Indoctrination Nation, Sustainable Development, and Nudging

Recently, our natural gas utilities started to mail its customers a “nudging” letter, colorfully printed in green, blue, and black, under the guise of helping customers decide how much gas they consumed, compared to previous months and to homes of similar size in the area. The fact that they had access to such data and took the time to find homes of similar size in the area is bothersome enough.

Having access to such data, the gas company is letting us know whether we consumed more gas than “efficient homes” or more/less than similar homes, all described in “therms.” The therms were colored in green for efficient, blue for your home, and black for similar homes.

A quick search revealed that a “therm” is a “unit of heat equivalent to 100,000 Btu or 1.055 x 10⁸ joules.” Since physics is not my forte, it might as well be in Greek. The gas company wrote that “a therm is a standard unit of measurement used to calculate natural gas use.”

The home profiling [spying] is done by using 100 single-family homes in the area with similar heating source and square footage. Should one find the report off, as if we knew that it was off, one is encouraged to take the Home Energy Assessment to make it more accurate. Additionally, they recommend upgrading to Energy Star appliances and installing a natural gas fireplace operated by the flip of a switch and a $75 rebate.

This letter is not going to cause me to change my heating behavior or consumption of any kind unless you triple the inflationary price again and I cannot afford to pay it. Who wants to be cold in winter?

If I turn the fireplace on, my gas bill will be twice as much. As it is, our gas bill was three times the price from previous months thanks to the Biden regime’s economic policies and inflation. And no, utility company, as you suggested, I did not have guests in my home that overstayed their welcome, thus forcing us to use more hot water for laundry.

This brings me to the modification of consumer behavior through incentives or through shaming with the help of innocuous nudging.

Cass R. Sunstein, a former Obama official, published a seven-page essay in 2014 in which he described a list of ten most important “nudges.” Microsoft Word - shortguide9_22.docx (ssrn.com)

“Liberty-Preserving Approaches” is steering people in the right direction as determined by those in power because consumers may not be smart or attentive enough to make their own logical decisions and choices. The government can institute bans and mandates, but nudges seem benign and do not strip you of liberty of choices, i.e., GPS, apps, text messages, alarm clocks, appointment reminders, etc.

Sunstein claims that nudges “maintain freedom of choice,” are “transparent and effective,” but “need evidence and testing.” “Some nudges are described as soft paternalism because they steer people in a certain direction,” wrote Sunstein. In his opinion, nudges are becoming quite important. He cites U.K.’s Behavioral Insights Team (Nudge Unit) and the U.S.’s White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team.

Sunstein wrote, “In the context of retirement planning, automatic enrollment has proved exceedingly effective in promoting and increasing savings. In the context of consumer behavior, disclosure requirements and default rules have protected consumers against serious economic harm, saving many millions of dollars. Simplification of financial aid forms can have the same beneficial effect in increasing college attendance as thousands of dollars in additional aid (per student). Informing people about their electricity use, and how it compares to that of their neighbors, can produce the same increases in conservation as a significant spike in the cost of electricity.”

Sunstein’s ten important nudges are:

1.      “Default Rules (automatic enrollment in programs such as education, health, retirement, savings whether you want it or not)

2.      Simplification (rules devised by government and corporatism, public-private partnerships)

3.      Uses of social norms (“reuse towels in hotels, most people do it to save the planet” – manipulating choices by shaming if you don’t do it like your neighbor)

4.      Increases in ease and convenience (make it easy and visible to shoppers, manipulating their easy v. harder choices)

5.      Disclosure (“sunlight is the best disinfectant”) – something that seldom happens in government

6.      Warnings, graphic or otherwise (large font, bold letters to trigger people’s attention, fines)

7.      Precommitment strategies (nudging procrastinators in ways that eventually become required)

8.      Reminders (appointments, emails, text messages, overdue bills notices)

9.      Eliciting implementation intentions (consumers, do you plan to go to college, do you plan to vote, to vaccinate your child)

10.  Informing people of the nature and consequences of their own past choices (“smart disclosure,” but is it smart if you are accessing my information when I did not ask you to do it, and without my consent, in order to “help” me save money or to sell me smart appliances that spy on my household even more?)

According to United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Behavioral Science Advisor to the United Nations, Dr. Lori Foster, “In the real world, humans do not always behave in perfectly rational ways, something behaviorally informed policies and programs take into account, helping people, organizations, communities, and countries translate intention into action.” Who gets to decide what is a ‘perfectly rational way to behave’ and why should a globalist government decide?

Enter nudges to change people’s behaviors much faster in order to implement U.N. Agenda 21 now morphed into U.N. Agenda 2030. “Nudges can take many forms, but describe policy design choices or actions that apply insights from behavioral science to improve consumers’ existing choices. So how can nudges combat climate change, pollution and unsustainable use of the Earth’s resources?”

That is a very good question when Sustainable Development (SD), the lynchpin to globalist enslavement, must be attained across the globe with no exceptions. “Agenda 2030 can only be accomplished if we understand the habits and behaviors that prevent our societies from fully achieving sustainable development,” said Dr Foster. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/nudge-action-behavioural-science-sustainability#:~:text=The%202030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%2C%20which%20includes,achieving%20changes%20in%20how%20we%20consume%20and%20produce.

Once the frowned-upon behaviors are understood, the globalist organization makes the behavioral change mandatory, for all humans, for their own good, as determined by a high-minded bureaucrat who knows better because their science is in a consensus, stripping choices away from the people’s decision-making. And it all starts with the innocuous “nudge” to change your behavior they dislike.