????按照桑斯坦的說法，他的方法要溫和許多。他把它稱為“監管魔球”（"Regulatory Moneyball"）。“監管魔球”的宗旨是將規章的制定過程升華，使之經受經驗主義的嚴格考驗，而不再是機械、刻板的政策工作。桑斯坦的新書名為《更精簡：政府的未來》，這本書可以說是《助推：我們如何做出最佳選擇》（Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness）的續編。《助推》（書中助推的定義是：不用強制手段，不用硬性規定，卻能保證你同時收獲“最大利益”和“自由選擇權”。這股輕輕推動你做出最優選擇的力量，就是“助推”——譯注）是他與行為經濟學家理查德?泰勒合寫的著作，是2009年的暢銷書。桑斯坦已竭盡全力消除他的監管方法所帶有的意識形態色彩。畢竟，如果連英國保守黨首相大衛?卡梅倫這樣的人都能接受助推型的規章，甚至建立了自己的“助推小分隊”（"Nudge Unit"）來促進戒煙、能源效率和器官捐獻，那么助推型的規章又能有多大的害處呢？

????桑斯坦把奧巴馬的上任跟里根的當權聯系了起來。正是里根首開先河，把審查所有聯邦規章的使命交給了OIRA。為了減少累贅的規章命令， 里根還要求OIRA務必確保新規章的收益大于成本。桑斯坦全心全意地接受了這項命令。當然，琢磨成本和收益一直是桑斯坦全身心投入的事情，盡管其結果經常惹惱自由派。在奧巴馬的第一個任期內，當初美國政府拒絕提高環境和工作場所的某些標準時，自由派看不下去了，他們指責助推型規章為跛腳政策。

????桑斯坦令人信服地表明，將益處和壞處量化、同時明明白白地擺到臺面上，這樣既有助于改善市場，也有助于改善政府。他的功績之一就是不再把每加侖英里數作為衡量汽車燃油效率的標準——事實證明每加侖英里數并不是反映燃油效率的線性指標——取而代之的是100英里的路程消耗的加侖數，以及預計五年的燃料成本。這樣一來，橫向比較就會更有意義。

????但是，把同樣的理論運用到政策決定上或許更困難，因為他的部門必須把任何一個降低風險的規章可能拯救的人數跟這個政策的經濟影響做對比。要做到這一點，就必須用美元量化一個人生命的價值——或者更確切地說，要把消除一例死亡的統計風險所需的價值用美元量化出來。桑斯坦的團隊解決了這個難題，他們的方法是，先做調查，人們愿意花多少錢來消除10萬分之一的死亡風險，然后計算企業為消除這個風險所支付的工資溢價。根據這個算法，政府目前將一個生命的價值認定為900萬美元左右。

????政治體制變動過于頻繁的情況下，研究這樣的算法可謂一劑良藥。話雖如此，桑斯坦的書還是表明，他身為一位知識淵博的作者，身上帶著不安分的一面。他的書給人感覺有點雜亂。但是考慮到它的著眼點是精簡我們的監管制度——跟一般的暢銷書路數不太一樣，這本書著實有趣，引人入勝。為了說明我們的理性是多么脆弱，桑斯坦援引了大眾心理學的一個例子，這個例子很讓人印象深刻。那些對紐約市長邁克爾?布隆伯格禁售大份蘇打水的措施嗤之以鼻，嘲笑他是書呆子的人要是知道了下述實驗的結果，估計會大受打擊。在這項實驗中，受試者被告知可以盡情飲用金寶（Campbell）番茄湯。他們不知道的是，湯碗里其實有個機關，藏在桌子下面的裝置會將碗里的湯自動填滿。很多受試者只是一直不停地喝湯，直到實驗人員出面阻止。

????這是個典型的例子，而這本書或許是了解桑斯坦這個白宮監管一把手的最好窗口。桑斯坦和他效力的總統一樣，為了消除項目的黨派色彩而煞費苦心。他試圖運用科學的方法，為復雜的公共政策問題尋找有理有據、經得住考驗的解決之道。不過從根本上講，這個方法其實基于一個信念，那就是，由專家擔任顧問的政府理應配備各種工具，拯救我們不受自身的傷害。他或許是對的。但是有一點桑斯坦還需要注意，那就是我們美國人生性不順從。

????譯者：Nasca

????In Sunstein's telling, his method is a lot more benign. He calls it "Regulatory Moneyball," an effort to lift rulemaking out of the arena of knee-jerk politics and subject it to the rigors of empiricism. His new book is called Simpler: The Future of Government. It's a kind of follow-up to Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, the 2009 bestseller he wrote with behavioral economist Richard Thaler. Sunstein does his best to drain his approach of any ideological spirit. After all, how pernicious can nudge-based regulation be if it's been embraced by the likes of Conservative British prime minister David Cameron, who has established his own "Nudge Unit" to promote smoking cessation, energy efficiency, and organ donation?

????Sunstein draws a straight line from Obama's embrace of the office back to its empowerment by Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan who first gave OIRA its mission of overseeing all federal rule-making. In a bid to choke off burdensome regulatory mandates, Reagan also required OIRA to ensure that the benefits of new rules outweighed their costs. Sunstein accepted this mandate wholeheartedly. Indeed, crunching costs and benefits has been a central preoccupation of Sunstein's, although the results frequently frustrated liberals. They stewed during Obama's first term when the White House declined to tighten certain environmental and workplace standards, and they panned nudges as limp.

????Sunstein argues persuasively that quantifying upsides and downsides and laying them bare improves both markets and government. One of his wins was replacing the miles-per-gallon standard for cars -- which turns out to be a non-linear measurement of their fuel economy -- with one that states how many gallons they use over 100 miles, as well as expected fuel costs over five years, making side-by-side comparisons more meaningful.

????Applying that same discipline to policy decisions can prove trickier. Because his office had to weigh the economic impact of any risk-reducing regulation against the lives it would save, it had to assign a dollar value to a human life -- or, more precisely, the dollar value of eliminating the statistical risk of a death. Sunstein's team answered this grim question by weighing both what individuals say they would pay to eliminate the risk of one death out of, say, 100,000, and calculating the wage premiums that companies pay to reward that risk. Based on that math, the government currently values a human life at roughly $9 million.

????The practice of working through those calculations acts as a curative in the heart of a political system that's too often jumpy and reactive. That said, Sunstein's book displays some of the restless energy of its polymath author and feels a bit disorganized. But considering it's addressed to the task of streamlining our regulatory regime -- not exactly the stuff of page-turners -- it's a remarkably fun, engaging read. And to illustrate the frailty of our rational systems, he makes his arguments with memorable examples from pop psychology. Those who scoffed at New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's ban on supersized sodas -- a textbook nudge -- might be struck by the experiment in which subjects were told to eat as much Campbell's tomato soup as they wanted, without being informed that their bowls were designed to refill themselves through a device hidden under the table. Many just continued eating until the experimenters finally stepped in to stop them.

????It's a characteristic example, and the book is perhaps most useful as an insight into the man who functioned as the superego of the Obama White House. Like the president he served, Sunstein takes pains to frame his program as post-partisan. He invokes scientific method in pursuit of testable, provable solutions to entrenched public policy problems. And yet at bottom this approach rests on a belief that government, informed by experts, should be equipped with the tools to save us from ourselves. He may be right. But Sunstein must also appreciate that our American id can't help but object.