Imagine the level of creativity that must have been involved to convince hundreds of millions of people to pay you money to consume something will cause them long term damage. Now imagine how much more cretative you’d need to be to keep convincing them even after they know what you’re doing to them. That’s a lot of creativity. And a big testament to the idea that if you pay people a salary to be creative, they will deliver.

That’s the state much of the world finds itself in these days. Large corporations that have done enormous damage to society by getting society to inflict damage on itself.

Not surprisingly, the public sector eventually woke up to the problem. The large corporations have been terrifically creative at ‘externalising’ a lot of the harm they’ve caused. Encourage 30% of the population to become obese, but don’t worry about it because the healthcare system will take care of it. Encourage people with limited resources to pour most of their money into your fixed-odds betting terminal, but don’t worry about it because Social Services will mop up the broken homes and bankrupcy.

So, the public sector fights back by telling people to be careful. All totally logical. A balance has to be struck. Although – hmm – having successful big corporations in your neighbourhood is also a good thing, because look at all of the jobs they provide, and the taxes they pay. So local governments also play the externalisation game. Even so, there seems to be a growing perception ‘higher up’ that the scales of justice seem to be tipping in the wrong direction.

The large corporations response? The organisations that employ all those creative people? They put the creativity to work. And in a stroke of sublime genius they come up with expressions like ‘nanny state’. They then convince the mass media to pick up on the phrase and turn it into a libertarian meme. And they in turn convince poor Joe Public that the Government is evil because they’re ‘taking away your liberties’. They’re telling you what you can and can’t do. Take back control. Show them who’s boss.

Taken at a certain level, you have to take your hat off to the genius of it all. Get the consumer to defend the evil you’re making them pay to do to themselves. You couldn’t make it up.

You couldn’t make it up, because the journey has taken several decades and dozens of iterations. Each one more subtle than the last. The slippery slope to complete consumer control has been a long and winding one. To the point where it’s now difficult, if not impossible, to see what life was like while we were still at the top of the hill.

From a TRIZ perspective, of course, the current corporation-versus-nanny-state battle is merely a contradiction. Albeit one that looks a lot like a David versus Goliath fight. Quite romantic in some ways, except for the fact that we all remember the story because it’s the rare exception rather than the rule. 99 times out of a hundred, Goliath beats David to a pulp.

Perhaps the real point of the parable is that David wins by being creative? If the odds are stacked against you, the only way you win is by being able to out-smart than your opponent.

It’s time for the Nanny State to step up to the plate. No more public information diatribes, no more ill-thought penalising taxes, no more ‘expert opinion’, because all they do is play the game the creatives at the big Corporations want you to play. Time instead for the public sector to get properly creative. Play the corporations at their own game. Think about it, if they managed to convince all of us to pay to harm ourselves for their benefit, surely it must be possible to convince the population to get the pendulum swinging in the win-win direction where everyone actually wins instead of killing themselves?

We can all start by remembering that each time someone uses the expression ‘nanny state’ to argue against a point you’re trying to make, your job is not to argue back, it’s to reveal to them which Corporate puppeteer has snuck the empty phrase into their head.