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… is from page 163 of Gordon Tullock’s and Gordon Brady’s important 2000 monograph, Government: Whose Obedient Servant? A Primer in Public Choice [2]:
The analysis of public choice reveals, much more than conventional political theory, that collective choice-making in government has made the fundamental error of putting the vaguely identified interests of the people as voters before their clearly perceived interests as consumers. This historic error results in providing them with standardised services, supposedly to suit hundreds or thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions, rather than individuals or families in different circumstances with diverse preferences.
DBx: Yes.
“Progressives” who loudly proclaim their allegiance both to “diversity” and to increasing the number of decisions made politically reveal their deep misunderstanding. Collectivizing decisions – transferring decisions from the private sphere into the political – results in greater uniformity and (at best) dreariness of outcomes. Maximum possible private decision-making – including but not limited to those made in free, commercial markets – is among the greatest sources of genuine diversity that humankind has ever experienced. “Progressives'” policies eliminate much of this diversity.