AA Gill Quote - 23 January 2005
"Choice has no synonym. There's selection, or pick, which are close, but no matching valance. Of all the words you'd have thought would offer you a choice... What the limited vocabulary of choice is trying to say is that choice is a chimera, a basilisk, a cockatrice, a Hydra - a mythic multiple that doesn't exist. One of the great lies of freedom and democracy and the marketplace is that they give you choice. Competition is choice. Well, how do you imagine that competition in business is going to be the opposite of competition everywhere else? The FA Cup doesn't end up with everyone a winner. It finishes with multiple losers and one winner. The business of capitalism is to defeat the opposition and become the biggest - ultimately, the only - choice, so choice is no choice at all."
Posted by Hg on Monday 24 January 2005 at 06:36.
Received 1 comments so far.
Interesting. Although from your quote my brain leapt to my morning thoughts about the latest threats on Iraq, the 'terrrrurists' who stated: "We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy"
When democracy is based on that type of 'choice' (Hobson's anyone?) I start to wonder if we've got it all wrong.
(We haven't I know but it's amazing what a little parallel thought can do).
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