White Washing Behavioral Economics (Patreon)

By Sam (@LiberationistMA)

Behavioral economics has redefined our economic understanding. It is all the rage in pop-science books, TED talks, podcasts, and Nobel Prizes. It explains bad behaviors as being economically determined. There is less free will than people think. What we think is free choice is mostly constraints and incentives.

Nevertheless, notice how behavioral economics is used to defend companies and rich elites but never foreign countries? For countries the US sanctions, threatens, blocks, and oppresses, behavioral economics is all of a sudden missing from the conversation. It is assumed they have free will without constraints.

It is no accident that conversations about the Global South mirror conversations about the racialized poor. Likewise, US domestic tactics mirror foreign policy. For the globally poor, it is not about conditions and circumstances but moral failings, poor choices, and innate cruelty.

US propaganda is about omission and victim-blaming while using mental gymnastics to defend itself and its elites. US capitalism and foreign policy are not about freedom and democracy but serving US ethnonationalism.