628. Sludge, Part 2: Is Government the Problem, or the Solution?
2025/4/4
Freakonomics Radio
Neale Mahoney: 我专注于消费者金融领域，致力于保护消费者免受金融剥削。我的研究表明，许多公司故意设置障碍来增加取消订阅的难度，这是一种'淤泥'现象。我们研究了美国50家发行量最大的报纸的订阅取消流程，发现即使在加州这样的消费者友好型州，许多报纸也故意使取消订阅流程变得复杂，以阻止用户取消。这促使我们推动了FTC的'一键取消'规则的制定，这将有助于减少订阅服务取消过程中的'淤泥'。
Ben Handel: 我是医疗保健经济学家，我的研究表明，医疗保险公司故意制造'淤泥'来限制医疗服务，以最大化利润。要解决这个问题，我们可以利用人工智能技术来帮助消费者理解医疗保险合同并找到可预约的医疗服务提供者。然而，整合消费者医疗数据以改善医疗服务选择面临着隐私方面的挑战，需要更巧妙的政策来解决。医疗保险公司的盈利模式也导致他们故意制造障碍，以减少消费者使用医疗服务。
Jennifer Pahlka: 我致力于帮助政府机构进行数字化转型，以提高效率并减少'淤泥'。政府机构的'淤泥'问题比其他机构更严重，因为它往往是垄断性的，一旦失败，后果更加严重。Healthcare.gov网站的失败案例表明，政府缺乏产品经理的角色，导致项目范围过大，最终导致系统崩溃。加州失业救济网站在疫情期间不堪重负，这凸显了政府法规累积过多，导致系统僵化的问题。解决政府'淤泥'问题需要关注'如何'而非'什么'，即关注政策执行过程的改进，建立反馈回路，不断调整政策执行过程，以确保其有效性。政府需要更多关注'执行'而非'阻碍'，即需要更多人专注于完成任务，而不是仅仅关注规章制度。如果马斯克的Doge项目能够推动政府数字化转型并提高服务效率，我将支持它。政府裁员应该谨慎进行，要避免随意裁减，并保留必要的内部能力。
Richard Thaler: 我认为，精简政府部门的支付系统，理论上来说是一种减少'淤泥'的方式。许多政府部门可以进行精简，以提高效率。应对日常生活中的'淤泥'问题，需要采取多种方法，包括简化流程、寻求专业帮助等。所有政府雇员都应该接受关于'淤泥'问题的培训，并承诺在离职时留下比他们上任时更少的'淤泥'。即使是诺贝尔经济学奖获得者，在选择医疗保险计划时也面临着巨大的困难，这说明现有的医疗体系过于复杂。人类历史上已经成功地解决了'淤泥'问题，例如货币和时间的标准化，我们也可以再次做到。
supporting_evidences
Neale Mahoney: 'So me and my team, we took a list of the 50 highest circulation newspapers in the U.S.,'
Neale Mahoney: 'But soon, this should be a thing of the past.'
Ben Handel: 'He told us that a lot of health care sludge is intentional, a way for insurance companies to ration care in order to profit maximize.'
Ben Handel: 'You could try to allow private firms to develop AI tools to help basically mine the insurance contract.'
Ben Handel: 'With most products, the more you sell, the more money you make.'
Jennifer Pahlka: 'I wrote a book called Recoding America, Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.'
Jennifer Pahlka: 'So I was there trying to stand up the USDS when healthcare.gov had its failures'
Jennifer Pahlka: 'In 2020, early in the COVID pandemic, Jennifer Palka was brought in by the state of California to help with a similar problem'
Jennifer Pahlka: 'If they come in and put a whole bunch more muscle behind the kind of digital transformation that USDSers have been doing'
Richard Thaler: 'I haven't seen anything that would fall into the category of sludge reduction.'
Richard Thaler: 'Although when he sent some people into treasury to theoretically streamline the payments system'
Richard Thaler: 'If I could wave my magic wand, I would say every government employee, including legislators and executives, should take a one-day course on sludge.'
Richard Thaler: 'It tells us that the system is way too complicated.'
Richard Thaler: 'We, meaning humankind, we have been fighting and winning sludge battles for a long time in domains as foundational as money and time.'
Deep Dive
This chapter explores the nature of "sludge" in government and private sectors, comparing their differences and similarities. It examines whether government's monopoly status makes its sludge problems more impactful.
- Government sludge is often compared to "red tape", a historical term dating back to 16th-century Spain.
- Economist Neale Mahoney's research on subscription cancellations highlights the sludge in consumer finance.
- California's consumer protection laws, while progressive, still struggle to eliminate sludge in online cancellations.
- The FTC's "click to cancel" rule aims to combat sludgy cancellation processes.
- Government is a monopoly, making its failures more impactful than those of private companies.
Shownotes Transcript