Nudge policies and Negative Liberty Writing sample Olga Fjodorowa Msc, MA

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Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... 2

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 2

2. Nudge Theory .............................................................................................................................. 3

3. Nudge Theory as violating Negative Freedom .............................................................................. 4

4. The types of Nudges and their individual impact on negative freedom ......................................... 6

4.1 Type 1: Activating a desired behaviour – Externally-imposed – Mindful – Encourage ............ 9

4.2 Type 2: Activating a desired behaviour – Externally-imposed – Mindful – Discourage ........... 9

4.3 Type 3 and 4: Activating a desired behaviour – Externally-imposed – Mindless – Encourage

and Discourage .............................................................................................................................. 10

4.4 Types 5 and 6: Boosting self-control – Externally-imposed – Mindful – Encourage &

Discourage ..................................................................................................................................... 11

4.5 Types 7 and 8: Boosting self-control – Externally-imposed – Mindless – Encourage &

Discourage ..................................................................................................................................... 12

4.6 The four Self-Imposed types of nudge policies .................................................................... 12

5. Conclusion. ................................................................................................................................ 13

6. Literature List. ............................................................................................................................ 15

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Abstract

In this paper I will consider the claim that nudging reduces the degree of negative liberty. There are twelve different general types of nudge policies, and their impact on negative liberty will vary. I will show that not all nudge policies decrease negative liberty to a degree. Thus there are nudge policies which can be safely implemented by liberal governments.

1. Introduction

The democratic government has always been a topic of debate, in particular what its duties and powers should be. Since the rise of communism and the welfare state these debates have increasingly focused on the question of how extended the state ought to be. At the one side of the debate libertarians have argued that the state should be minimal, and should not interfere with the liberty of citizens. At the other side, paternalists have argued that the purpose of the state is the promotion of wellbeing of its citizens. Recently Thalter and Sunstein (2009) have proposed a third approach, which they call libertarian paternalism. Their idea is that the state ought to gently nudge citizens to make the choices most beneficial for them and the society they live in, without removing the right to choose. In this way, Thaler and Sunstein (2009) argue, the liberty will be preserved while the welfare of the citizens will increase. Additionally, this method is often cheaper to implement than the traditional tools of the state, such as taxation, regulation and bans. The usage of nudges can thus decrease the size of the state, in the long run potentially also reducing the taxes imposed on citizens. Libertarian paternalism promises great benefits, but there are fears that the implementation of such policies will reduce the citizens’ liberty. Authors such as Grüne-Yanoff (2012) have argued at least some nudge policies decrease negative liberty by interfering in the choice process. Ly et al. (2013) have identified twelve general types of nudge policies. This paper will examine which of the general nudge policy types do indeed decrease negative liberty, and whether there are general types of nudge policies which can be acceptable from the point of view of libertarians. This paper is structured as follows. In chapter 2 I will discuss the general theory of nudge policies. In chapter 3 I will look at negative freedom and examine the claim that at least some nudge policies decrease negative freedom. In chapter 4 will discuss the twelve general types of nudge policies and consider their impact on the negative freedom. Finally, chapter 5 will offer the conclusion.

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2. Nudge Theory

Thaler and Sunstein (2009) provide a definition of a nudge: “A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates.”1 Thaler and Sunstein (2009) begin with the insight that a choice is always made within a choice architecture. Choice architecture is a context in which people make decisions. One cannot thus avoid deciding upon a choice architecture, for even a random assignment of choices is in itself a choice architecture decision. Choice architects are the ones responsible for designing the choice architecture. When choice architects, in particular governments and social institutions, wish to promote certain behaviour, they essentially have two options. Liberal governments usually chose the “Just Maximize” strategy, by maximizing the number and the variety of different options. Often this is paired with forced-choice strategy, forcing the citizen to select the option best suited for their needs. The “Just Maximize” strategy maximally respects the liberty of the choosers, and relies on the choosers to be fully informed and capable of making perfect choices. The disadvantage of this strategy is that it often implies high costs for the choosers in terms of time, effort and mental energy. The resulting choice process is often incredibly cumbersome, and the outcomes are usually not as good as they could have been. A very good example of this is the design of a Swedish Privatizing Plan, discussed by Thaler and Sunstein (2009)2. Another option, often preferred by the paternalists, is to make certain types of behaviours mandatory. Here one can think of mandatory usage of car seatbelts. Such regulations maximally protect the citizens from making choices that they would otherwise regret, and in a way provide simplicity to people’s lives by not requiring the citizens to spend their mental energy on making certain decisions. The disadvantage lies of course in the limited freedom for the choosers, and with the costs from having one size that does not fit all. Nudging provides an alternative to these two strategies. It basically provides the chooser with a preliminary choice. One can either disregard the nudge and decide for oneself what option suits one’s preferences most, or one can follow the nudge, and save the time and mental energy necessary to make a well-informed decision. Of course there are many different kinds of nudges, and many possible ways by which nudging can be done. Ly et al (2013) have even

1 Thaler S. R., Sunstein C. R., [2009], “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness”, Yale

University Press, New Haven & London, p 6. 2 Thaler S. R., Sunstein C. R., [2009], “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness”, Yale

University Press, New Haven & London, p 145 - 156

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identified twelve general types of nudges. All these different types differ not only in implementation strategy, but also in their impact on liberty. I will return to these different types in Chapter 4. Nudge Theory is based upon the understanding on how humans actually behave, rather than how they should be behaving. It assumes that humans are among others fallible, are sometimes busy, sometimes lazy, and sometimes emotional. Therefore the choices that humans make are often not the best ones that they could have made. And humans could thus benefit from gently being nudged into the right direction, or having the best choice highlighted, or being told that water is good for you. Nudging offers a low-cost way by which the governments and other institutions can adjust behaviour, while still respecting the freedom of choice. The trouble with Nudge Theory starts to arise when people are unaware of being nudged, which is a common occurrence. The most prominent example of it is advertising. Advertising has nudged us for a long time to purchase certain goods, by promising love, wealth, beauty, fame and many other things to those who purchase a bar of soap. Of course it is not unimaginable that a bar of soap contributes to all those things, but the relationship far more complicated than the advertisers would want us to believe. We consider nudging to be perfectly permissible if it comes from business who only care about our money, and not so permissible from the governments which may want us to live happier and better lives. Unfortunately, we cannot be certain that the governments do indeed care about our wellbeing, though the chances of that being true for a government are significantly higher than for a business.

3. Nudge Theory as violating Negative Freedom

The idea that governments should apply nudges in order to save the tax-payers money is mostly criticized from the libertarian camp for not respecting the citizens’ freedom. Grüne-Yanoff (2012) argues that liberal paternalism violates the liberal principles. According to him liberal paternalism limits freedom, and fails to justify such limitations in a way that is acceptable to liberal positions. He points out: “…. some LP policies constitute non-transparent manipulation, and hence reduce people’s degree of republican liberty; and further that other LP policies interfere in choice processes, and hence reduce people’s degree of negative liberty.”3

3 Grüne-Yanoff T., [2012], “Old wine in new casks: libertarian paternalism still violates liberal principles”, Social

Choice & Welfare, Volume 38, Issue 4 , p 635-645, http://home.abe.kth.se/~gryne/papers/LiberalWelfare101111.pdf (checked 25 July 2013) p 1.

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This paper focuses on the question whether nudging people by the government is contrary to the concept of negative liberty. In order to examine the argument offered by Grüne-Yanoff one first needs to understand what is meant by negative liberty. I will very briefly consider this concept. Isaiah Berlin (1969) provides perhaps the most famous account of negative liberty and defines it as freedom from coercion: “I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others.”4 And, “Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act. You lack political liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings. Mere incapacity to attain a goal is not lack of political freedom.”5 (emphasis is mine) Negative liberty focuses on the factors external to the person. These factors are usually thought to be constraints imposed on the person by other people and the state. Usually proponents of negative liberty argue against any interference from the state, unless this interference is used to protect certain liberties, such as freedom of religion, freedom of movement, freedom of personal property and so on. On this account of freedom, I am free as long as nobody prevents me from doing certain things, such as attending a university for example. If I am unable to attend university because I am physically disabled, or too poor, or the university is too far away from where I live, then my liberty is not diminished. If my angry parents have locked me up so that I will not attend university, then I become unfree to do so. The key point here is that Berlin (1969) is very specific about when one lacks negative freedom: only when other humans prevent you from attaining your goal. This means that Grüne-Yanoff (2012) is right in saying that a mere interference already decreases the degree of negative freedom. But, a mere interference does not make you unfree, unless this interference prevents you from achieving your goal.

4 Berlin I., [1958,1969], “Two concepts of Liberty”, Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford: Oxford University Press,

http://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/wiso_vwl/johannes/Ankuendigungen/Berlin_twoconceptsofliberty.pdf (checked 27 July 27, 2013), p 3 5 Berlin I., [1958,1969], “Two concepts of Liberty”, Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford: Oxford University Press,

http://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/wiso_vwl/johannes/Ankuendigungen/Berlin_twoconceptsofliberty.pdf (checked 27 July 27, 2013), p 3

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One can wonder if this reduction of freedom is as unacceptable as the libertarians make it appear. There are two points that can be made here. The first is that if the government has a certain degree of paternalism in its ideology, then the alternatives to nudges may decrease the liberty a lot more than the libertarian paternalism policies will ever do. An example of this is the public ban on smoking. In this case, the government has tried to do some nudging first by providing warning labels on the packaging. When this has proven to be less effective than hoped, taxes were raised and eventually a public ban was enacted. It is possible that using several nudge policies at once, could have had a similar effect, without reducing the negative liberty to damage own health quite so much. The second point is that in the long-run, nudge measures may actually promote negative liberty. The key argument provided by Thaler and Sunstein (2009) is that nudge policies are cheaper to implement than their alternatives. This is both due to the low-cost for the citizens on whom these measures are implemented, and due to low-cost of implementation for the government itself. A nudge does not need to be enforced; therefore there are no enforcement costs. Thus less taxation money will be needed to maintain the government itself. And perhaps one of the oldest claims from the libertarian camp is that taxation reduces negative liberty, for it diminishes the freedom to own property. One can wonder whether slightly decreasing negative freedom in order to prevent much larger decreases, or to (slightly) increase another aspect of negative liberty can be justifiable in ways acceptable to liberal positions. If it is justified, then part of the objection to libertarian paternalism that Grüne-Yanoff (2012) makes will be removed or at least weakened. It is unfortunately outside the scope of this paper to discuss this point in detail. Grüne-Yanoff (2012) argues that his criticism applies to at least some of the libertarian paternalism principles6. Perhaps there are other nudge policies which do not decrease the negative freedom of citizens. This question is the topic of the next chapter.

4. The types of Nudges and their individual impact on negative freedom

According to Ly et al (2013) nudge policies share characteristics which can be classified across four dimensions: 1. Boosting Self-Control vs. Activating a Desired Behaviour. 2. Externally-Imposed vs. Self-Imposed. 3. Mindful vs. Mindless. 4. Encourage vs. Discourage

6 Grüne-Yanoff T., [2012], “Old wine in new casks: libertarian paternalism still violates liberal principles”, Social

Choice & Welfare, Volume 38, Issue 4 , p 635-645, http://home.abe.kth.se/~gryne/papers/LiberalWelfare101111.pdf (checked 25 July 2013) p 1.

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The first dimension distinguishes between nudge policies which help the individual follow through with their decision (boosts self-control) and policies which help the citizen to make a decision to which the chooser is inattentive to, or finds to be unimportant (activating desired behaviour) . There are areas in life in which there is a discrepancy between what people say they want to do, and what they end up doing. Perhaps the best examples of this are the New Year goals. Most people do try to follow through with their intentions, but tend to give up or forget about their goals in a few months. If people genuinely wish to proceed with their intentions but lack the self-control necessary to do it, then they can benefit from nudge policies which boost self-control. Policies which activate desired behaviour focus on the aspects of life where citizens do not consciously consider what the best behaviour should be. Here one can think of littering and excessive drinking. As Ly et al. (2013) point out: “... nudges that seek to activate latent or non-existent behavioural standards in people rely on exposing them to conditions in which those standards become more salient”7. Nudges in these areas can help develop good habits. The second dimension looks at whether a nudge will be voluntarily adopted. Self-imposed nudges are voluntarily and actively adopted by people to influence their own behaviour. An example would be going to work on a bicycle to meet an exercise goal. Externally-imposed nudges are those which passively shape behaviour by presenting a choice in a certain way without constraining that choice, such as by the use of a default option. The third dimension focuses on the biases and heuristics that humans use in their decision making. Mindful nudges attempt to free the decision maker from his biases and allow for a more deliberate cognitive decision making. Mindless nudges at the other hand make use of those biases and heuristics such as emotions and framing to sway the decisions towards certain goals. The fourth dimension looks at whether the nudges encourage or discourage certain behaviours. An advertisement “drink more water!” on a hot day would be an example of an encouraging nudge. Ly et al. (2013) have combined those four dimensions into twelve distinct nudge policy types. They have provided the following table to demonstrate the twelve types:

7 Ly K., Mažar N., Zhao M., Soman D., [2013], “A Practitioner’s Guide to Nudging”, Research Report Series:

Behavioural Economics in Action, Rotman School of Management , University of Toronto, 7

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Table 1: The twelve general types of nudge policies.8 The question is to what degree each of those general types impacts negative liberty. If the impact is substantial, then Grüne-Yanoff’s (2012) criticism is correct and these policies should not be used by a liberal government. If the impact is modest, then it can be considered whether the benefits of implementing this policy can outweigh the degree of reduction of negative freedom. If a policy does not seem to decrease the degree of negative freedom or this decrease is insignificantly small, then the use of such policies should be encouraged.

8 Ly K., Mažar N., Zhao M., Soman D., [2013], “A Practitioner’s Guide to Nudging”, Research Report Series:

Behavioural Economics in Action, Rotman School of Management , University of Toronto, 8

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4.1 Type 1: Activating a desired behaviour – Externally-imposed – Mindful – Encourage

Activating desired behaviour refers to policies which help guide the citizens towards certain behaviours in situations where the citizens do not actively think about what the right behaviour should be. Usually in these situations the citizens are inattentive, or do not consider the behaviour to be very important. Such policies are per definition externally-imposed. Mindful nudges help the decision maker make deliberate and conscious decisions. Ly et al. (2013) provide “simplifying tax rules to make tax filing easier” as an example of this type of nudge policy. Reducing the degree of complexity allows people to make better informed decisions. And since people do not usually go around questioning themselves whether or not they will be filing their taxes this year this policy counts as “activating desired behaviour”. This type of policy will only moderately decrease the degree of negative freedom. The policies which activate a desired behaviour do interfere in the choice process by altering the choice architecture, and thus the criticism expressed by Grüne-Yanoff (2012) has some merit. Yet, the mindful aspect of this policy promotes negative freedom and therefore counters some of the reduction imposed by the policy activating a desired behaviour.

4.2 Type 2: Activating a desired behaviour – Externally-imposed – Mindful – Discourage

This type of nudge policy is very similar to the previous one, with the only difference being that this type is about discouraging certain behaviours, rather than encouraging them. Ly et al. (2013) classify placing signs to remind people not to litter under this category. The placement of a sign “please do not litter” does not constrain the choice of behaviour in any way. People are completely free to ignore the sign and litter, though they are requested not to. A similar situation would arise if another person would walk up to me and ask me not to litter. I believe that I would be overreacting if I were to respond to every person who makes a request of me that they are decreasing my negative liberty by interfering in my choice process. Yet it is clear that such a sign or a request of another citizen requires me to behave in a certain way for which I have not expressed a previous desire for. It does therefore have a negative impact on the negative liberty, but this effect is nearly non-existent. Even if it was my life-goal to litter all the time, I could not possibly claim that a mere sign is an obstacle which can prevent me from achieving that goal. This example highlights one crucial point already made by Thaler and Sunstein (2009) with regards to policy design: the exit-option. In the example given here the exit-option is present because you can simply ignore the sign. Since doing so is very easy, the exit-value is very high. With regards to simplifying regulations, no exit-option is given since you cannot request that the simplifications would not apply to you. Therefore the impact on negative liberty there is

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greater. Thus the impact of a policy on negative liberty also depends on the design on a particular nudge. In general though, we can say that nudge policies which activate a desired behaviour have a negative impact on negative liberty, the degree of which depends on the individual policy design. However, the mindful type of measures mitigates that impact by providing the citizens with an enhanced choice and by making such choices more deliberate. Therefore the nudge policies which combine “activating a desired behaviour” with “mindful” aspect have a moderate to small impact on the negative liberty. They do interfere in the choice process, but they do not constrain the choice made. And even this interference is designed to promote rather than diminish negative liberty. Mindful policies do not provide an obstacle for a person to meet his goals. Thus these two types of nudge policies can be used by liberal governments if close attention is paid to the design of individual policies. It is very important to consider exit-option in the design of a nudge policy.

4.3 Type 3 and 4: Activating a desired behaviour – Externally-imposed – Mindless –

Encourage and Discourage

These types of nudge policies differ from the two previously discussed ones in that they are designed to be mindless rather than mindful. Mindless nudges attempt to modify the decisions made by using emotions and biases that humans are prone to. The “activating desired behaviour – Mindless” types are the ones that the critics are most concerned with, because these policies can be considered as manipulative by exploiting the citizens’ ignorance or irrationality. These policies seek to elicit certain responses by bypassing deliberate considerations. Yet caution must be exercised when claiming that such policies are exploitative, for there are multiple theories about what constitutes exploitation9. What most of these theories agree on is that for an action to be exploitative, the exploiter must benefit from exploiting the victim. It is not clear that a democratic government would benefit from nudging its citizens, since the nudges are designed to be in the best interest of the citizens. Even if one could argue that some policies may not be in the best interest of a certain individual, this individual could benefit from the possible decrease in taxation as a result of implementation of the cheap nudge policies. In any case, the policies used as an example of these two types may be considered to be fairly harmless. Policies such as signs which invoke social pressure, and fake speed bumps have a potential for providing great social and economic benefits at the low cost. Thaler and Sunstein

9 Wertheimer A., Zwolinski M., [2001, 2012], “Exploitation”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/ (checked 1 August 2013)

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(2009)10 have also addressed the concerns that critics may have about the slippery slope, and the possibility that the nudges may be used for bad purposes. Yet this does not change the fact that the both crucial components of such policies, “activating a desired behaviour” and “mindless”, have a negative impact on negative liberty. I have previously already discussed the impact of “activating desired behaviour” on negative liberty. “Mindless” types also negatively impact the negative liberty and the freedom of choice because they provide an obstacle, such as an emotional response, to deliberate and cognitive decision making. The combined effect of “activating a desired behaviour” and “mindless” can be substantial. It is therefore advised for the liberal governments to not to deploy such policies. If negative liberty is a crucial concern, then even the potential of such policies to provide large benefits should not override the preference for negative liberty.

4.4 Types 5 and 6: Boosting self-control – Externally-imposed – Mindful – Encourage &

Discourage

These two general types of nudge policies include policies which help citizens meet their self-set goals without creating any obligations. The externally-imposed policies can suggest possible goals by providing gentle nudges towards (socially) beneficial behaviour. The nudges are mindful and designed to make the decision making process easier and more pleasant. The two examples provided by Ly et al. (2013) help the citizens to meet self-set goals by either eliminating obstacles (simplifying application process for college grants to encourage higher-level education), or by providing clear information (installing car dashboards that track mileage to reduce gas usage). They only offer support to meet self-set goals (the “boosting self-control” factor) while being perfectly ignorable by those who do not have such goals. If I have no intention to attend a university, nor do I wish to reduce my gas usage (perhaps because I do not own a car) then these policies have no impact on me. Policies which include “boosting self-control” and “mindful” aspects in fact simply provide the tools needed for better decision making. It is up to the user whether or not to make use of such tools. These policies do not interfere in the choice process, unless one sees the provision of information or suitable tools as interference. Therefore they do not decrease the degree of negative liberty, and perhaps even promote the negative liberty by removing the obstacles to decision making. The fact that they are externally-imposed does have a negative effect on the negative freedom, but I believe that the positive effect from the other two components (“mindful” and “boosting self-control”) mitigate the small negative impact. Therefore such policies should be considered to be implemented by the government. 10

Thaler S. R., Sunstein C. R., [2009], “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness”, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, p 236 - 241

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4.5 Types 7 and 8: Boosting self-control – Externally-imposed – Mindless – Encourage &

Discourage

The two examples of these types of policies provided by Ly et al. (2013) are automatically enrolling for prescription refills to encourage taking medication, and placing unhealthy foods in harder to reach places. The liberals have trouble with such policies because they are “mindless” and therefore try to bypass the deliberate decision making. The impact of these two types of policies on negative liberty is perhaps the hardest to judge, for such policies offer plenty of space for abuse. It can be questioned whether there is a significant difference between automatic medication prescription and automatic renewal of journal subscriptions after the subscription has stopped being free. The key issue here is that while these policies are designed to boost self-control, because they are mindless they do not ask of the user whether the user wanted to have that self-control boosted. So there is an issue here regarding to the agent’s “real interests”, and there is no clear consensus as to what these interests should entail. For paternalists it is in the agent’s real interest to live a long, healthy and happy life. For liberals, such as for example John Stuart Mill, it is in the agent’s “real interest” to life a self-determined life, to discover own limits and own way of life. For them, paternalism offers an obstacle in this self-realization, for what can be seen as “good” for the majority is not necessary beneficial for the individual. It is out of the scope of this paper to discuss this issue in much detail, but with regards to these two general types of nudge policies it can be questioned to what degree they are self-control boosting. Unfortunately it is out of the scope of this paper to study these two particular types of policies in great detail. In general, I would advise the governments not to implement such policies before they have been extensively studied in controlled settings.

4.6 The four Self-Imposed types of nudge policies

The crucial aspect of self-imposed nudge policies is that they are imposed by a citizen himself upon himself. These policies are therefore per definition part of a citizen’s private life and outside of the work scope of the government. Self-imposed nudges do not violate the subject’s autonomy or restrict the citizen’s negative liberty in any way, because they are not imposed up on the citizen by someone else. Whether the policy is “mindful” or “mindless” also has no impact on the negative liberty, for it is the private choice of the individual on how to nudge himself. These policies cannot be enacted without the citizen’s active and deliberate consent regardless of them being “mindful” or “mindless”.

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5. Conclusion.

In this paper I have considered the claim that the nudge policies reduce the degree of negative freedom (Grüne-Yanoff, 2012). Nudge policies are a part of the libertarian paternalism movement which is increasingly becoming the topic of discussion after Thaler and Sunstein have published their book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness on this topic in 2009. Nudge policies provide a cheap method of government interference focused on gently nudging citizens towards behaviour which will benefit the citizens and the society they live in, without reducing the freedom of choice. Such policies are designed in a way that makes them cheap to be ignored. Nudge policies assume that most people are fallible, have limited mental energy and time, and sometimes prefer to be doing other things than making complicated decisions. These people can therefore benefit from being nudged into the right direction. According to the authors, libertarian paternalism applied by the state can lead to a better and smaller state. This could in the future also lead to the reduction of taxes, as the state overhead costs will be lower due to the implementation of nudge policies. The liberal camp has expressed some concerns with this theory, most notably that the policies reduce liberty. A good example of such concerns is a paper by Grüne-Yanoff (2012), where the author points out that by interfering with the choice process nudge policies decrease the degree of negative liberty. In this paper I have examined the impact of the different types of nudge policies on the negative liberty. Lt et al., (2013) have identified twelve general types of nudge policies. A brief analysis has shown that the impact of a nudge policy on the negative liberty does not only depend on the type of nudge policy, but also on the design of that particular policy. The policies which are very easy and cheap to be ignored decrease the negative freedom to a lesser degree than the policies which are harder to ignore. Keeping this in mind it can generally be concluded that some types of policies have a larger impact than the others. The criticism expressed by Grüne-Yanoff (2012) mostly applies to the “Activating a desired behaviour – Mindless” types of nudge policies. Most policies of these types appear to be harmless, but they have a large negative impact on negative liberty. These policies are non-transparent and greatly interfere in the choice process. If negative liberty is a concern, then the government should not deploy the policies of this type. The “Activating a desired behaviour – Mindful” types of policies have a small to moderate effect on the negative liberty. These policies can be considered to be paternalistic. If a close attention is paid to the design of individual policies of these types, then they can be used by liberal governments if the benefits of such policies exceed their costs (including the cost of the reduced liberty).

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The “Boosting self-control – Mindful” types can actually increase the degree of negative liberty by providing better tools for decision making and functioning as an alternative to the traditional governmental tools, such as taxation. These policies are designed to help the user make more deliberate, better informed and well considered decisions. These types of nudge policies should be the first to be considered for implementation by a liberal government. “Boosting self-control – Mindless” types heavily depend on the theory of what constitutes the agent’s “real interests”. Their impact on negative liberty is therefore unclear and should be studied in more detail. Finally, the four “Self-Imposed” types of nudge policies are outside of the government’s concern, since they per definition cannot be imposed on a person by someone else. Different types of nudge policies have different impacts on negative liberty, and the permissibility of their implementation varies as well. Instead of the two camps arguing between themselves as to whether the government should be using the nudge policies or not, perhaps the discussion should be about which general types of nudge policies can be used and how they should be designed as to preserve negative liberty while offering substantial benefits to the citizens and the state. Such a discussion will be more constructive and practical. Regardless of our political background we all have one thing in common: we all wish to live a happy life in a good society. So perhaps we should focus on how to achieve that, rather than argue what a happy life is and how a society should be in order for me to consider it to be good. NOTE to fellow Academia.edu members: if you have comments and / or suggestions about my work, and being a philosopher in general, please feel free to contact me at olia.fjodorowa@gmail.com Thank you!

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6. Literature List.

- Berlin I., [1958,1969], “Two concepts of Liberty”, Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, http://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/wiso_vwl/johannes/Ankuendigungen/Berlin_twoconceptsofliberty.pdf (checked 27 July 27, 2013)

- Carter I., [2003, 2012], “Positive and Negative Liberty”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/ (checked 23 July 2013)

- Farrell H., Shalizi C., [2011], “'Nudge' policies are another name for coercion”, New Scientist 2837, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228376.500-nudge-policies-are-another-name-for-coercion.html#.UeaYO9Iy3Ex (checked 17 July 2013)

- Grüne-Yanoff T., [2012], “Old wine in new casks: libertarian paternalism still violates liberal principles”, Social Choice & Welfare, Volume 38, Issue 4 , p 635-645, http://home.abe.kth.se/~gryne/papers/LiberalWelfare101111.pdf (checked 25 July 2013)

- Hansen P. G., [2013], “Nudge – Nudge for Good”, Policy Options, http://www.irpp.org/en/po/nudge-experiments-in-human-nature/nudge-nudge-for-good/ (checked 17 July 2013)

- John P., Cotterill S., Richardson L., Moseley A., Smith G., Stoker G., Wales C., [2011], “Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think: Experimenting with Ways to Change Civic Behaviour”, Bloomsbury Academic, http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/NudgeNudgeThinkThink_9781849662284/chapter-ba-9781849662284-chapter-002.xml (checked 19 July 2013)

- Ly K., Mažar N., Zhao M., Soman D., [2013], “A Practitioner’s Guide to Nudging”, Research Report Series: Behavioural Economics in Action, Rotman School of Management , University of Toronto

- Soman D., [2013], “Nudge – Making policy through a behavioural lens”, Policy Options, http://www.irpp.org/en/po/nudge-experiments-in-human-nature/nudge-making-policy-through-a-behavioural-lens/ (checked 17 July 2013)

- Spiegelhalter K., [2012], “‘Nudge’; the current popularity of the agenda, it’s evidence base and the potential for it’s application to Mental Health and Well-being”, LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, http://www.academia.edu/928782/Nudge_the_current_popularity_of_the_agenda_its_evidence_base_and_the_potential_for_its_application_to_Mental_Health_and_Well-being, (checked 19 July 2013)

- Thaler S. R., Sunstein C. R., [2009], “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness”, Yale University Press, New Haven & London

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- Wertheimer A., Zwolinski M., [2001, 2012], “Exploitation”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/ (checked 1 August 2013)