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Can There Ever Be Too Many Flowers Blooming

Fifty years of psychological research have confirmed the obvious: freedom and autonomy are essential to human well being. Unless people can exert significant control over the events in their lives, they are diminished. Indeed they are candidates for clinical depression (Seligman, 1975). And at the level of entire societies, there is evidence that democratic political organization, including the protection of civil liberties, has a bigger effect on life satisfaction than does material affluence—at least among those whose material circumstances meet subsistence needs. The operational sign of freedom and autonomy is choice. To be free and autonomous is to be able to make choices. And this means both that no one compels you to do anything, and that there are real options to choose among. Freedom of choice by statute or ideological commitment is empty if your world affords you few alternative courses of action. Thus, we have a kind of syllogism: the more autonomous people are, the better off they are, and the more choice people have the more autonomous they are. Thus, the more choice people have, the better off they are. This line of reasoning comports nicely with ideological defenses of the free market as the ideal institution for the production and distribution of goods and services. A central aim of public policy in a democratic society should be improving the welfare of its citizens. Even when resources are plentiful, this is an extremely challenging task,