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maxstone98 's review for:
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness
by Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein
I would give the book 4 stars unless you are already pretty familiar with the concepts, in which case more like 3 stars, since a lot of it is re-hash.
The message of the book: it really matters a lot how choices are structures (e.g. options in a health plan; food in a cafeteria), and that is just like any other form of power in that it can be used for good or ill. Governments should try to use it for good by framing choices in a way that most people will benefit from taking the option requiring least effort, yet they should still have the freedom of choice to select other options. sure it can be abused, but right not more often than not it is just ignored and govt is doing things which make it much harder than necessary for people to make reasonable decisions about certain things.
I basically buy that. Also many of the examples are interesting. But if you have read much in the pop economic field, you will already know 2/3 of the points they are making, and 1/2 the examples they give, and you might wish the book was somewhat shorter. But still, lots of interesting ideas, and reasonably engagingly written.
Some of the ideas aren't particularly fairly presented though. e.g. they propose to solve the gay marriage debate by basically separating church and state here, you can have gay marriages that get you the legal advantages of hetero marriages, but that churches are free to ban. the authors imagine that conservatives couldn't oppose such a freedom of choice policy, which seems patently untrue, as if people couldn't think gay marriage was wrong and actively want to discourage it through govt rules, as opposed to just not wanting to have a gay marriage themselves. personally I'm in favor of allowing gay marriage, but I didn't think the authors were really being fair here; seemed like a pretty weak straw man they set up on that one.
The message of the book: it really matters a lot how choices are structures (e.g. options in a health plan; food in a cafeteria), and that is just like any other form of power in that it can be used for good or ill. Governments should try to use it for good by framing choices in a way that most people will benefit from taking the option requiring least effort, yet they should still have the freedom of choice to select other options. sure it can be abused, but right not more often than not it is just ignored and govt is doing things which make it much harder than necessary for people to make reasonable decisions about certain things.
I basically buy that. Also many of the examples are interesting. But if you have read much in the pop economic field, you will already know 2/3 of the points they are making, and 1/2 the examples they give, and you might wish the book was somewhat shorter. But still, lots of interesting ideas, and reasonably engagingly written.
Some of the ideas aren't particularly fairly presented though. e.g. they propose to solve the gay marriage debate by basically separating church and state here, you can have gay marriages that get you the legal advantages of hetero marriages, but that churches are free to ban. the authors imagine that conservatives couldn't oppose such a freedom of choice policy, which seems patently untrue, as if people couldn't think gay marriage was wrong and actively want to discourage it through govt rules, as opposed to just not wanting to have a gay marriage themselves. personally I'm in favor of allowing gay marriage, but I didn't think the authors were really being fair here; seemed like a pretty weak straw man they set up on that one.