Nudging us towards Happiness the Tory Way

Last night David Cameron spoke at the TED event, in London. It was in the stream dealing with Behavioural Psychology and Economics (I covered it here) and his talk was essentially a thesis in how this may be used by a future administration. My notes during the talk:

He started off very well - "politics is showbiz for ugly people"

Then moved to the first point - the central debate of the 21st century is..... global public debt - $32 trillion and counting. So how do we make things better without money?

- Give power to the people
- Go with the grain of human nature
- Use digital technology

There was then the regulatory discussion about the view that people get happier until income hits $60,000 (there must be a UK equivalent, quoth he) and then increased happiness tails off. He actually said that the differences between the middle class and the very rich therefore didn't matter, and took the view that the critical thing was to help poorer people who earn less than this to earn more. He didn't seem to get that if he did that, all that happens is that the "$60,000" number will go up, because its a relative difference.

I also think he's wrong re rich not causing envy among the middle class, but there are clearly Tories who want to believe this one.

There were quite a few other references to Happiness Theory, Behavioural Economics, especially Nudge etc

He also reckoned we have gone from pre-bureaucratic ages local power to industrial age, central power (bureaucratic stage) and we are now moving to ..... People Power.

As part of this, we were going to get Transparency, Accountability and Choice

Also, all government contracts above £20k were to be published online. I delight to see what will happen when We The People see how much they are spending on consultants

He then showed examples of potential mashups of government data, with true Government 2.0 fervour ...which prompted the first concerned Twts:

[Cameron] reveals he plans to publish live crime maps. Won't this lead to vigilantism, panic,fear?

Kevin Anderson has live blogged the whole thing over here.

So, All Good Stuff - Happiness, Nudge, Equality, Government 2.0 - what's not to like?

Here's what:

Firstly. he is picking and choosing his Behavioural Economics - one person picked him up on too much focus on Choice, pointing out that BE also shows too much choice is bad.

Secondly, he seemed to believe that moderation will be done by We The People being vigilant - as questioners pointed out, thats not the way it works now so why would it work online - "the only people who have the time to do this are the media, so we will have rule by media mob" as one questioner put it. (This by the way had many social mediarati grumpy when I twittered it, but I think the worriers may have a point, watching the way Social Media Mob Rule works)

Thirdly, he was dreadfully optimistic (naive?) about the sorts of things people will get up to with all the public's data out there - his approach to all the questions about how to control cheating behaviour, miscreants etc was to believe all people were Good Citizens at heart and to play the "shame on you for believing people are bad" card.

Fourthly, and most worryingly, overall I got the very strong impression that they (the Tories) do not have the inclination to take on the financial sector to get any of the $32 Trillion back. He made no reference to the Robin Hood Tax video that had just been shown before (see above YouTube video), suggesting that 0.05% tax on bank transactions could pay back a lot of what we had given them and solve global warming and poverty to boot. His thesis seemed to boil down to the approach that we should do all this low cost Government 2.0 / BE stuff to keep us happy in our new-found poverty while we rendered the loot unto the Bankers.

In fact, Government 2.0 looked like it was just a way of introducing Feudal 2.0 and BE will Nudge us towards Happiness, which will be the new opiate of the masses. Get ready to tug your virtual forelock to the New Barons Rothschild

(By the way, I am fairly apolitical - "don't vote, it only encourages them" seems as good a motto as any these days, anarchism without bombs works for me - but I got a very strong Brave New World feeling last night, and it would worry me, except of course I believe in the Wisdom of the People to resist it......ummmm )

Speaking of voting, by the way - it looks like Goldman Sachs rigged up a huge campaign to vote against the Robin Hood Tax proposal.