Who said this?
Though it sounds paradoxical to say that . . . to prevent ourselves from making the wrong decision we must deliberately reduce the range of choice before us, we all know that this is often necessary in practice if we are to achieve our long term aims.
Sounds too forward thinking for Hitler. How about Peter Costello?
Nope
I cheated and used Google, so I’ll disqualify myself.
Is he saying ‘we’ the individuals or ‘we’ the comunity?
OK, a serious guess. Kissinger?
Sinclair,
‘We’ is intended in the singular on my reading.
And it’s not Kissenger. Ken, I hadn’t even thought of Google as it’s deep in a book that’s not on the net. But you’re right – the quote turns up in secondary literature.
I would have thought so. How individuals restrict their choices is very interesting and would form a better basis for behavioural economics than the sort of irrtionality type arguments we currently see. Unfortunately I haven’t yet read the mystery persons book in this area.
I suspect, looking at the Server’s choice of links, the obvious “not who’d you’d expect” tone of your post and the veneration that is accorded to them in the immediate blogospherical vicinity – Popper or Hayek or Friedman.
Sinclair,
I suspect you have read the book – for reasons alluded to by Geoff.
I have read the book that has the quote (pg 59), also the 1958 article in Ethics. I haven’t read his work on theoretical psychology.
p. 66 in the copy I’ve got!
You have the University of Chicago Press edition and I have the Routledge edition (at home and the other at work). I read somewhere that all editions of Keynes’ General Theory have the same pagination, a very sensible notion for classic works such as your mystery person.
Geoff – you should have a serious guess.
This sounds like a Bill Joy sort of remark. Or at least how he approached the Java programming language. Indeed it could have been the mantra of all “whip and bondage” language designers since Dijkstra.
But somehow I doubt Nick reads Bill Joy :)