Page 177 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Social Marketing as Social Control 169

judgments about the nature of the health risks confronting the citizenry. In
other words, a new cadre of cognitive elite, teaming up with key officials
in the corridors of power—at the executive, legislative, judicial, and ad-
ministrative levels—will decide what’s best for everyone. This is the same
problem that Gouldner (1980) raised long ago concerning the way world-
saving tends toward unreflective and dogmatic stances. It is the culmina-
tion of the bureaucratization of the welfare-warfare state, where champions
of the underdogs and the downtrodden bring the bad news to the masses
that those who have already attained the good life—or some proximity to
it—will have to do a little bit more for their fellow man. This is a massive
repudiation of private charity in favor of the bureaucratization of govern-
ment mandates for behaviors deemed to be in the best interests of society
as a whole.

Conclusion: Social Marketing and Globalization

In 2009 the Chief Executive Board of the United Nations formulated the
Social Protection Floor (SPF) policy. Consistent with the UDHR, the SPF is
a set of social policies “designed to guarantee income security and access
to social services for all” (International Labour Office, 2011, p. 9). Among
the rights pertaining to social protection, those most clearly emphasized
are the right to social security (UDHR Article 22), the right to medical care
and social services (UDHR Article 25), and the right to education (UDHR
Article 26). Behrendt (2010, p. 163) noted that “the litmus test for the
Social Protection Floor will be whether national governments and the in-
ternational donor community are willing to allocate sufficient financial
resources to the realization of the set of minimum rights to social protec-
tion” specified in the plan. Since the general public would likely not have
the stomach for this kind of blatant wealth redistribution, it would fall
upon global agencies such as the United Nations and the WHO to coax
recalcitrant states—most notably the United States—into showing the will
and fortitude to make it happen. It is obvious that with such a massive
project in the works, social marketing could be employed on some level to
change jaded minds about the benefits of making such a minimal set of
protections available to all.
Economist Philip Harvey (2006) has attempted to calculate how much
it would cost the United States to provide universal basic income consist-
ent with the aims of the SPF. Essentially, what Harvey has asked is: How
much it would cost to eliminate poverty in the United States? Utilizing a
negative income tax—a system of refundable tax credits that guarantees
eligible tax filers a certain minimum income—and working with 2002