I came across this interview with US academic Cass Sunstein, whose views on behaviouralism – including the area known as “behavioural economics”, have been immensely influential on governments in the past 25 years or so.
The idea of “nudging” people via policies to doing certain things (auto-enrolment in savings for retirement, messaging about the dangers of certain lifestyles, etc) has become a default piece of wisdom. It accords with the tendency of a managerialist political class that sees the wider population as only partially rationally self-interested. Sunstein, as shown in this video (conducted by the Hoover Institution in the US) notes how he disagreed with the Chicago-based economics folk such as Nobel Prize winner George Stigler and others about the idea of rational expectations. The behavioural school thinks that human motivation is not like that; in the financial services space, for instance, there is a school of thought known as behavioural finance that looks at crowd behaviour in times of stock market booms, busts, etc. And there are temptations to try and “fix” these behaviours.
I see a few dangers, and maybe Sunstein does too now (it is worth seeing the whole video). For example, it is easy to see how a government, even if democratic and accountable, can grow into a monster if driven by even well-meaning people that think that people aren’t necessarily fully rational, and need to be nudged, or guided, into doing the “right thing”.
This helps explain, in some ways, why the “administrative state” is what it is. It would not have got so big had it been a clearly evil project. Most people who drive all these changes and programmes think they are doing the right thing. Some might be bad but most aren’t. And yet here we are, with a bloated set of governments in the West, with skyrocketing debt and all the rest of it.
I think a major flaw in behavioural economics is the hubris of the “nudge” advocates about how they think they can handle all this. And as we have seen, politicians who lean towards tax-and-spend policies love some of these ideas because they can sit alongside what they want to do anyway. I am not even sure it makes sense to describe these as “liberal” because some of this “nudge” stuff does not seem to accord with ideas about treating people as individuals who need to be held accountable for their actions.
It is arguable that the “nudge” crowd hew to a form of soft determinism, or maybe “soft paternalism” – the notion that we are not really volitional creatures with agency, but buffeted by internal and external forces, and often emotional first, rational second. But even if that latter point is true, a rational person with choice-making capacity can realise that he or she is prone to making unwise/foolish choices, and like Odysseus who lashed himself to a mast to avoid being tempted by the Sirens, adopt rules and protocols to not screw up. (I know an alcoholic who avoids parties and certain events to avoid getting into trouble, to give one example. Another might be a stockbroker who turns off the noise of the daily news and makes better investment decisions over the long run.)
Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, and all that.
“I think a major flaw in behavioural economics is the hubris of the “nudge” advocates about how they think they can handle all this.”
There is also the Hubris of thinking that they know better than me about how to run my life. They see themselves as being more intelligent and better informed than me when most of them are deluded and as thick as mince.
If I were to lumber myself with a political label it would be ‘classic liberalism’. From Wikipedia:
Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech. Classical liberalism, contrary to liberal branches like social liberalism, looks more negatively on social policies, taxation and the state involvement in the lives of individuals, and it advocates deregulation.
I used to think the Conservatives were the closest to this ideal but recent events have cause me to consider them as much closer to something like social liberalism. Social policies, taxation and involvement in the lives of individuals plus regulation seem to be common to most main parties in the Western world.
We are perhaps seen as a flock to be managed – and I don’t like it. Plus it is becoming more and more difficult to opt out.
It seems Jonathan Pearce can’t seem to find current newsworthy things happening in the UK to talk about. May I suggest this (a brave Dundee lass is involved):
https://ombreolivier.substack.com/p/crime-rates-and-lying-politicians?r=7yrqz
“nudge” always ends up as SHOVE.
As Mr Ed pointed out, the sheer length and complexity of the Covid lockdown regulations shows they must have been, at least in part, written before the virus – in short the virus was used as a justification (uncharitable people would say as an excuse) for ideas that had been floating about long before it, perhaps to see what the people could be made to accept. By the way, in case anyone does not know, the lockdowns did NOT reduce deaths – and were never intended to do so.
It would be nice to think that this was paranoia or conspiracy theory – but the international community, in their various conferences and so on, have made it quite clear that they want every aspect of life controlled by governments and partner corporations (Agenda 2030 – and all the rest of it), and if “nudging” will not serve, they are quite happy to SHOVE – to take the velvet glove off the iron fist.
It is true that in some countries the government has not signed on to all this agenda – indeed opposes some, or all, of the agenda. But the United Kingdom is not such a country – here the establishment is committed to the international agenda of total control of the lives of ordinary people.
Note, for example, that there was no real opposition, in British establishment circles, to the recent World Health Organisation agreement – giving even more power to this organisation.
In future people are to live in their little rented apartments, in their 15 minute cities, with their electric car (if they are lucky enough to have one – remember the national grid will not be able to support most people having such a thing) computer controlled so it will not go too far – and will not go into areas that the ruling class (to use a term that Snorri uses – and not unreasonably) do not want them to go into.
Entertainment will be approved entertainment – which will carry “Positive Messages”, and people will be prevented from reading dissent on the internet (as dissent is “disinformation” and creates an “unsafe environment” – that makes people in “vulnerable groups” terrified of “harm”), and many (most?) people will depend on a “basic income” provided by the state – which can, like their accommodation, be withdrawn if they are a problem. This “money” will have to be spent in a certain period of time, and and on certain things (not science fiction – there are experiments, backed by the international community, in several countries already).
Cash will be banned – all money will be electronic and controlled, everything that people do with this electronic “money” will be known by the state and partner corporations (this will “protect the children” and so on).
Food will be produced synthetically.
“Will the new society work?”
Of course it will not work – it will collapse (collapse horribly), but the international establishment are committed to it.
The specific example that Cass Sustein gives (to show that humans are not really people – not really reasoning agents) namely stock market booms-and-busts – carefully ignores the fact that these are NOT caused by “animal spirits” (as Lord Keynes, falsely, claimed) – but are caused by Credit Money.
Cass Sustein does not say this, because to admit that Credit Money (rather than his fellow citizens not being fully human – as he pretends they are not) is the cause of boom-busts would be to admit that the monetary and financial order is institutionally corrupt.
And people like Cass Sustein do not want that to be widely known.
Henry Cyulski.
The reason that Johnathan Pearce has not commented on the case you mention is because the facts are not fully known yet – and to make the slightest mistake in reporting such a matter, especially as it involves a child, could send a person to prison in Britain – indeed even if you do not make any factual mistakes in your commenting on such matters, you can end up in prison here.
I might comment on all sorts of things – but then I do not care if I go to prison, or if I die for that matter (that is NOT courage – courage is when someone who desperately wants to live chooses to risk, or sacrifice, their life). But Johnathan Pearce has a life – and does not want to throw it away without some real chance of his sacrifice having an a real chance of doing some good.
He is rationally brave – rather than filled with suicidal despair.
Paul Marks, all I can say is WOW, is it really that bad.
Henry, you may be trying to be constructive in suggesting things to write about. But I write about what interests me. This is a current affairs blog, but so much more than that.
Thank for your attention in this matter!
Henry Cybulski.
Sadly – yes it is that bad Sir.
Nudge was always wrong. It is not up to policy wonks to dictate how I live my life. As Stonyground says above, I know better than they do how to live my life. Thick as mince is being kind to these people.
Try opting out of organ donation in the UK. Easy.
Now try checking that the system recorded your choice correctly.
Nudge is a system which relies not on nudging the dozy citizen to “do the right thing” by default, but on the nudger’s confidence that the incompetence of the bureaucracy will make the citizen’s choice irrelevant.
… by people who are also not fully rational. What could possibly go wrong? 😀
To put it bluntly, how dare you tell people what they should write about?
I got into a fairly angry exchange a few years ago when someone tried that with me. Blunt being the apposite word for my reaction.
To put it bluntly, how dare you tell people what they should write about?
Same way you do, Perry. You’re criticising what Henry chose to write about 🙂
A better response might have been “On this blog, we like to keep comment threads vaguely on topic. Please oblige.”
(Though it must be said that silence does, sometimes, speak. You can learn a lot about what is really going on by reading a BBC story and seeing what sort of stuff they’ve deliberately left out.)
How would the state go about putting someone in prison – someone who covered the matter Henry C. mentioned?
Easy.
First they could be hit with reporting on a matter that is before the courts – charge the girl (with anything) and there you go – of course they would be happy with stories attacking the girl, but a story defending her…. oh dear me no. “Tommy Robinson” was hit this way once.
And if anyone was critical of Mr Ali (who I am sure is a Prince among men) – they could be hit with “incitement to racial hatred” – that carries YEARS in prison, prisons increasingly under the influence of Islamic gangs.
It is not the idea to send everyone to prison (there is not enough room) – just to give everyone the idea that they COULD be sent to prison.
Sometimes it is not “nudge” – it is “spit in your face”.
For example, the recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece suggesting that the United States accept “refugees” from Gaza – because Islamic migration to Western Europe and the United States (see areas of Minnesota and other States) has gone so well. And no the piece was not meant as a sick joke.
And then there is today’s front cover of the Economist magazine (a publication that loves Cass Sunsteen and people like him) – showing the former conservative President of Brazil (for whom the media have a deep hatred and lie about endlessly) in buffalo horns – like the poor protester (who did nothing wrong – he was waved into the Capitol building by the police) who was shoved into prison after January 6th 2021. And the words above the illustration read “What Brazil Can Teach America”.
Well what can Brazil teach America – how to blatantly rig elections? The election that brought the “Lula” socialist back into office was rigged – and the American Presidential election of 2020 was rigged. Or how to prosecute a man for a protest when he was not-even-in-the-country-at-the-time. Perhaps how to drive a lot of people into exile from Brazil – who have left because they know they would savagely persecuted if they remained there, as many people have been.
In a way I am glad – as now it so blatant no one can pretend that the Economist magazine (very much at the center of the international “mainstream media”) is not written by evil people – for evil people, it clearly is written by evil people for evil people, but what are such articles actually for?
They convince no one – no one believes them, but those of us who remember the Soviet Union understand what the true purpose of such articles is – and it is not to “nudge” people, not to influence people without them knowing it.
The purpose of such articles is to say “we can lie blatantly – we can spit in your face – and there is NOTHING you can do about”.
Pravda and the other Soviet publications did that every day.
And that is what much of the mainstream media in the West has become – they lie, endlessly, NOT for the purpose of convincing anyone (or “nudging” them), but rather for the purpose of spitting in our faces.
It was not a “recent” WSJ opinion piece – it was in 2023, I meant a friend had recently reminded me of it.
I wish he had NOT reminded me of the piece – I really do not need to be made to feel any worse, but he meant well.
As for the Economist magazine – I do not seek it out (contrary to what some people think) – every time I go to the supermarket, there it is, like a turd on the shelf.
@Paul Marks, August 29, 2025 at 12:16 pm
That is a brilliant treatment for a dystopian SF movie. I’d love to help you work out the details of the screenplay!
We’ll get a major studio onboard, think about casting and the director… Clear a place on the mantelpiece for a gold statuette and umbrella drinks all round!
Oh, bugger! Just rembered it’s 2025 and not 1985. Back then I dreamed of a bright new C21st. Playing with my ZX Spectrum and watching the antics of Kirk and the game I never thought the SF future would be written by Orwell.
May Angela Rayner’s third home burn down in a freak power surge when Ed Milliband’s windmills for actually work!
In the US, the Second Amendment to our Constitution is probably our greatest tool for nudging the government into restraint.
No actual force. Just a nagging reminder that they’re not acting correctly, to their own possible peril.
bobby b – Athens Tennessee 1946.
If the protest of 2021 had been an “insurrection” – if a vast number of people who turned up to Washington D.C. (most of whom never went near the Capitol Building – they were about a mile away) had turned up armed (they were not armed), then the very people who condemned them would have been on their knees begging for mercy – courage is not one of the characteristics of the establishment.
NickM – talking of the establishment….
The editor of the Economist magazine is “Zanny Minton Beddoes” and her husband (Washington Post, Financial Times and Guardian) is “Sebastian Mallaby”.
No I am not making this up.
Almost parodies of upper class World Economic Forum types who think ordinary people should be their serfs.
“Nudging” is beneath them – they just issue orders and expect everyone to obey “chop-chop”.
Lee Moore,
If Henry has things to say, he can write his own blog. It’s easy. Get a Substack. Videos, a YouTube channel even. Have fun with it.
Managerialist politicians see people as only partially rational and need to have their actions controlled and constrained.
Managerialist politicians are people.
Therefore, managerialist politicians – by their own arguments – are only partially rational and need to have their actions controlled and constrained.
Works for me. When do we start?
Perry:
Mike Rappaport made the same point in what might have been the single blog post that most influenced me, back in 2012.
Reading it again, it is shorter than i thought; but the basic ideas are there:
* At first, the ruling class justified its own power by arguing that people are selfish; but then, Buchanan and Tullock (and before then, unmentioned by Rappaport, Machiavelli and A.Smith) pointed out that the ruling class is selfish, too;
* Then, the ruling class justified its power by arguing that people are ignorant. Rappaport mentions Stiglitz and Akerlof, but actually Mises and Hayek had already pointed out that the ruling class is ignorant, too;
* Now, the ruling class is trying to justify its power by arguing that people are irrational.
The answer to that is not to let them frame the debate (ie to argue that people are rational); but to point out that the ruling class is irrational, too.
That looks increasingly easy to do.
Is it your thesis that such a situation merely lies in the UK’s future?
(I read Henry Cybulski’s objection as a “fiddling while Rome burns” theme, not a “this would be more a interesting subject” objection. The monsters seem to already be in charge, and nudging has become outdated.)
I’ll write what I want. You don’t edit or control this blog. You have your areas of interest: write about them.
Being told that I am “fiddling while Rome burns” because someone thinks a subject is more urgent than what I wanted to write about is a sort of bullying. It is like demanding that everyone – on someone else’s blog, for crissakes – writes only about things they (random commenters) think is important.
That way madness lies. I will not play to it.
No, honestly, I don’t mean it that way. I am writing about your topic, which I find interesting.
I just wonder if the radicals aren’t just about done with nudging and have moved on to blatant coercing.
So, a question about this. Right now about one third of Americans (and I imagine a similar fraction of people in other western countries) are on some form of welfare. The government pays for their life to some degree or another. When my kids live under my roof and eat the food I provide, and get places by hitching a ride in my car, I also give them a nudge, and even occasionally a shove, in the direction they should go.
So, it seems to me that the problem is not the government nudging people so much that a shocking number of people who are little more than wards of state.
And, of course, that isn’t necessarily totally the fault of the people involved. Often nanny state government policy traps people (and corporations) into situations where that is almost their only option. So it really is part of a much bigger problem. Namely that the government spends VASTLY too much of our money, and insofar as they are spending it legitimately, they are doing such a piss poor job it is ruining the people’s lives and trapping them in dependency. And this is true of many large corporations that are just as trapped by the government as some jobless welfare queen with six kids in downtown Chicago. There are a lot of welfare queens with tickers on the NASDAQ.
You know a follow up to my previous comment: in the UK healthcare is provided essentially free for all residents. So, if you are a smoker, or eat so poorly you weigh 400lbs, then your choices are costing the government a LOT of money. So, in this bizarro world of free healthcare, it seems the government does have legitimate claim to nudge people to eat more healthy. After all, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Now, of course, the problem is not the interfering government nudging people, but that the people are, in regards to their healthcare, wards of the state. In any reasonable system people would be responsible for their own healthcare costs and so the market would “nudge” them, and they would be able to act of their own volition.
And for those who cannot pay for their healthcare, if a charity was to help them, then that charity absolutely would be within their rights demanding that the targets of their charity play their part by, for example, quitting smoking.
So the problem is not so much the nudging as it is the fact that the government has its tentacles into every microscopic pocket of your life.
Fraser’s latest comments prompt me to offer the following half-baked thoughts.
Discussing whether nudging is right or wrong, is as relevant as discussing whether the weather is too wet or too dry.
The plain fact is that nudging goes on all the time, intentionally or not.
The real issues are how we can deal with it; and how the government should deal with it.
Nudging is wonderful if I get to decide which way to nudge.
It’s nothing more than “here’s the right way to live.”
I nudged – and still nudge – my kids in all sorts of ways. And I feel successful at it, inasmuch as my kids now have happy, productive, well-off lives.
“Government” – well, I have little confidence that people who aspire to governmental lives will nudge anyone in the right direction.
Fraser Orr @ August 29, 2025 at 11:00 pm
I can summarise this.
1) You pay for healthcare through taxes.
2) That money now belongs to the Government.
3) The Government does not like spending money on what the Great Unwashed want but on what IT wants.
4) Therefore they will either refuse treatment or grudgingly provide treatment to those who have “deliberately” made themselves unwell (smokers, overweight etc.).
Viewed like that, then it is far more economical for the Government to make meaningless statements and indulging in nudge tactics than do what they are paid to do via taxation.
If anyone would care to hear more detailed critique of this sort of nudge soft paternalism, they may care to listen to this podcast episode.
Snorri – the point is that government should not try and “nudge” people – and this is, sadly, what Cass Sunstein wants.
Michael Oakeshott in “On Human Conduct” (1975 – I think it is in long essay “On Civil Association”) mentions how absurd (and insulting) it is for government ministers to try and influence the private conduct of people – how they live their lives. Gladstone mentioned the same thing about a century before – of this I am certain, the moral improvement of the people will not be via the state.
TomJ – thank you Sir.
But nudging is what government does, all day, every day.
I did a law review article decades ago, concerning how civil and criminal law are primarily “nudge” mechanisms. (This was before the word “nudge” was used, of course.)
If you have to enforce a prohibitory law and impose consequences, your nudge has failed. The ultimate goal is to draft and distribute laws and rules and regs and then let them guide society in its day-to-day affairs.
Nudging is the act of inculcating a society into the ruling ethos. Marketing is nudging. A police car seen on the street is nudging. Showing a happy prosperous working family unit is nudging.
And now we’re about to start nudging in a different direction.
@Paul Marks
Snorri – the point is that government should not try and “nudge” people – and this is, sadly, what Cass Sunstein wants.
I have made my comments about this above, but I honestly wonder, in the situation we currently find ourselves, how many people fully believe this, or are more inclined to thing that the government shouldn’t nudge people in a way that they don’t agree with — though nudges they do agree with are ok.
For example: should we take away the mortgage tax deduction, which is a nudge to encourage people to buy a house?
Should we take away the charitable tax deduction, which is a nudge to encourage others to contribute to charity?
Should we extinguish all tax exemptions for charities, including, for example, churches, since this is a nudge to people to set up and participate in such organizations?
Should we shut down the public school system, since that is a nudge by the government to encourage parents to get their children an education?
FWIW, my answer to all of these is “yes”, but such a thing would only work in a very different world than we live in. Ask the large majority people in Britain or America and you will get a firm “hell no” on all of these. Of course Paul, you are as “out of the box” as I am, so perhaps you’ll favor shutting them all down too.
I agree with your three tax deduction conclusions but I disagree with your analysis of the mortgage case.
In the charity case the economic transaction is zero sum and so the tax should be zero. If the charity is not taxed on the receipt then the donor should get no relief on the payment.
But for mortgage interest, the lender is taxed on the interest receipt so the borrower should get a deduction for the payment to return to zero tax. Taxing the receipt and not relieving the payment creates tax on a zero sum transaction thereby discouraging borrowing.
Better to not relieve the interest payment and not tax the interest receipt. Simpler too.
@Lee Moore
I agree with your three tax deduction conclusions but I disagree with your analysis of the mortgage case.
That’s not really how the tax system works. You get taxed when you receive a paycheck, then when you buy something the seller gets taxed on the income it makes from your purchase. You work and save some money — you save out of the money you receive net of taxes, then you buy a car (with money that has already been taxed), and the dealership makes a profit on the sale and pays taxes on it. So the money is taxed twice (actually several times since the dealership spends that money somewhere too.)
Don’t make the mistake of thinking there is any fairness in the tax system. It has a bizarre logic to it for sure a kind of fake “fairness” if you live in the bizarro world of the tax authorities, but it is a horrifying tangle of “OMG you must be joking”s and “FFS that is so deeply unfair”s and “surely that is some loophole bought by a special interest”s. The tax code is a deeply immoral document; it is government writ small — designed to pay off the connected and powerful and screw over the ordinary employee.
There are nudges and nudges. The mortgage tax deduction is a nudge that everyone is aware exists, and for what purpose. I am more or less tolerant of such.
Sunstein also like nudges which are subliminal or disguised, however, and these work directly against “governments derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed”. Because no valid consent is possible in that situation.
I fully approve of Fraser’s reply to Paul (on my behalf 🙂 ).
And also of his reply to Lee Moore.
But i would like to note that, when i wrote my previous comment, i had in mind default options, especially for pensions. Any employer is bound to have a default option for its pension scheme, either yes or no. If you think that “no” is not a nudge, that only “yes” is a nudge, then i submit that you have not thought about this issue seriously.
To put it bluntly: when interacting with people, it is impossible not to nudge. This is the important message from behavioral economics, for me. Don’t throw the baby away with the bathwater!
Fraser Orr – yes indeed, I would support a neutral tax system and neutral laws.
Indeed, on taxation, Paraguay (a nation of several million people – so not a micro state) had no Income Tax at all before 2012 (so I smile, in bitterness rather than amusement, when people tell me that such as tax is inevitable) – although it did have Social Security taxes (for people in the scheme) and tariffs. Even now its Income Tax is a flat rate 10% (as is the case in Bulgaria, Romania and some other nations) – so deductions for mortgages and so on would be pointless.
Snorri – on default.
One of the problems of limited liability is it allows the owners of limited liability companies to walk away from their promises, such as their promises of pensions for employees, and yet keep their personal wealth. This is troubling – to say the least.
On default more generally – default on the national debt (now bigger than the entire economy in many Western nations) would have terrible consequences – but continuing to try and finance this ever increasing debt, via creating “money” from nothing – then lending it to the banks, and other such, and borrowing it back (at a higher rate of interest), thus digging the hole deeper, is utterly insane.
This system of money and finance is utterly mad – it is vortex of insanity, which gets worse and worse over time.
Terrible though it would be, an open default might (might) be less bad than continuing to spin down the plug hole.
Snorri – the difference is the use of force.
I might “nudge” you by saying “if you do this do this job of work for me – I will pay you X amount of money”.
The state, or private criminals, “nudges” by saying “if you do not do this – you have to pay X amount of money” (or punishes you in some other way).
The Cass Sunstein version of “nudging” is that of the state and private criminals – it is like the “I will make him an offer he can not refuse” nudging of “The Godfather”.
Paul: to speak bluntly (again), i do not see how what you wrote about default, has anything to do with what i wrote about default options.
— As for The Godfather, it is the single xx-century novel that i found most educational.
Therefore, i’d like to point out that Don Vito Corleone used carrots as well as sticks. He made reasonable offers, before recurring to threats.
Were his actions always ethical? hell no! But they were (nearly) as ethical as compatible with the survival of his family, and other people to whom he owed loyalty.
Again, i do not see how any of this is relevant to behavioral economics.
PM: “One of the problems of limited liability is it allows the owners of limited liability companies to walk away from their promises, such as their promises of pensions for employees, and yet keep their personal wealth. This is troubling – to say the least.”
Just to be my usual pedantic self – in a USA-centric way, of course – limited liability can be pierced quite easily these days. If you fail to adequately capitalize a business, if you pull assets out before a crisis – and especially if you fail to make federally-protected pension fund payments – you’re going to lose your house and your savings even if you properly set up your LLC.
(Of course, there is still a good reason to take employment with an employer who funds “qualified accounts” that are your property upon funding instead of setting up a company-owned pension program.)
@bobby b
Just to be my usual pedantic self – in a USA-centric way, of course – limited liability can be pierced quite easily these days.
Just be be equally pedantic, it depends a LOT on which state you are incorporated in (here talking about corps rather than LLCs since it is what I know about.) One of my businesses I incorporated in Nevada which, if I remember right, has only allowed piercing of the corporate veil a handful of times in its history. However, I have personally experienced the very real threat of piercing the corp veil here in the socialist state of Illinois, which, thankfully was dealt with via out of court settlement. Needless to say I will never incorporate a business in Illinois again. It is one of the most business unfriendly states in the union. Something that Brits might not know is that when you set up a business in the USA you can incorporate in any state at all, it does not depend in any way on your state of residence. There is a booming market in incorporation lawyers who will literally give you a menu of states with a list of pros and cons.
It is also worth saying that many of the complaints about these sorts of limited liability entities can simply be answered by saying “you know what you got yourself into.” If you do business with such an organization then you know that their liability is limited, so why should you complain when it is enforced? As to pension funds? FFS who has an employer pension fund besides government employees these days? Get a pension fund that you personally control with money outside your employers control. I mean isn’t it bad enough that you are forced to put large amounts of your paycheck into the bankrupt social security system — a system that is bankrupt simply because the government stole all the money? At least when a big employer raids your pension fund it is usually because they are going out of business. Yet the thieving government goes on and on unabated, telling you the problem is “changing demographics” rather than their shameless pilfering.
Ah, good! Pedants-R-Us!
As long as a Corp does any business in a state – which gives that state’s courts jurisdiction over the Corp – you can pierce any corporate veil, no matter where it was incorporated.
It’s not where you’re incorporated that makes the difference. It’s where you’re sued. I would not want to be sued in Illinois. 😉
(I should clarify: I WAS sued, many times, in Illinois. I had a regular room at the Palmer House for several years, as it was close to the fedcourt.)
@bobby b
It’s not where you’re incorporated that makes the difference. It’s where you’re sued. I would not want to be sued in Illinois. 😉
See I didn’t know that, and it could really have hurt not knowing that. Another reason to move to a different state. Illinois sucks, I should move up to where you live, Minnesota, paradise…. oh, wait….. 😉
Snorri – to try and make people do what one wants them to do by using force (say “you have to choose this – or we will make you pay more for this other thing – via regulations”) is wrong.
Calling it “behavioral economics” does not make it any less wrong.
And a private criminal, such as “The Godfather” using such threats of force is also wrong – it is not just wrong when the state does it.
It is like saying that Central American nations have low tax rates – forgetting that MS-13 and other groups (thousands of armed men) can turn up and tax a person at 100%.
Whatever these armed groups were called they were never any good – Marine Corps General Butler spoke falsely (as was his habit on so many matters) when he argued they were noble people fighting the exploitation of “capitalists” – “Chesty” Puller was closer to the truth – bandits need to be killed, especially “Social Justice” bandits.
“But General Butler was very brave and won a chestful of medals” – if anyone comes back with that counter argument I refer them to the Conan Doyle character “Colonel Moran”.
A man can be physically incredibly brave – and still a liar, and a traitor.
The great temptation of “nudging” is that it doesn’t use force or say no. It’s an explicitly non-violent market-based form of coercion for the immediate post Cold War world – a policy tailor made to pierce and subvert classical liberalism, which is prone to arguments making a black and white distinction between violence and consent.