's his focus-group mindset. Maybe he just lacks a moral compass. Most likely, as with many public health protagonists, he is an opportunist, lurching towards prohibition but drawing back when the public's apathy turns to disgust.

Le Grand was inspired by the ideas presented in Nudge, a book on behavioural economics written by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. Thaler and Sunstein invented the phrase 'libertarian paternalism'. They also invented the phrase 'choice architecture'. You can see why this kind of management-speak appealed to the political class.

And not just in the Labour party. Nudge is said to be one of the Conservative party's favourite texts at the moment. Nudging is back in fashion and, in a shameless attempt to embrace the zeitgeist, the UK Faculty of Health titled its latest manifesto for authoritarian paternalism 'Healthy Nudges'. This document—which, in reality, is a glorified opinion poll—asserted that:

Sometimes legislation and regulation of the so-called ‘choice architecture’ are important tools for nudging people into making healthier choices.

As far the UK Faculty of Health are concerned, the kind of 'nudges' required are a ban on 'junk food' advertising, raising the minimum age of alcohol purchase to 21, reducing the speed limit in towns to 20mph, a minimum price on alcohol, banning smoking in cars and banning buy-one-get-one-free offers on food.

Since this was all I knew about Nudge, I began reading it this weekend fearing the worst. Nudging, I assumed, would be the latest euphemism for banning and prohibiting. But I was wrong. Nothing in Nudge justifies the kind of prohibitions being mooted by public health campaigners. Authoritarians will find little to console them in this book.

The underlying assumption of Nudge is that human beings are fallible, easily influenced and not always best-placed to judge what is in their own interests. Libertarians will find this a worrying premise from which to start. It echoes the Marxist concept of false consciousness and could be a charter for those who think they know what's best for people. But Thaler and Sunstein never view the public as unwitting dupes of corporations and peer-pressure. Rather, they view people as fundamentally sensible, if not always well informed. As such, they set significant limits on the kind of nudging that can be considered tolerable in a liberal society.

Libertarian paternalism, as defined by Thaler and Sunstein, aims to help people make the best decisions without obstructing those who still wish to make the 'wrong' decisions. In any government intervention, the costs to liberty and the economy should be close to zero. They would like people to save more for their retirement, take out the right mortgage, take advantage of pension schemes, save electricity and not get ripped off by high-pressure salesmen. In practice, this means making information readily available and comprehensible, cooling off periods, warnings and easy opt-outs.

When they talk about making 'good' choices easier, they actually mean it. Unlike the UK Faculty of Health and the last British government, they do not mean banning 'bad' choices. A paternalist solution to stop foreign tourists getting run over in central London would be to ban jaywalking. The libertarian paternalist solution would be to paint 'look right' on the street. It is difficult to see this as an unnecessary intrusion on personal freedom.

Nor do they appeal to the majority to decide the fate of the minority. Nudge almost exclusively deals with helping people avoid situations they could not conceivably desire. If asked, people would generally welcome a safer, healthier or cheaper option. You want to use a sun bed? No problem, but how about we fit the sun bed with a dial to make sure it turns off after ten minutes in case you fall asleep under it? You want to gamble? No problem, but if you know you have a gambling problem how about we enable you to be able to go to a casino and ask them to ban you?

It is hard to see even hardcore libertarians objecting to most of the ideas presented, although there are exceptions. Paying teenage girls a dollar a day to not get pregnant might save the taxpayer money in the long-term but it smacks of the nanny state and encourages public to see themselves as (to quote Alexis de Tocqueville) "a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." Presumed consent for organ donations also sits uneasily with many people—me included—who are uncomfortable with the notion of the state owning its citizens bodies. 

Presumed consent is a classic Nudge problem. There is little doubt that many people would be happy to be organ donors but have not yet registered and will never do so. There is also little doubt that presumed consent would increase the number of organs available and save many lives. If opting out was as easy as making a one-off phone call or visiting a website (as the authors propose), it is difficult to muster up too much antipathy towards it. Presumed consent is not something I am fervently against, but I would like to see a more proactive attempt to get people to register voluntarily before we contemplate coercion. Years ago, I remember donor cards being available at shop counters. All you had to do was pick one up, fill it in and keep it with you. I haven't seem them for years and I doubt this is because budgets have been slashed. There are, in other words, better ways to help make choices easier without the presumption of consent.

The strongest argument against nudging is the slippery slope. Although most of Thaler and Sunstein's ideas would be of no practical detriment to either the target group or the wider public, they do concede that the impact cannot always be reduced to zero. Having accepted that small impositions on liberty and choice are not always avoidable, where does it end?

To be fair, Thaler and Sunstein address the slippery slope argument towards the end of the book, using an apt example:

Governments that start with education might end with stiff fines and even prison terms. The case of cigarettes offers a possible example. Some nations have gone from modest warning labels to much more aggressive information campaigns to high cigarette taxes to bans on smoking in public places, and a smoker would not have to be paranoid to think that the day might eventually come when one or another nation heavily regulates or even bans cigarettes altogether... Faced with the risk of overreaching, critics might think it is better to avoid starting to slide at all. (p. 235-6)

Thaler and Sunstein's counter-argument is that (a) individual proposals should be judged on their own merits; (b) their philosophy automatically puts a limit on further legislation by insisting on low-cost opt-outs; (c) some kind of action is inevitable, so it is better for it to be a nudge than a shove.

I am not fully convinced by these assurances. It seems to me to they overlook how the slippery slope works in practice. In reality, policies are not always judged on their own merits and the appeal to precedent is powerful. How often do we find campaigners demanding that 'loopholes' be closed, despite the fact that these 'loopholes' are actually deliberate exemptions created to make the legislation reasonable in the first place? And how easy has it been for health campaigners to apply the policies first used against the "unique case" of cigarettes to a whole range of products that carry an element of risk?

It may be fallacious to claim that because we are forced to wear seat-belts, we should be forced not to smoke or eat fatty foods, but campaigners who call it 'the next logical step' are not wholly wrong. Those who opposed seat-belt laws in the 1970s did indeed warn of a slippery slope and, what's more, they turned out to be right. One needs to look no further than 'Healthy Nudges' to see the truth of this. It refers to seat-belts no fewer than six times in eight pages. The message is clear—it was for your own good then and it's for your own good now.

When the idea is raised of regulating against allowing smoking in cars when children are on board, politicians are often concerned about legislation in the “private space”. Of course, there are clear parallels with seat-belt legislation...

It is often far cheaper and longer-lasting to introduce regulations or change the law. The classic example of this is the use of seat-belts...

Did politicians of the 1970s intend compulsory seat-belts to be used as a precedent for smoking bans and tax rises? Surely not. Would they have passed the legislation had they known what it would lead to? Probably not. Saying 'we did that therefore we must do this' might be fallacious, but people are susceptible to fallacious arguments. Since Nudge revolves around the idea that human beings are fallible, this point could have been more thoroughly explored.

But perhaps this is to blame the leader for the sins of his followers (see here for an amusing example of how nudging can be abused for malign purposes). If politicians stuck to both the spirit and the letter of Thaler and Sunstein's philosophy, the nudge agenda would be largely benign and almost certainly beneficial. Far from supporting the kind of policies being pursued by the UK Faculty of Health, any British government that was genuinely committed to the Nudge agenda would have no choice but to repeal whole swaths of legislation that already cross the line between libertarianism and paternalism. But as Le Grand and the UK Faculty for Health amply demonstrated, once an idea reaches the mainstream, you no longer get to make the rules.


[Elsewhere, The Guardian (which originally gave it a glowing review) has turned against Nudge for being too libertarian. For an alternative view, Spiked criticised Nudge for being too paternalistic. Who you agree with will depend on your politics.]

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