----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]