In other words, improve the plans' choice architecture.
That platitudes about personal responsibility and choice architecture cannot be substituted for real structural change.
"There must be ways to improve the choice architecture," Mr. Brooks says.
"There is no question that certain nudges, and certain kinds of choice architecture, can raise serious ethical problems," he writes.
Some of Thaler and Sunstein's examples of choice architecture are trivial and can be used to trivialise their argument.
Another solution is to tinker with "choice architecture" — doing things like enrolling people in 401 k)s automatically — in order to "nudge" them toward better decisions.
There must be ways to improve the choice architecture — to help people guard against risk creep, false security, groupthink, the good-news bias and all the rest.
Whether it's 401 k)'s or food, the way choices are presented to people — what the economist Richard Thaler calls "choice architecture" — has a huge effect on the decisions they make.
They stressed the role of "choice architecture": the countless factors that coalesce around a given decision, often shaping outcomes in crucial, if barely visible, ways that could be rearranged.
In August, Cass Sunstein published a book, "The Ethics of Influence: Government in the Age of Behavioral Science," in which he reminded readers that choice architecture is value-neutral, ripe for democrats and demagogues.
For example, in the "Nudge" scheme, signs on men's and women's restrooms would count as paternalistic "choice architecture" simply because they structure choices in a way that helps us do what's best by our own lights—in this case, not mortifying ourselves barging into the wrong restroom.
