The Illusion of Choice

Download or read book The Illusion of Choice written by Andrew Bard Schmookler and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is sensitive to those values pertaining to what can be bought and sold but is blind to others - such as the integrity of the natural world and the quality of human relationships - that cannot be turned into commodities. It is impervious to the costs of tearing apart the larger wholes - families, communities, the biosphere - that are vital to the quality of our lives. While these shortcomings are known to mainstream economics, their vital importance has not been recognized because economics takes too static a perspective. Systematic errors wreak damage over time. The Illusion of Choice, by putting our economic lives in a social evolutionary perspective, illuminates the defects of the market ideology that defends the uncontrolled play of market forces. On the basis of that analysis, this work also provides the outlines of a program by which we can make the market system a better instrument of the full range of human values