Lynne Kiesling
Russ Roberts was just on NPR with Barry Schwartz, the "choice is debilitating" Swarthmore psychologist. In his gentle, intellectual, nonconfrontational way, Russ spanked him. Russ's arguments were a powerful combination of focus on the positive and focus on the core, essential point: individuals should always ask themselves "who gets to choose for me?" Although individuals do make mistakes, we develop meta-contexts to help us deal with choice (Russ mentioned indexed mutual funds) and make those tradeoffs.
Schwartz's last comment was a classic: "The more important the decision is, the less markets should be used to make it."
The NPR interviewer (can't remember who it was) also did a nice job of asking the questions; he actually almost phrased the "don't economists think that we make better decisions collectively through markets than any one individual can?" in a close-to-Hayekian way.
I'll post the link to it when it's up later today.
UDPATE: Here's the link to the audio file. Thanks to Scott Johnson for leaving it in the comments.
Here's the link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4558616
A definite spanking. Nice job Russ.
Roberts was pleasantly effective in showing the backwards nature of Schwartz argument. Schwartz claims that "the more important area of life you are talking about, the smaller the role of the market should be".
This rings beautifully false within Robert fine example of "who to marry" being an important choice, and no one is about to argue in favor of central planning of marriages.
Very clear and understandable economics that every listener can grasp. Well done.
JBP
Does it strike you how unscientific this "too many choices" theory is? What is it based on, surveys?
Not that market economics is science, but I would put it in the category of things like evolution and the OJ Simpson case, where the "preponderance of evidence" proves that it is true.
But this theory is the NPR crowds' wet dream. If individuals are overwhelmed by choice, and we need to move towards non-market solutions, who gets to make the choices? Hillary Clinton types, that's who. The cognitive elite. Lawyers. People with advanced degrees from fancy colleges.
Schwartz and his ilk should be reminded that the Soviet Union in its later stages was a society run in such a way. The Soviets graduated more engineers than anyone, and their society was run by these technocratic experts. There was no choice, there was only production. And look where it got them.