The Illusion of Choice by Andrew Bard Schmookler
The market economy attends well to some dimensions of human life and does not even see others. It is sensitive to those values pertaining to what can be bought and sold but is blind to others that cannot be turned into commodities, such as the integrity of the natural world and the quality of human relationships. The market registers the costs and benefits to transactors acting as social atoms but is impervious to the costs of tearing apart the larger wholes-families, communities, the biosphere-that are vital to the quality of our lives. In The Illusion of Choice, Andrew Bard Schmookler shows how the market system unfolds according to a logic of its own, shaping everything within its domain-the landscape, social institutions, even human values-to serve its own inherent purposes. This understanding helps illuminate what has been most troubling to generations of Americans struggling to create a more humane society, and provides the conceptual tools by which we can become less the instruments of our powerful systems and more the masters of our destiny. Here is a powerful critique of the market, not couched in the Marxist economics of surplus value and exploitation, but drawing upon mainstream economics to shows how we all have a stake in making change. Schmookler sets out a program to help us humanize the market, not by overthrowing it but be correcting its biases, not by revolution but by strengthening the democratic process. Perhaps we can now add the most important choice to the abundance of choices the market provides us: the choice of developing into the kind of society we really want to be.Andrew Bard Schmookler is Research Associate at Harvard University's Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age. He is the author of a number of books, including The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution and Out of Weakness: Healing the Wounds That Drive Us to War.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780791412664 |
| ISBN 10 | 0791412660 |
| Title | The Illusion of Choice |
| Author | Andrew Bard Schmookler |
| Series | Suny Series In Environmental Public Policy |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | State University of New York Press |
| Year published | 1993-07-20 |
| Number of pages | 363 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |