Nudge Nudge Wink Wink, Say No More

In Nudge, the behavioral economist Richard Thaler and political scientist Cass Sunstein describe the various ways that people behave irrationally because of the cognitive biases and the seemingly irrelevant contextual cues that influence our choices.  Their solution is what they call “nudging,” or promoting rational choice without limiting one’s choices, through “choice architecture,” the organization and design of choice presentation.  Since human beings’ choices are influenced by seemingly irrelevant environmental circumstances, Thaler and Sunstein see no harm in organizing those environmental circumstances to nudge people to make the best choice, so long as they still have the option of the less good choice.  In discussing Thaler and Sunstein’s book, I’ve divided my comments into three parts: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Continue reading →

Song to the People of America (with apologies to Shelley, for butchering his meter):

People of America, why work
For the rich who lay you low?
Why weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Why feed and clothe and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat -nay, drink your blood?

Why, People of America, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?

Have you leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?
Or what is it you buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?

The seed you sow another reaps;
The wealth you find another keeps;
The robes you weave another wears;
The arms you forge another bears.

Sow seed, -but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, -let no imposter heap;
Weave robes, -let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, in your defense to bear.

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls you deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains you wrought? You see
The steel you tempered glance on ye.

With plough and spade and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
America be your sepulchre!

(The original poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Song to the Men of England” can be found here)

There is a frequent misconception that the freedom of the individual implies a lack of duty to others.  Usually this comes in the form of raging against the provision of “welfare,” or pooling private funds into a social insurance fund like Social Security.  Such claims should go further, to demonstrate against payments for policing and public safety, fire control, the paving of roads, etc.  And some, to their credit, take just this tack to its logical conclusion.  That conclusion is, basically, that social requirements, or duties, of me to which I did not explicitly commit are an infringement of my right to freedom.  To understand why this is nonsense, let us first look at the nature of rights.

The most successful definition of a right is in relation to a corresponding duty (this is not universally accepted, I admit).  That is to say, if I have a right, then you have a duty to uphold the content of that right.  For example, my right to the freedom of speech» entails that you have the duty to protect my freedom of speech.  And if you also have that right, then I have the same duty in regards to you.

Thus, if I have any right to freedom» , then you have the duty to protect that freedom.  In a free society, all persons have the right to freedom, and all the rights that are entailed thereby; thus, all persons have the duty to protect one another’s freedom, and all the duties that are entailed thereby.

But – aha! – what is the content of those duties?  Those who reject their social duties claim that those duties implied by rights are those of non-intervention.  That is, that my right to the freedom of speech entails that you have the duty not to prevent my speech – if anybody else does prevent my speech, well, it’s not your problem.  Similarly, you might say that my right to be unharmed means only that you have the duty not to harm me, but not the duty to protect me from violence.

The difficulty with this view is that it separates having rights and duties from actually being able to follow through on them.  If your duty is non-intervention in my enjoyment of a right, then my inability to attain those rights is inconsequential.  We have parliamentary procedure so that everyone may have an equal opportunity to exercise their right of the freedom of speech in an assembly.  If, however, your duty is to non-interference with my right to free speech, then I have only the right to be heard above the shouting of others also trying to be heard in the assembly.  After all, you have no need to see to the realization of my rights as I choose to use them, only not to keep me from speaking.

Under this formulation of right and duty, my claim to my rights becomes counterfactual at best.  I could speak freely, if I can manage to be heard.  I could remain safe, if I can manage to defend myself.  However, if we want our rights to be actually realized, we must accept that we have more thorough duties to fulfill those rights.  Namely, we have the duty not only to not interfere with the pursuit of one’s rights, but the actual positive pursuit of those rights.  We do not merely have the duty not to prevent speech, but to provide equal time for any and all who wish to speak to do so – thus we have parliamentary procedure.  We do not merely have the duty not to cause harm, but the duty to protect one another from violence – thus we have publicly-funded police.

In any case, the centrality of freedom to social organization does not entail the absence of duty.  The question merely becomes what kind of duties do we then have?