October 2005

I finally received David G. Myers The American Paradox in the mail. Naturally, it begins, "We Americans embody a paradox." After quoting Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," that is. But what’s the "worst of times" about our times? Myers says, "There are those who wring their hands [...]

I find it extremely frustrating that economists, who like to color themselves intellectually rigorous folk, insist on confusing people about the meaning of words. Here’s Robert Frank in Luxury Fever:
In economist’s parlance, it is customary to speak not of happiness, but of utility. The analogous construct in the psychological literature is subjective [...]

It struck me this morning that Schwartz’s problem of managing “too much” freedom is kind of the opposite of the problem of managing too little freedom implicit in Admiral Stockdale’s Epictetian stoicism and Victor Frankl’s existential therapy. Or is it the same!? (If you don’t know, Stockdale was tortured for years by the North Vietnamese [...]

Schwartz also constantly mixes up objective opportunity and the representation of such: “. . . choice has negative features, and the negative features escalate as the number of choices increases.” No, the negative features escalate as the number of choices entertained, or represented to the self, increases.
It is very important for Schwartz that whatever [...]

Looking again at Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice, I’m struck by something Virginia Postrel picked up on in her Reason review, which is that Schwartz’s argument turns on a false opposition between freedom and commitment. I tripped up on the same passage Virginia noted:
In the context of this discussion of choice and autonomy, [...]