THE IGNORANCE OF EACH:

Jeff was a libertarian. But he was not satisfied with libertarian dogma, and he criticized the idea of man as a self-interested rational actor. His great theme was ignorance: not only the public ignorance of electorates but also the individual ignorance of experts bound by the constraints of ideology and groupthink. The state, he said, operated according to the fashionable desires of bureaucrats who were free from democratic accountability.

Such "accountability" was itself a slippery concept. It was hard for either politicians or journalists to determine the meaning of elections and the nature of mandates. Electoral majorities are composites of millions upon millions of people with millions upon millions of concerns, fears, attitudes, hopes, and dreams. Making sense of this cacophony is impossible.

Jeff preferred markets to government not because markets are more rational or more efficient but because they are easier to escape. Markets allow for a greater possibility of exit. And the ability to leave counterproductive, hazardous, or perverse conditions is a guarantor of freedom that also creates opportunities for innovation and improvement. Jeff's classroom at NYU was where I first heard of A.O. Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, and where I first encountered Schumpeter's aphorism, "The picture of the prettiest girl that ever lived will in the long run prove powerless to maintain the sales of a bad cigarette."

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