With many from the Deep State and the DC Sewer scrabling to keep one step ahead of a vacation at the Graybar Hotel, we might want to remember a character from Barack Hussein Obama’s inner circle. A critter by the name of Cass Sunstein.
Cass Sunstein, a friend of Obama’s from his University of Chicago Law School days, spent four-plus years running the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). It’s an obscure but exceedingly powerful perch that enabled Sunstein to put his imprint on everything from fuel efficiency standards and the redesign of the food pyramid to the rules for the landmark health care and Wall Street overhauls.
Sunstein used his office as a laboratory for his brand of “progressive paternalism” — his self-described and seemingly paradoxical approach to structuring prompts for people that promote their welfare by protecting them from their own more self-destructive impulses.
Sunstein’s approach is built on behavioral economics, which has upended centuries of belief that individuals are rational actors who will act in their own best interest left to their own devices. The science behind behavioral economics is largely accepted by academics, but applying it in the policy realm is controversial. Detractors conjure up Big Brother and with good reason.
His latest book is called “Simpler: The Future of Government”. It’s a kind of follow-up to Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.
Sunstein drew a straight line from Obama’s embrace of the office back to Ronald Reagan. In a bid to choke off burdensome regulatory mandates, Reagan insisted that the benefits of new rules outweighed their costs.
Now why is this a big deal?
Does anyone remember Barack Hussein Obama signing an executive order instructing the Gov. to use Behavioral Science to persuade the public?”
Quote:
“Behavioral insights and public policy: Can the former be used to craft solutions for the latter?
Traditionally, many government policies are designed on the basis of how people should behave and an assumption that this behavioral is rational. Yet both individuals and organizations make many decisions that systematically depart from what is rational. The result? Policies that are ineffective or even backfire.
But using insights gleaned from behavioral economics, psychology and other social sciences, you can craft better policies that have more successful outcomes.
Better Public Policy from Behavioral Insights.”
“Led by a renowned group of scholars and practitioners working in this rapidly expanding field, this program will introduce you to cutting-edge research from various social science disciplines and how these can be used to build more effective policies. You will examine how behavioral insights can inform the development of nontraditional policy tools and why these can be more impactful and cost-effective than traditional policy tools.
OK, well this is the class that teaches this concept to future leaders and gov. officials.”
The intent is to “Nudge” people into accepting political policy even when they don’t want it.
Why should you care?
Because this is the subtle art of getting the people to give up their liberties and freedoms and make them look forward to it.
Among other directives, Obama’s order authorized the government to “recruit behavioral science experts to join the Federal Government as necessary,” and to “strengthen agency relationships with the research community to better use empirical findings from the behavioral sciences.”
In other words, it sanctioned the sharing among government agencies of an entirely new set of data points on the private activities and tendencies of the American people.
Add to this the NSA data collection of texts, phone calls and internet usage of every American and you have a true-life George Orwell scenario. And, with artificial intelligence “appliances” like “Alexa” and “Cortana” et al the populace is spending their own money to buy the eyes and ears of Big Brother. They are carefully forging the chains of their own slavery.
We can only hope that President Trump succeeds in reconciling the concept of individual sovereignty with conscientious participation in the American political process. We have closely observed the manner in which well-meaning small-town politicians and policy makers often accept, unthinkingly, their increasingly marginal role in shaping the quality of their own lives, as well as those of the people whom they serve.
American public policy is plagued by inscrutable and corrupt motives on a national scale, a fundamental problem which individuals, families and communities must strive to solve.
This can only be achieved if Americans rediscover the principal role each citizen plays in enriching the welfare of our Republic and takes personal responsibility for their actions, lives and welfare of themselves and their families.
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