The thing is that suggestive manipulation is unavoidable. The state takes it's slice, but the most people can do is to chose what to get manipulated by. The solution to state nudging can't be no nudging, for it's a physical impossibility, but a "better" nudging, at the choice of each individual. Holding a "life philosophy", to know the own nudging, and understanding manipulation mechanisms, to detect the outer nudging, is the way.

That's very much correct. Most behavioral economists are enormous statists, in my experience. That doesn't mean they aren't discovering useful tools, though.