Psychologists and behavioural economists who can tell you about the experimental proofs around nudging and how it works, will also tell you that people experience distress when they perceive that their freedom of choice has been eliminated or constrained.  As people become more educated (in critical thought), the more they have the ability to see the nudging around them, and when they see nudging they generally feel alienated from the nudgers (government, society, the elites, etc.), and react against it.  Who likes to be tricked?  So where does that leave us?  Nudging works the opposite of the way you want it to when the architecture of choice is perceptible.  So, it's not enough that architects of choice simply believe that they're smarter than the people (which they undoubtedly do), they need to actually be smarter than the people, or risk undermining their own projects.