"Individuals do not act so as to maximize utilities described in independently-existing functions. They confront genuine choices, and the sequence of decisions taken may be conceptualized, ex post (after the choices), in terms of “as if” functions that are maximized. But these “as if” functions are, themselves, generated in the choosing process, not separately from such process. If viewed in this perspective, there is no means by which even the most idealized omniscient designer could duplicate the results of voluntary interchange. The potential participants do not know until they enter the process what their own choices will be. From this it follows that it is logically impossible for an omniscient designer to know, unless, of course, we are to preclude individual freedom of will."
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Nobel laureates from the United StatesLibertarians from the United StatesEconomists from the United StatesNobel laureates in EconomicsPeople from Tennessee
Original Language: English
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"Order Defined in the Process of Its Emergence", Literature of Liberty, Winter 1982, vol. 5, No. 4
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_M._Buchanan
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James M. Buchanan
James McGill Buchanan, Jr. (3 October 1919 – 9 January 2013) was an American economist known for his work on public choice theory, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics.
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