Just following the practices promoted by behavioral economics.

Reader comment on: Organ Donor Opt-Out

Submitted by Lyle (United States), Dec 13, 2012 15:30

It holds that one should make the default no decision option to be the one that the folks setting up the system want. Since the default today is no donation, and that results in excess deaths the legislature changed it to be donation unless you opt out to follow the notion suggested by behavioral econ. We have seen this with many things recently where the practices have been followed such as auto sign up for 401ks, unless you explicitly opt out.

The behavioral econ folks point out that this does make folks think about the option a bit, but perhaps the question should be asked at drivers license renewal time.

Expect to see more and more of the setting of default options to yield a desired result over time. The argument against it is hard to make because if you care you can opt out. I suspect that on many issues the default will change from opt in to opt out.

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