For a generation, the United States, along with most of the West, was in the thrall of an ideology that asserted that the magic of market competition held the solution to every problem. But even the father of modern economics, Adam Smith, knew that this ideology is false-a lesson we are learning anew in the current financial crisis.

Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action Barry Schwartz argues two things. First, markets have their place, but that place isn't every place. And second, even in their place, to work properly, markets depend on nonmarket values that market competition actively corrodes.

Americans value freedom of choice perhaps above all else, but as choices increase, they can be transformed from instruments of freedom into instruments of tyranny, threatening happiness, well-being, self-esteem, and optimism. In this talk, Barry Schwartz will explain who suffers from too many choices and why.