Deconstructing Sunstein: American Security - A Moral Menace And Mess

8 March 2010

By Keith Johnson

“Some of the nation's most important policies are implemented through regulation.  In domains as diverse as energy efficiency, environmental protection, health care, occupational safety, civil rights, communications, homeland security, and many more, the government attempts to protect its citizens through regulations.” 
                                                                                     Cass Sunstein

On  February 16, 2010,  Cass Sunstein made his first public speech as Obama’s regulation and information “Czar” during a keynote address at the American University's Washington College of Law.  From it, we learn firsthand how a scientific dictatorship is being structured.  Sunstein discusses techniques to manipulate human behavior in order to facilitate, or in his own words, “nudge” people into compliance with government policy.  What’s frightening about his plan is that it parallels the social engineering outlined in Lord Bertrand Russell’s “The Impact of Science on Society”. 

I. "It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries.”-- Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Sunstein begins his lecture with a quote from a fellow Chicago Lawyer, Karl Llewellyn:

 “Technique without morals is a menace.  But morals without technique is a mess”

It seems a little less than ironic that Sunstein would pick a quote from Llewellyn, who was the principal drafter of the Uniform Commercial Code.  The UCC essentially replaced our Constitutional courts and has been the basis of every code, law and statute since it was enacted in the early 1950’s.  Jordan Maxwell goes into a little more depth on the subject in a short 6 minute clip entitled “UCC=Slavery, which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oux3wMLdP2U

II.  “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”—Bertrand Russell

Sunstein attempts to make the case that human beings really don’t know what’s best for them.  He states that decades of scientific research have found that humans are “unrealistically optimistic” and that the resistance to “change” (inertia) dominates their behavior even if the change is in their own best interests.  He claims that evidence of this can be found in the average American’s voluntary participation in a 401K program.  Sunstein states “…people aren’t saving for retirement at the level one might expect, because to get into a 401K program they have to opt in.  And even though it is easy to opt in, the enrollment rate for opting in is surprisingly low.  If people are automatically enrolled, the rate shoots up even if they can opt out by checking a box.”   This was an obvious plug for the administration’s “Automatic Enrollment Program”.  Obama referred to this in September, 2009 when he said "We know that automatic enrollment has made a big difference in participation rates by making it simpler for workers to save - and that's why we're going to expand it to more people.”  Automatic enrollment is nothing new.  Everything we see on the stub of our paychecks came as a result of automatic enrollment.  Silence is compliance. And in time this so-called “voluntary” deduction will become mandatory, and opting out will be all but impossible.  The 401K program is a trap and ripe for looting, not only by the banks, but the government as well.

Another program Sunstein wants to implement is the “Direct Express Program” for Social Security recipients.  Instead on receiving a check, a plastic debit card will be issued.  He claims this will be more convenient and cost effective for both the government and the citizen.  But in reality, we all know that this is just another way to trace purchases and track individuals.

II.  “Under the influence of great fear, almost everybody becomes superstitious”-- Bertrand Russell,  An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1943)

Sunstein next describes how crisis can be used to drive human behavior.   He states “people are greatly influenced by whether an incident of badness or goodness is cognitively available in the sense that it readily comes to mind….  We know that people believe that more people will die from homicides than suicides, though the opposite is true.  And the reason is that homicides are cognitively available in a way that suicides are not…  I bet each of us can think of our own lives of cases in which the recent occurrences of events for us personally, or for our government, has driven our behavior, or our fear or our complacency in a particular direction.”   Yeah, I can think of a few:  9-11, the Oklahoma City bombing, swine flu.  Here Sunstein is actually admitting how effective tragedy can be used to the government’s advantage to get people to recognize risk and coalesce with their solutions to the problem, which of course they created in the first place.

 III. “Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so." --Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Next, Sunstein speaks to the significance social networks play on human behavior.  He states “people are very much affected by the influence of others in the sense that the social network in which one finds oneself often dominates behavior.  Obesity is contagious.  If people find themselves in groups of people who are overweight, the likelihood that they themselves will be overweight jumps.  Flu shoots, it turns out, are contagious.  The likelyhood that people will get flu shots depends very much if people in their community have gotten flu shots. 

Sunstein goes on to address Michelle Obama’s recent announcement to take up the cause of childhood obesity.  He says “if you look at the proposals she has in mind, every single one of them has to do with social norms and trying to alter social norms which are damaging to health and encourage social norms which are desireable for health.”. 

IV. “When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.''-- Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Sunstein goes on to outline ways that social stigmas, public disclosures of private information and “salience” can be used to drive human behavior.  It’s called “self-regulation”.

Jodi Short of the Georgetown University Law Center describes this emerging strategy in her February, 2009 paper entitled “Coercive State Discourse and the Rise of Self-Regulation” In it she writes…

“There is a widespread “coercion-aversion” among contemporary scholars and practitioners of regulation. Hierarchy and control are out, participation and collaboration are in. Conflict is out, cooperation is in. Punishment and deterrence are out, intrinsic motivations and“nudges” are in. This focus on regulatory partnership and cooperation has been one of the most significant trends in regulatory scholarship and design in the last two decades, and it has yielded a wide variety of “voluntary” or “self-regulation” programs and techniques that redistribute responsibility for core governmental functions like standard-setting, monitoring and enforcement from administrative agencies to regulated entities and citizens.”

To demonstrate the effectiveness of self-regulation, Sunstein asks “When is it you get compliance without enforcement?  With smoking, the apparent reason for widespread kind of miraculous compliance without enforcement is there are social norms.  So that if people in most relevant places lit up a cigarette in violation of law, there would be private enforcement or ostracism or at least complaints.”

Through public disclosure, Sunstein intends to use the fear of stigmatization as a way to hold private organizations accountable for what they deem to be hazardous.  One of these actions is in the area of greenhouse gas regulation.  Through the EPA, companies are now required to report their emissions.  Sunstein boasts of the success of the reporting requirement by claiming, “No one anticipated it but the toxic release inventory drove down toxic emissions because no one wanted to be one of the highest polluters.”

Yet another recent disclosure requirement concerns industrial fatalities being reported on the OSHA website.   According to Sunstein “If you go to OSHA.gov you will see for the first time fatality information.  If any American dies in the workplace where OSHA has access to the information (and OSHA has a lot of access that’s going to be up there in a matter of weeks) the company is identified.  It’s not a regulatory requirement, it’s a disinfectant.  The early anecdotes are that no company wants to be on OSHA.gov at the place where a worker died last week and as a result, that disclosure requirement has a significant effect on workplace safety.” 

V.  "Physiology and psychology afford fields for scientific technique which still await development. Two great men, Pavlov and Freud, have laid the foundation.”—Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Sunstein also addresses the importance of “salience” in eliciting favorable compliance from individuals and private organizations.  Salience is defined as “a striking point or feature”.  In the context of energy efficiency, Sunstein states “We in the administration are greatly concerned about the environment, economy and national security problems created by excessive use of high polluting energy and we want to find out what to do about that.  A company in Southern California a number of years ago was also concerned about the same series of problems and attempted a range of interventions to try to get people to not use so much energy.  They used education; they used moral suasion…nothing worked.  Finally they gave people a little globe. An ambient orb, its called.  And the ambient orb would go green when energy use was low and it would glow red in their kitchen when their energy use was high.  That intervention reduced energy use by 40%.”

Sunstein also proposes stricter and more salient regulation with regards to labeling of tobacco products.  He wants them to be “more graphic, more novel, more attention grabbing than anything we’ve seen before.”  With regards to food, Sunstein states “There is proposed rule to label the nutritional content of beef and meat and for the first time ever, the FDA, the first lady announced this, is thinking about front of the package labeling which will give people clear and concise and salient information.”

VI. “I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology” –Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Everything discussed by Sunstein fits appropriately under this heading.  In his society, social norms need to be standardized in order for people to be controlled more efficiently.  Sunstein’s approach is the soft and gentle road to slavery.  It is the very essence of a scientific dictatorship.  It requires your acquiescence and participation.  They need you to help them create consecutive generations of self-policing, obedient, mind-controlled slaves.  And this is very likely where mankind is headed if we allow this kind of indoctrination and government intrusion to continue.  If we stand idly by and let them proceed, it will be left to our children to fend for themselves.  But by then it may be too late.  By then they may have no fight left in them.  And then you will know that Bertrand Russell’s most dire prediction has come true and that “a revolt of the plebs will become as unthinkable as an organised insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.”

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