what enables all of this choice in industrial societies is material affluence. 给我们这个工业化社会带来这么多选择的，是物质的极大丰富。

There are lots of places in the world, and we have heard about several of them, 我们这个世界上还有很多地方，至少我们听说过其中几个，

where their problem is not that they have too much choice. Their problem is that they have too little. 在那里问题不是选择太多，而是几乎没有。

So the stuff I'm talking about is the peculiar problem of modern, affluent, Western societies. 所以我在这里谈的这个话题是现代富裕的西方社会的一个特殊问题。

And what is so frustrating and infuriating is this: 令人气愤的问题是，

Steve Levitt talked to you yesterday about how these expensive and difficult-to-install child seats don't help. It's a waste of money. 史蒂夫·里维特昨天就说过，我们生产的那些昂贵而又难以操作的婴儿汽车座椅于事无补，只是在浪费钱。

What I'm telling you is that these expensive, complicated choices -- it's not simply that they don't help. They actually hurt. 而我今天要说的就是这些昂贵的，复杂的选择不仅仅是于事无补，它们其实在给我们带来伤害。

They actually make us worse off. 它们其实让我们变得不如从前。

If some of what enables people in our societies to make all of the choices we make 如果我们把给这个社会创造出这些选择的人力物力拿出一部分来，

were shifted to societies in which people have too few options, not only would those people's lives be improved, 投入到那些现在人们还没有足够选择的社会中去，那么不仅那里人们的生活可以得到改善，

but ours would be improved also, which is what economists call a "Pareto-improving move." 我们自己的生活质量也同样得到提高。这就是经济学家称之为的帕累托改善的做法。

Income redistribution will make everyone better off -- not just poor people -- because of how all this excess choice plagues us. 产品的再分配会使得所有人，不仅仅是穷人的生活好起来，因为我们摆脱了那些像瘟疫般困扰我们的多余的选择。

So to conclude. You're supposed to read this cartoon, and, being a sophisticated person, say, 结束之前，你们该看看这幅漫画，并站在一个智者的立场说，

"Ah! What does this fish know? You know, nothing is possible in this fishbowl." “哼，这条鱼懂什么？告诉你，在这个鱼缸里一切都是不可能的。”

Impoverished imagination, a myopic view of the world -- and that's the way I read it at first. 毫无想象力，目光短浅，我第一次看到这幅画时是这么解读的。

The more I thought about it, however, the more I came to the view that this fish knows something. 可是，我越想越明显地感到这鱼肯定知道些什么。

Because the truth of the matter is that if you shatter the fishbowl so that everything is possible, you don't have freedom. You have paralysis. 因为说实话，如果你想让一切都变得有可能而把鱼缸打破，你得到的不是自由，而是瘫痪（鱼会死）。

If you shatter this fishbowl so that everything is possible, you decrease satisfaction. 如果你想让一切都变得有可能而把鱼缸打破，你反而降低了满意度。

You increase paralysis, and you decrease satisfaction. 你增加了的是瘫痪，减少了的是满足。

Everybody needs a fishbowl. This one is almost certainly too limited -- perhaps even for the fish, certainly for us. 每个人都需要这么个“鱼缸”。至于这个（鱼缸）嘛，对这条鱼可能是小了点，对于我们几乎肯定是太小了。

But the absence of some metaphorical fishbowl is a recipe for misery, and, I suspect, disaster. Thank you very much. 但是，没有这么个象征性的鱼缸，那就意味着苦难将至，也许是，灾难。非常感谢。