The more choices people have to make, the more likely they are to make bad ones.”

our leaders think so little of us The caption to the video that accompanies my review of Cass Sunstein’s book Simpler reads “Cass Sunstein says that the act of choosing is a muscle that gets fatigued. The more choices people have to make, the more likely they are to make bad ones.” That sentence is indeed an excellent summary of Prof. Sunstein’s thesis. Yet it is a thesis fundamentally at odds not only with my own, but with the thesis of many other people who are not so enamored with the alleged promise of a nanny state. We say, in contrast to Prof. Sunstein, that “the act of choosing is a muscle that gets stronger with exercise. The more choices people have to make, the more likely they are to make good ones” (assuming, of course, that government socializes neither the benefits nor the costs of such choices). What a bleak and condescending opinion Prof. Sunstein has of ordinary people. Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux Professor of Economics