fatvegan

Some study I read a few months ago found that employees were far more likely to use a voluntary superannuation scheme if they were enrolled by default, rather than being required to enroll. The schemes had significant benefits, so it wasn't because they were just apathetic about something of no importance. It would have a large impact on their retirement income. I suspect you could find thousands of examples of similar things. We economist sorts will say that people should make their own choices because only they know what is best. People have learnt, through evolution and experience, to find the optimal outcome given their circumstances. I think that's bollocks. People should make their own choices because the only alternative is abhorrent, not because it achieves more efficient outcomes.

Someone will rock up and try to model "the desire for rationality" and say that irrational decisions actually are rational, because becoming perfectly rational would require spending too much time at university. For example, someone earning $20,000 a year won't go and learn about the best superannuation plan because they'd have to spend more time learning than they'd gain from finding a better super plan. That's just dumb, because it's impossible to disprove. If you deconstruct it enough, you realise that you're no longer saying anything at all. And the only proof you need that humans are rational is that we beat the dinosaurs, tigers and bears and are still here. But we don't have to be perfectly rational to beat a bear. Just marginally more rational. And fortunately, that isn't very hard.

Update: I've just read that a big problem with Medicaid in the US is that parents don't actually realise they are eligible for health care. They expanded it because they realised that child mortality was significantly higher than in other developed countries, but it didn't work as well as they'd hoped because lot's of parents still never took their kids to the doctor. A US child on Medicaid is twice as likely to have been to the doctor in the last year, as a child with no health insurance. I love France.