Welcome to you Orwellian nightmare of the day. This one’s a doozy.
The federal government is hiring what it calls a “Behavioral Insights Team” that will look for ways to subtly influence people’s behavior, according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there could be unintended consequences to such policies, while supporters say the team could make government and society more efficient.
Weird, but in his 876,492 speeches sine he’s been on the scene we haven’t heard Obama droning on about a “Behavioral Insights Team”. Must have slipped his mind what with being distracted by all those phony scandals.
But hey, why let the idiots know what you’re cooking up for them? Besides, it’s already being implemented.
While the program is still in its early stages, the document shows the White House is already working on such projects with almost a dozen federal departments and agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.
The document was emailed by Maya Shankar, a White House senior adviser on social and behavioral sciences, to a university professor with the request that it be distributed to people interested in joining the team. The idea is that the team would “experiment” with various techniques, with the goal of tweaking behavior so people do everything from saving more for retirement to saving more in energy costs.
They’re not going to run your life or anything, silly, they’re just going to tweak it. Calm down, wingnutz!
The document praises subtle policies to change behavior that have already been implemented in England, which already has a “Behavioral Insights Team.” One British policy concerns how to get late tax filers to pay up.
Because social behavior in England is working out so well these days, huh?
“Sending letters to late taxpayers that indicated a social norm — i.e., that ’9 out of 10 people in Britain paid their taxes on time’ — resulted in a 15 percent increase in response rates over a three-month period, rolling out to £30 million of extra annual revenue,” the document reads.
Come to think of it, going after tax deadbeats might be a great idea, right, Mr. President? We’ve got someone in mind, in particular. How about it?
But some economists urge caution.
“I am very skeptical of a team promoting nudge policies,” Michael Thomas, an economist at Utah State University, told FoxNews.com.
“Ultimately, nudging … assumes a small group of people in government know better about choices than the individuals making them.”
And sometimes, he added, government actually promotes the wrong thing.
“Trans-fats were considered better than saturated and unsaturated fats in the past. Now we know this is an error.”
But they meant well. As always, Team Obama was quick to respond to media inquiries about this secret behavior-modification program.
Maya Shankar did not respond to questions.
The document is here. As if there’s isn’t enough government intrusion in your life, you could have them snooping through your attic.
Increasing adoption of energy efficient measures: Offering an attic-clearance service (at full cost) to people led to a five-fold increase in their subsequent adoption of attic-insulation. Interestingly, providing additional government subsidies on attic insulation services had no such effect.
Going out on a limb here, but government is just a tad too big when they’re offering up an attic-clearance service. Notice by they way, the acronym for the Obama Behavioral Insights Team is OBIT. This is a brainchild of Cass Sunstein, to no surprise. More on this loathsome cretin here.
Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.” In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.
Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). This program would target those advocating false “conspiracy theories,” which they define to mean: “an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” Sunstein’s 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story‘s Daniel Tencer.