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Responding to Mohammed Gani: 
 
People "don't do what they would prefer to do, even with the clear freedom 
to do it" all the time, no?  Unless one argues that "it can't be that they 
didn't do what they preferred to do, otherwise they would have done it. 
They must have preferred to do what they did, because they did it." If that 
argument 'holds', it is trivial.  I would have thought this would have been 
all hashed out long ago, in the revealed preference literature. The more 
interesting point is that the same 'preferences' can result in different, 
even diametrically opposed behaviors, while different preferences can 
result in the same behaviors. This is the heart (of one aspect at least) of 
the problem of freedom and order. And it is also why we must ultimately 
turn to rules and other institutions, not reducible to 'preferences', to 
understand society. 
 
Mat Forstater 
 
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