The World Is (Still) Drowning in Sludge

“If you make things harder, I call that sludge,” says Richard Thaler, the Nobel-winning economist who coined the term as the dark twin of his famous “nudge.” This Freakonomics Radio episode explores the pervasive problem of sludge—the friction, confusion, and deliberate difficulty that makes simple tasks needlessly hard. The central argument is that sludge is not merely an annoyance but a systemic force that wastes time, money, and well-being, and it operates differently depending on whether it arises from incompetence, indifference, or outright strategy.

The Two Faces of Sludge

Thaler distinguishes between two broad categories. The first is “inadvertent and/or incompetent sludge”—the kind that comes from thoughtless design. His favorite example is the “Norman door,” named after design scholar Don Norman: a door with a pull handle that you are supposed to push, or a push plate that you are supposed to pull. Nobody designed it to make fools of people; it was just incompetence. The second category is intentional and strategic sludge, epitomized by the “unsubscribe trap.” With one click you can sign up for a service, but canceling requires a phone call, a long wait, and a sales pitch. Thaler notes that when he has tried to convince large subscription companies to stop this practice, he has been told flatly: “No, that would cost us too much money.”