Nudgital: Critique of Behavioral Political Economy

Julia Puaschunder ()

No 6, Proceedings of the 9th International RAIS Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities, April 4-5, 2018 from Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies

Abstract: Behavioral Economics revolutionized mainstream neo-classical economics. A wide range of psychological, economic and sociological laboratory and field experiments proved human beings deviating from rational choices as standard neo-classical profit maximization axioms failed to explain how human actually behave. Human beings rather use heuristics in their day-to-day decision making. These mental short cuts enable to cope with a complex world yet also often leave individuals biased and falling astray to decision making failures. What followed was the powerful extension of these behavioral insights for public administration and public policy making. Behavioral economists proposed to nudge and wink citizens to make better choices for them and the community. Many different applications of rational coordination followed ranging from improved organ donations, health, wealth and time management, to name a few. Yet completely undescribed remains that the implicit hidden persuasion opens a gate to deception and is an unprecedented social class division means. Social media forces are captures as unfolding a class dividing nudgital society, in which the provider of social communication tools can reap surplus value from the information shared of social media users. The social media provider is outlined as capitalist-industrialist, who benefits from the information shared by social media users, or so-called consumer-workers, who share private information in their wish to interact with friends and communicate to public.

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Behavioral Political Economy; Democratisation of information; Education; Exchange value; Governance; Libertarian Paternalism; Nudging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2018-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hea, nep-hme and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published in Proceedings of the 9th International RAIS Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities, April 4-5, 2018, pages 87-117

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