… is from page 565 of Karl Brunner’s important 1970 Kyklos article, “Knowledge, Values and the Choice of Economic Organization“:
My moral indignation only reveals that I prefer another state of the world to the state actually observed. Unquestionably, we can always picture more preferable states without taxing our imagination. But our ability to visualize ‘better’ states more closely reflecting our sensitivity and personal preferences yields no evidence that this state can be realized. Neither does it provide evidence to assure us that the values satisfied have a larger weight than the values unavoidably sacrificed by our endeavor at ‘social improvement’.
