From The Daily Event Newspaper by Heywood Gould, published by Tolmitch Press, www.heywoodgould.com
Igor Yopsvoyomatsky, editor of paranoiaisfact.com and columnist for The Daily Event, answers readers' questions.
Dear Igor,
My plumber Fritz went berserk when he saw the Obama commemorative plate on my kitchen wall. He says Obama is the front man for a secret organization known as "the Intelligentsia", who plan to infiltrate our minds and turn us all into robots. Is this paranoia or fact?
Scared,
Fort Prion, Miss.
Dear Scared,
This is fact. But not robots. The Obama branch of the "Intelligentsia", or "nudge nazis" as we call them, want to turn you into docile sheep who will get plumper and happier under their benevolent herding.
But first, a little background. There was a moment in prehistory when a burly Neanderthal felt an irresistible urge to bang somebody--anybody-- on the head with his thorny club. An undersized cave man, fearing for his ovoid pate, piped up:
"Hit the hairy fat guy by the fire and I will sing a song in praise of your bloodlust."
And the Intelligentsia was born.
It flourished in authoritarian societies --tribes, monarchies, empires, dictatorships, capitalist oligarchies,
dictatorships, capitalist oligarchies, anyplace where a greedy, brutal
bully needed an explainer. Aristotle, tutor to Alexander the Great, was an early member. As was Machiavelli, who glorified the murderous intrigues of the Borgias;Thomas Hobbes, extoller of sovereign power; the propagandists of the American, French and Russian Revolutions, who wrote eloquentMembers of Obama's intelligentsia have used sycophancy and elitist-skewed research to advance in the Academe. They now believe that their success qualifies them to tell the rest of the benighted world how to live.
The best-selling policy document of the Obama intelligentsia is Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The authors, professors at the the University of Chicago and Harvard believe that the world is populated by "Homer Simpsons" who "have trouble with long division, forget their spouse's birthday and have a hangover on New Year's day." These people suffer from "inertia", the "status quo bias" and the "yeah, whatever heuristic." They are not capable of managing their lives. Given freedom of choice they inevitably make the wrong decisions, which lead to poverty, ignorance and unhappiness. In Thaler/Sunstein's words they need "choice architects" to "nudge" them down the right path.
The authors describe themselves as "libertarian paternalists." Their method is simply to make free choices more difficult to make. They suggest automatically enrolling workers in pension plans and medical insurance, on the theory that they will be too lazy to opt out. They might suggest automatic deductions from bank accounts for civil violations like traffic tickets, failure to recycle, etc., gently forcing people into good citizenship. Or increasing the payroll tax on the theory that the dummies won't know how to file returns and get refunds.
They never question their core beliefs: that people might be wary of pension plans after the collapse of the 401k; that they might not want to spend hard-earned money on health insurance when they are constantly denied coverage and reimbursement.
They nominate "policy makers and business leaders" to be their "choice architects." It never occurs to them that we might not want to be guided by the people who brought us Iraq, or seek to solve the Social Security problem by increasing the eligibility age; or have so confused the financial system that even the rich are going broke. They never think that we might not trust the business leaders who sell us overpriced adulterated products that we don't need, hire us for slave wages and then fire us to bolster their bottom lines.
It never occurs to them that the "policy makers and business leaders" might need some nudging themselves in the form of impeachment for incompetence, higher corporate taxes for offshore operations and increased unemployment contributions for profit-motivated layoffs.
Professor Sunstein has been appointed head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. This is an opaque agency within the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the implementation of government regulations. Try to get a coherent explanation of what OIRA actually does, I defy you. If you search the White House web site for it you get a capsule biography of Gerald Ford. If you search for "Cass Sunstein" you get a capsule bio of short-lived President Zachary Taylor. Don't bother looking under Federal Agencies and Commissions--it's not there. Under the OMB web site you will find a list of papers and position papers written in dense bureaucratese. But gradually a picture emerges: Government regulates every facet of our lives and the OIRA regulates the regulators. In other words, Professor Sunstein will now get what every intellectual dreams of--a chance to put his theories into practice.
Charismatic leaders make grandiose statements. Anonymous bureaucrats run our lives. It is that clerk shaking his/her head implacably, waving a sheaf of regulations in our faces that we have to fear.
But tell your plumber Fritz not to worry. Obama may love his "nudgers," but we'll see who he calls when his toilet overflows.