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It's worth noting, that Prof Thaler wrote a book with Obamaite Cass Sunstein. If you forgot, Sunstein's 2004 book, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever, advocates the Second Bill of Rights proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Among these rights are a right to an education, a right to a home, a right to health care, and a right to protection against monopolies; Sunstein argues that the Second Bill of Rights has had a large international impact and should be revived in the United States. Just sayin'.

Relatedly, when I was in college there was a required book in a persuasive speaking class called Influence by Robert Cialdini. It was an eye-opener - Cialdini basically pulled back the curtain to detail how agents try to change your views/opinions/actions etc via:

Reciprocity: Obligation to repay.
Consistency and Commitment: Need for personal alignment.
Social Proof: The power of what others do.
Liking: The obligations of friendship.
Authority: We obey those in charge.
Scarcity: We want what may not be available.

In the 80s, the tone of Cialdini's book was "know these tactics, so you don't get influenced against your will." It was worth my entire tuition.

Fast-forward...Cialdini is now on the Dark Side, lecturing on how to change people. Indeed, he was advising the CDC on how to change "anti-vaxxers".

Speaking of the pandemic, can the science of persuasion be put to work to change the behavior of people resistant to getting the COVID-19 vaccine?

I’m advising the CDC on this. I have a couple of suggestions. One is a technique inside persuasion science called the “convert communicator,” which is very effective in getting people who are resistant to moving forward — antivaxxers are like that — by giving them access to a communicator [in their demographic group] who used to believe as they do, but then something happened — they received a very powerful piece of information about [the consequences of not moving forward] — that changed their mind.

What’s the other technique?

To disempower one of the reasons people are using to resist. Those who don’t want to get vaccinated say they don’t want to be pushed or pulled in a direction they don’t want to go. There’s a phrase you can use that disarms that resistance. It is: “Of course it’s completely up to you.” In 47 separate experiments, that increased the likelihood that people will go along with a well-meaning request asking them to move in a direction that’s designed to help them. They don’t feel challenged anymore.