America Needs a Sludge Czar
All hail the Complainer in Chief
Not too long ago, I bought my first suit since high school. It was a fine experience. The sales associate, a broey, affable twenty-something named Chandler1 handed me jacket/pants combos in various shades of navy, and assured me that the most expensive one was also, coincidentally, the one that looked the best on me. For better or worse, my girlfriend and I agreed.
At checkout, I entered my email and phone number on an iPad, deselected the “sign me up for sales and promotions” checkbox, and handed the tablet back to Chandler. “Hey man, what’s your address?” he asked me. (The suit needed some minor alterations, so they were shipping it to me.)
I said my street and apartment number—which Chandler cheerily typed into the screen—then noticed over his shoulder that the opt-in for marketing was, once again, selected. “Can you uncheck that?” I said, probably more curtly than I’d intended.
“No problemo,” said Chandler. He held out his hand for my credit card.
The next day, I noticed an email at the top of my inbox: “Discover All the Details of Your Suit.” I opened it. Scrolling through, I saw photos of all the special features I would soon be able to flaunt, like my functional cuff (“fully buttoned, or undone for a little sartorial flair, this high-end feature is all about versatility & style”) and my barchetta pocket (“named after the Italian word for small boat, this pocket features a slight curve for some subtle detail.”) Was this a marketing email, or just a generic primer on my purchase? I couldn’t tell—but I had my suspicions…
To learn the answer, I scrolled to the bottom of the email and clicked into the communications preference center. When the webpage opened, this is what I saw:
How was it possible that after opting out of marketing twice, and forking over more money than the check I cut my landlord each month—I still ended up being involuntarily committed to receive over a hundred emails per year?
Sluck Fudge
Let me be clear: Getting signed up for an unwanted marketing newsletter isn’t the world’s gravest injustice. In this case, I could make the problem go away with the click of a button.
Still, it’s always frustrating to have such explicit wishes ignored—especially with so little recourse—and it’s typical, I think, of a wider culture of mildly slimy sales tactics. Like so many of life’s daily indignities, it’s an inconvenience which might not be such a big deal in isolation, but which imposes significant psychological and economic costs when considered in aggregate. This class of inconveniences has a name, of course, and that name is sludge.
What exactly is sludge? Simply put, it’s the opposite of a nudge. Whereas nudges make certain behaviors more likely—e.g., by increasing their salience or removing barriers to completion—sludge decreases behaviors’ salience, imposes barriers to completion, or just adds general shittiness to what ought to be a simple process. It includes—among many other reviled cases—opaque cancellation procedures like the one pictured in the above Tweets; and administrative burdens that create friction for citizens seeking promised government benefits.
(It’s worth emphasizing again that nudges and sludge really are the same phenomenon, just from two different vantage points. From the perspective of Suitsupply, opting me into their marketing newsletter is an aggressive nudge, with the ultimate goal of increasing sales; from my perspective, it’s unwanted sludge that makes it ever-so-slightly more difficult to realize my goal of maintaining an inbox that is free of clutter and harrassment.)
There has, of late, been greater attention to the problem of sludge. The term itself has gained wider recognition, for example, thanks to a book-length treatment by Nudge author Cass Sunstein, and recent coverage in the New York Times. This coverage, in turn, stemmed from the Biden administration’s proposed crackdown on “junk fees”—undisclosed or tacked-on charges that cost Americans tens of billions of dollars per year:
I’m glad that smart and important people are entering the fight against sludge: This growing awareness is a big step in the right direction. (It includes, by the way, resisting incidental sludge from well-intentioned procedures and regulations.) But this smattering of solutions is one I don’t think goes far enough.
After all, sludge is almost by definition an unsexy problem. It’s often tied to wonky design or policy choices—choices which, unless you yourself are personally facing the sludgey system in question, can be vanishingly difficult to notice. Sludge is not a cackling, laser-eyed supervillain; rather, it’s the work of a faceless enemy who kills through mind-numbing persistence and obfuscation until, eventually, you throw up your hands and say, “You know what? Fine. Take my extra $3.99/month to unenroll me from autorenewal of select processing fees (limited time offer!)”
No, what we really need here is someone to animate the fight against sludge: a champion who will rail against this viscous foe with the righteous fervor that Bernie Sanders aims at billionaires, or Tucker Carlson aims at snowflakes and drag queens.
What we need, my fellow Americans, is a Sludge Czar.
Not All Heroes Wear Capes
Again, there are already people paying attention to this issue; the problem here is that no one knows their names and faces. I scrubbed through this whole thirty-minute video of government officials talking about junk fees, and while they all seem like smart and lovely individuals, I’m sorry to say that none of them comes close to the monomaniacal outrage required of a true Complainer in Chief.
Specifically, this is what I envision: a charismatic yet highly irritable leader who will a) increase awareness of sludge and b) possesses the political shrewdness to do something about it. They need to be willing to get into the weeds, of course, and to get their hands dirty—but their primary duties are simply to stoke the fire of public indignation and channel that indignation toward concrete improvements for average Americans. They should be nonpartisan, an iconoclast, willing to call out private and government entities alike at the slightest sign of confusion, inefficiency, or mild inconvenience. No concern here is too petty.
With these criteria in mind, I now present my nominations for Sludge Czar:
#1 Larry David — Larry David was the first person that came to mind for this job, and for good reason: He's basically made a career of kvetching about life’s everyday injustices. An absolute shoe-in for Sludge Czar.
#2 Ziwe Fumudoh — While I worry Ziwe might be tempted to use the platform to address genuinely important social issues (i.e., as opposed to the banal garbage I’m concerned with), there’s no doubt in my mind that she could take skeezy sludge-mongers to task like no other. I think she could be great!
#3 Glenn Howerton — This man has a lot of rage in him, and he directs it with striking intensity at people who chew too loudly or don't know how to parallel park.2 I shudder to imagine him unleashed on hidden service charges and cancellation fees. Quite possibly my top choice for the position.
#4 Angela Merkel — I know next to nothing about Angela Merkel, but she projects unflinching German competence and seems like she doesn't take crap from anyone. I know she's not American and is technically retired, but as my sleeper pick, she helps expand the possibilities of what a Sludge Czar could be.
What kinds of issues would a Sludge Czar tackle? In addition to the bullshit around junk fees and subscriptions I’ve already covered, these are some initiatives I’d like to see broached:
No more waiting on hold to talk to customer service — Just let me schedule a callback! Hasn’t this technology been around forever?
Stop making us file our own taxes — In most cases, the government has all the data they need to tell us what we owe and let us sign off on it. Lots of other countries have figured this out, but here in the land of the free, we’re stuck with forms and fees thanks to TurboTax’s decades-long lobbying campaign against an easier system.
Eliminate paper forms — It’s 2023; why am I mailing in a little folded pouch that I have to lick with my tongue and affix a $0.60 sticker to? I get that there are sometimes original documents or security concerns or whatever; but ninety percent of the time it seems like I’m just filling out paperwork for some bureaucrat to type it into a database anyway. Just make a fucking electronic form!
No more downloading a new app every time we pay for parking — Just because this software is technically possible doesn’t mean it’s actually a benefit the decent, tax-paying drivers of America. I’ll happily swipe my credit card at a parking meter or even at a little machine that prints a receipt—I don’t even care if I have to walk a bit! There’s already more than enough crap on my phone.
Recourse for messing up reservations/appointments/listed hours — Look, I get that unforeseeable stuff happens, but every once in a while I’ll show up to an “open” business and find it locked and shuttered, or go to a scheduled dinner and have to wait forty-five minutes to be seated. What was the point in making a reservation in the first place? I’d much prefer no information to actively false information.
In all seriousness, I believe sludge imposes significant societal costs which—despite the collective eye roll they elicit—are difficult to convert into a highly potent political message. So I would 100% support the instatement of a Sludge Czar, however unlikely it seems that my fantasy version will ever come to fruition.
On the bright side, Chandler was right: The suit fits great.
Not his real name.
I think these are real examples, but am not 100% sure my memory is accurate. If invented, they’re very representative of the flavor of Howerton pet peeves.
#IStandWithChandler ✊