The paradox of choice | Barry Schwartz
http://www.ted.com Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed,...
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I'm going to talk to you about some stuff that's in this book of mine that I hope will resonate with other things you've already heard, and I'll try to make some connections myself, in case you missed them. But I want to start with what I call the "official dogma." The official dogma of what? The official dogma of all Western industrial societies. And the official dogma runs like this: if we are interested in maximizing the welfare of our citizens, the way to do that is to maximize individual freedom. The reason for this is both that freedom is in and of itself good, valuable, worthwhile, essential to being human. And because if people have freedom, then each of us can act on our own to do the things that will maximize our we...
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I'm going to talk to you about some stuff that's in this book of mine that I hope will resonate with other things you've already heard, and I'll try to make some connections myself, in case you missed them. But I want to start with what I call the "official dogma." The official dogma of what? The official dogma of all Western industrial societies. And the official dogma runs like this: if we are interested in maximizing the welfare of our citizens, the way to do that is to maximize individual freedom. The reason for this is both that freedom is in and of itself good, valuable, worthwhile, essential to being human. And because if people have freedom, then each of us can act on our own to do the things that will maximize our we...
