Housing Doom

… But finally, Mr. Wu said, you get so far from the core of the business that you’re simply "off the target" altogether, with "products that do not build the value or equity of the brand." So destructive of the brand were these products that they would only be explored if the revenues from them were "necessary for the survival of the company." What product did he point to as the canary in the coffee mine? Instant coffee. Mr. Wu called it "a product of last resort." - WSJ¹

Yes I know discrimination is frowned on in American, but this² is right out of Kornbluth.

Fans of CBC’s excellent The Age of Persuasion will immediately see both what Starbucks was trying to do here, and where they went terribly wrong.  Edgy humor is an excellent choice to promote brand recognition in the early stages of a severe economic downturn, but it is fatal to insult the intelligence of your existing customers, no matter how stupid you think they are.

And so it is with Cass Sunstein’s Nudge.  If Americans can’t taste the difference between fresh and reconstituted joe (if Canadians can’t tell the difference between a high-end coffee shop and a passenger train) then they won’t be able to taste the difference between a driver’s license and an organ donation consent instrument,³ between routine routine HR paperwork and permission for their employer to skim 15 percent of their gross pay into the company’s stock purchase plan.

Which is to say that the 3rd generation of Leo Strauss disciples out of Illinois has come up with a brilliant new policy tool — the Trojan Horse.⁴

UPDATE: A favorable but curiously sketchy review⁵ of Sunstein’s most recent book has just popped up.

Oh well, at least as all the forms citizens have to fill out go digital, Symantec could boot up a new and potentially very profitable protection racket scanning them for viruses, rootkits and other obnoxious payloads

Read the rest of this entry »

… In some circumstances, a “chilling effect” on false rumors can be desirable; the goal should be to produce optimal chill, rather than no chill at all. - Cass R. Sunstein, January, 2009¹

Dr Sunstein first achieved fame around the blogosphere thanks to panicky reports following on his appointment to Obama’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which in part "develops and oversees the implementation of government-wide policies in the areas of information technology, information policy, privacy, and statistical policy."

I am happy to report that, having just finished reading Infotopia, I am merely approaching panic.  The fatal flaw in the author’s argument is a failure to appreciate that rumors often bear inconvenient truths, and that therefore his little Orwellian corner of the OMB is likely to be very busy from time to time undermining Americans’ free speech rights (not to mention the privileges of various busybodies who aren’t even US persons ) for reasons of State.  Even in this relatively early work, what he’s saying about blogs is a bit worrying.

The simplified version of the Sunstein project for total opinion dominance comprises the trilogy Infotopia, Nudge and On Rumor.  The long version appears to be widely disseminated over academic journals and easily accessible venues like the University of Chicago and the American Enterprise Institute, including a UC lecture rather ominously titled "Nudge: The Gentle Power of Libertarian Paternalism" and a video of this highly illuminating AEI book-launch event for the same title.  It’s not like we haven’t been warned.

If nothing else, these ideas bear close study, because there is now a slight but non-zero risk they will actually be implemented.

Read the rest of this entry »