The Illusion of Choice

These are parts of an article by Joel Bowman in an article entitled, "The Illusion of Choice".

Tell me sir, “yes” or “no,” have you stopped beating your wife?

Simply put, the false dilemma is a sly trick of exclusion whereby a speaker (always generously) offers his or her audience the apparently favorable choice between two unfortunately poor options.


So profoundly have certain false dilemmas bored their way into people’s “thinking” that supposedly able-minded individuals have stricken the very possibility of free market cooperation from their mental map.

Indeed, some confused people even contend that, were we to ignore the iron-fisted directives of The State, we would promptly descend into a Mad Max-style dystopia, in which a collection of unchecked territorial monopolies would roam the planet, stealing and damaging property at whim and torturing, imprisoning and killing whomever they so wished.

Strange then that these same people would “remedy” this apocalyptic nightmare by supporting The State...a collection of unchecked territorial monopolies that roam the planet, stealing and damaging property at whim and torturing, imprisoning and killing whomever they so wish.

I mention this article because this is the reason that government has grown so large. We think that the only solution to a problem is to have the government solve it even when the government has proven over and over again that it is not an effecient problem solver. In fact, it ususally creates more problems than it solves.