Ethicists and ordinary people are typically more worried by interventions that alter agents’
mind by directly altering their brains than interventions than are focused on the environment,
and thereby indirectly change minds. I argue that the causal route to changing minds is not itself
important. Moreover, some of the most powerful techniques whereby behavior is altered
without the consent or knowledge of agents involve environmental manipulations: manipulations
of social space, for the benefit of those in the business of increasing consumption. I argue
that insofar as we are fixated on internal interventions, we overlook ways in which our autonomy
as agents is impaired. Once we recognize the power of environmental manipulations, however,
we should come to see social space as a legitimate target for political control.
