Prize for father of infamous Tory ‘nudge’ unit means Nobel committee should be ashamed
Richard Thaler: His theory has allowed the UK’s Conservative-led governments to victimise thousands of vulnerable jobseekers.
It is a travesty that the Nobel Prize for economics has been awarded to a man whose theories were used by the Conservative-led Coalition government of 2010-15 to manipulate unemployed people into inappropriate work.
Richard Thaler’s ‘nudge’ theory acknowledged that people frequently make bad decisions in their lives, thus contradicting one of the central tenets of economics – that people will always act rationally for their own good.
The theory suggests that the way choices are phrased or presented – the ‘choice architecture’ can be framed so that it nudges people towards the most beneficial outcome without restricting their personal freedom.
That is not what has happened. Look at the Coalition’s Behavioural Insights Unit, an organisation originally attached to the Cabinet Office, that used the theory to ‘nudge’ people towards decisions that benefited the Conservative Party and not the individuals concerned.
The best example of this is the fake questionnaire put out by the Department for Work and Pensions to manipulate jobseekers into doing what the Department wanted, rather than what was in their own best interests.
In theory, Thaler may have had a point. In practice, the UK government turned it into attempted mind control.
As the Skwawkbox article in the link above states, the questionnaire was rigged to suggest people had strengths that their answers did not bear out: “Untold numbers of people running around trying to use ‘strengths’ that actually have nothing to do with their actual personality – all under the threat of losing their income if they fail to comply.”
So ‘nudge’ theory was used to lie to vulnerable people, and to threaten them with destitution if they did not do as the Tories demanded.
And for this, the Nobel committee has given Richard Thaler a prize?
A demand for an apology would be better – along with financial restitution for all those whose lives have been blighted – or ended – by the implementation of his theory by genocidal politicians.
Richard Thaler has won the Nobel economics prize for his contributions to behavioural economics.
He championed the concept of “nudging” people, through subtle changes in government policy, to do things that are in their long-term self-interest, such as saving for a pension.
“Richard Thaler’s contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making, said the Nobel committee.
“His empirical findings and theoretical insights have been instrumental in creating the new and rapidly expanding field of behavioural economics, which has had a profound impact on many areas of economic research and policy.”
Source: The economist behind the Nudge theory just won a Nobel prize
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A shocking decision – almost down there with the peace prize for Kissinger and far worse than any decision since that one.
All these Nobel prizes, Knighthoods , and corrupt Gov donations mean nothing to us,in most of our eyes they are worthless pieces of paper, the only people excited by them are the receivers. To have a title now probably just labels you in a negative way. to put it politely .
We need to stop calling this the Nobel Prize. It’s the fake Nobel Prize for pseudoscience. Friedman, Hayek, Buchanan; intellectual frauds who gleefully inflicted vast harm upon Humanity. The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein expose the horror these creatures have done to the world and the existential threat they pose to us all.
The link that Skwawkbox supplies now leads to nowhere. The DWP test has been removed and says “This domain has recently been listed in the marketplace”. So in other words they’ve sold it off now they’ve been found out.
Was William Joyce not nominated, he’d have won outright (posthumously), given this award. What the hell is wrong with the Nobel committee, is it full of neoliberalites.
You smear behavioural economics with politically distorted manipulation of such.
I haven’t.
The Tories did.