Your lattes are safe from me. Really.

Mark Steckbeck at the Liberal Order belately realized that he's been the victim of a panda attack. Being the feisty classical liberal that he is, he responded with a lengthy iteration of the same straw-man argument that prompted the panda attack in the first place. My initial objection to his flippant dismissal of Schwartz's work on choice was how: "Any suggestion that the market might not be the be-all-and-end-all is aggressivly marched down the slippery slope to totalitarianism." And lo, my response was duly marched down in turn the slippery slope to totalitarianism.

To believe it socially beneficial to limit the available choices individuals have when purchasing laundry detergent, toothpaste, bed linens, refrigerators or automobiles simply to achieve your (or someone else’s) conception of some perfect market outcome is to simultaneously infer your right to control others’ ability to freely engage in mutually advantageous exchange, exchange that has no direct adverse effect on others. That is not just paternalism; it’s totalitarianism.

Um, Mark. Didn't I say explicitly that: " I'm not out to suggest that we mandate the number of laundry detergent brands or stepping on your rights to purchase a double-skinny soy mocha latte."? You know, in the post you're supposedly responding to?