There was a time when I was a boy when you could get any kind of telephone service you wanted as long as it came from Ma Bell. You rented your phone,… - Barry Schwartz

[W]e must decide which choices in our lives really matter and focus our time and energy there, letting many other opportunities pass us by.

There is in American society, not only the the American society but more here than anywhere else, what I have come to call the official syllogism and this is a set of assumptions that we have about well-being and about how society should be organized that runs so deep that I think we don't realize we make them. And the only time you start to notice that you make them is when you can start to accumulate evidence that they are wrong. So what is this official syllogism? First, we all think that the more freedom people have, the more welfare they have. How could you think otherwise? This is [a] no-brainer. What argument could you make to suggest that there is anything wrong with this assumption? The second thing we think is that the more choice people have, the more freedom they have. What does freedom mean if not choice?

There's enormous marketing of prescription drugs to people like you and me... They expect us to call our doctors... and ask for our prescriptions to be changed.