Dude... the worst part is to read your idea in an acclaimed new book and be all like "That was me! ME! That was totally me!" Fuck you, Thaler and Sustein, fuck you. All it took was seeing the title, piled up in neat stacks in the San Francisco airport Border's, for me to know what it was. I froze in my tracks, mixed with excitement and horror. "Oh shit, that's it! Someone else finally got it! It's out there!" and simultaneously "Fuuuuuuuuuccccckkkk"
I mean, granted, ideas are products of their age and I was probably reading up on some of the same research, or gleaning ideas from others who have been vocalizing proto-"Nudge" thoughts, but come the fuck on, these people are microfamous now! Interviewed by the Telegraph? Schmoozing with celebs? Glowing review by that "Freakonomics" dude? Goddamn it. If only I'd been a senior fellow of economics at one of the most respected economics institutions in the country and not a political science major-cum waiter I could have capitalized on that shit. Fuckers. And I can never prove it either. I mean, I may be able to back-date some things I wrote, but for all practical purposes... At least nobody's taken my other awesome idea yet... *Fires up Google* Oh fuck, some bastard "coins" it on a blog just this past week. Doesn't seem to know what he's on to, though. Gotta get me a publisher.
For the record, I referred to my idea as something like "Pragmatic Utopian Incentivism", which isn't nearly as catchy. So they at least have me there.
/and, for the record, that remains one awesome photo. You should frame it and put it on the mantle
“It is a strange paradox that today’s central banks are generally staffed by economists, who by and large profess a belief in a theory which says that their jobs are, at the best, unnecessary, and more likely wealth-destroying. Needless to say, this is not a point widely discussed among respectable economists. Nevertheless, it is an issue worth pondering.”
George Cooper, The Origin of Economic Crises