The general uncertainty about the prospects of medical treatment is socially handled by rigid entry requirements. These are designed to reduce the uncertainty in the mind of the consumer as to the quality insofar as this is possible. I think this explanation, which is perhaps the naive one, is much more tenable than any idea of a monopoly seeking to increase incomes.

When you look at any experimental work not directly related to economics, but trying to test rational behavior in other ways, experiments have conspicuously failed to show rational behavior. Macro evidence certainly suggests deviations from rationality, but I don't want to say the rationality hypothesis is completely wrong. If you have any introspective idea or experimental idea about people's behavior, it seems to be incompatible with the really full scale rational expectations.

The switch to the market in Eastern Europe, of course, has not exactly been one of the greatest advertisements for the market. There's no question the socialist system - and I hate to use the word 'socialist,' but I suppose some description of a system in which the state is in control - was breaking down, really collapsing. In these countries, most markedly in Russia itself and in a number of the others, it obviously was based on a tyranny, which is unacceptable even if it were producing good economic results, which it was not.

Classic economic theories recognize public goods aspects of one kind or another - the need for economic intervention in, obviously, the supply of infrastructure and of education. We're not supplying that infrastructure at an appropriate rate today. I don't doubt it isn't just money; it's organization and goals and so forth.

Knowledge is a free good. The biggest cost in its transmission is not in the production or distribution of knowledge, but in its assimilation. This is something that all teachers know.

Vast ills have followed a belief in certainty.

One way of looking at Impossibility Theorem is that we proposed some criteria for what a good system should be: what is it you want from a voting system, and impose some conditions. And then ask: can you have a voting system that guarantees that?