Asymmetrical Information

It's tempting to just pose the question, "what does it matter if all the choices suck?" and be done with it. But most of the time, in most things, there is a good choice available.

My biggest complaint as far as choices go is that much of the time theres no real difference between the old and new products, its just new packaging and an increase in price. Generally speaking, the more choices the better imo, and if you become trapped in the Ass's dilemma over what brand of soft drink you wish to purchase, you have to be a complete moron.

Of course, you don't *have* to take advantage of those choices -- you can ignore the majority of the Starbucks menu and force yourself to pick from the first five items, or limit yourself to the tooth floss that's farthest to the left.

This is the fallacy of "everyone wants what I want" -- in this case, she assumes that since she only wants a specific brand of toothpaste, the others are just there for decoration, and it's not possible that someone else might want something different.

When it comes to toothpaste, toothbrushes, paper towels, and other things proliferating in mindless, endless variations, I just grab something off a low (i.e., non-premium-product-placement-level) shelf and buy it by way of protest. I don't imagine it makes any difference, but it makes me feel better and saves me time.

It certainly is possible that some companies are making poor marketing decisions by offering too many choices.

And when there are too many competitors each offereing too many choices, the consumer is sometimes too scared to make any purchasing decision at all.

But the previous paragraph shouldn't be surprising, because marketing is often a negative sum game.

"Of course, you don't *have* to take advantage of those choices -- you can ignore the majority of the Starbucks menu and force yourself to pick from the first five items, or limit yourself to the tooth floss that's farthest to the left."

If you really don't want to choose, why not go to the local donut shop and get their cup of coffee? It will be cheaper, and there is only one choice.

"What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose; the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing." -- Archibald MacLeish.

Anyone who rails about "too many choices" is covertly advocating the forcible transfer of your power to choose to him, in his aspired-to role as Commissar. Beware.

i love this. people that rail against plenty will only harm themselves. they are the howard deans of social commentary.

but look at people's behaviour. do they prefer places with more or less choice? even if they don't avail themselves of all the choice, people actually prefer stores with more choice. do you go to a ratty market with 1 type of apples, or do you go to something like wholefoods (or some non organic place)? starbucks or diner coffee?

people do leave broad stores, but to go to higher end niche stores or to other broad stores that have better quality or prices (see demise of department stores with the ascendance of specialty retail, discounters, and super premium department stores like bergdorf's and neiman marcus).

as usual its all the same enemies: the marxists and the paleo-cons who want us to go ack to the farm. bah.

Would you like to go back to the world with fewer options? Granted, dealing with lots of choices causes frustration and regret. But would you really be happier, once you’d become accustomed to them, if those abundant choices disappeared?

Ah, notice that Ms. Postrel's statement doesn't say anything about being happier if those choices had never been offered. There are plenty of examples where simply the existence of new options makes the previous state unacceptable. In all likelihood, nobody is pining for pineapple flavoured toothpaste. But remove it once offered and many will feel unhappy. In such cases choice doesn't increase happiness much. However losing choice certainly would decrease it.

It's why "revealed preference" is so misleading. For example, obviously indigenous people are happier living in apartment blocks in poor neighbourhoods rather than toughing it out in the wilderness, because that's what they choose when given the choice. Except this doesn't take into account the fact the simple existence of an urban alternative destroys much of the personal value of living in the wilderness. Urban living may be preferable to wilderness living, but that doesn't mean wilderness living wasn't preferable to both before there was an alternative.

See Lancelot Finn's wonderful comment on this Econoblog post for a far better explanation of why "revealed preference" falls down.

Part of the problem here is that most businesses do a lousy job of helping people navigate among the alternatives. Whether the product is toothpaste or videocameras, there are too many people who think that product specs, sprinkled with adjectives & adverbs, represent a serious approach to marketing.

But these choices have been offered.

Finn's well-written post is interesting, although with a quick read I wonder if he has fallen prey to the noble savage fallacy.

At any rate, it reminds me that I did find Virginia's argument incomplete. The primary problem with limiting choice is the centralized authority required to do so.

I'm just barely old enough to remember the "three networks, three car companies, and two brands of toothpaste" days, but I'm pretty sure that the networks and the car companies, well, sucked, at least by the standards of today. Full-on over-priced, under-featured, poor-service, zero-feedback, high-maintenance, planned-obsolescence, one-size-fits-all, take-it-or-leave-it suckage, of a sort we just don't put up with anymore. They perhaps didn't suck to the truly massive degree that the phone companies or airlines did, but that's setting a pretty low bar. The feedback look between quality and variation is pretty easy to see, and not all that difficult to model mentally. That someone would pine for those days strikes me as very bizarre and a little disturbing.

"but look at people's behaviour. do they prefer places with more or less choice?"

If it's a restuarant we're talking about, I usually assume that less choices mean the chefs cook the fewer dishes better. It often turns out to be true.

Of course, I'm glad there are so many different restaurants to choose from! (I'm fortunate living in a blue area of the country. In a red area there are often nothing but chain restaurants. See my post: Why are Republicans so boring?.)

I wonder if he has fallen prey to the noble savage fallacy.

I don't know, it's hard to imagine that given the present state of various aboriginal cultures is truly their preferred state. As for the rest of the world, I know a lot of people who had half as much 20 years ago who were a lot happier (their relative economic situation has stayed the same as their absolute situation has improved, but there's a lot more uncertainty in their lives.) I think there's a lot of truth that the economy of status is more important to our happiness than the economy of goods.

The primary problem with limiting choice is the centralized authority required to do so.

I've thought about this a lot. [This is generalizing rather a lot here...] As I've stated in our previous post, in general we're now wealthy enough that desires that can be self-destructive *can* be had continuously where before most of our income was spent on necessities. The other side is that we've advanced commercial knowledge enough that we can figure out just what someone will desire, manufacture it, and advertise enough to make certain that it's pretty hard to resist that basic desire.

We didn't need a central authority because the means to self-destructiveness through commercial availability wasn't there for the most part (and those that were available were illegal).

The last point is that there was also social approbation for fulfilling those desires. You might obtain commercial success, but most considered the social cost not worth the extra profit (since wealth without status is worth very little to most people). Nowadays, if you can successfully "fill a need", you won't suffer social condemnation, regardless of what trouble that need causes those who indulge it.

Does this mean we need a central authority? On the balance, I don't think so. But I'd say the balance between public good and centralized restriction of choice is lot more closely tilted than it was 40, 20 or even 10 years ago.

Half Sigma,

If you haven't read James Lileks' celebrated screed on the Guardian's "Olive Garden" piece, you should. I think it's findable in a separate screed section on his site.

My favorite restaurant in fact does one set meal a night, so I'm with you on the less-is-more thing. (Though how "blue" a town can be when Clint Eastwood was once its mayor is debatable. Still, if any of you happen to be in Carmel for any reason, La Bohème is pretty well unbeatable.)

'I'm just barely old enough to remember the "three networks, three car companies, and two brands of toothpaste" days, but I'm pretty sure that the networks and the car companies, well, sucked, at least by the standards of today.'

I am that old. (Except that if there ever really were just "two brands of toothpaste", it was back when most of those who brushed at all used baking-soda and salt instead of a commercial preparation.) I can remember 3 networks - and only CBS and NBC were available in my home town until about 1968 - and yes, they sucked. When Gilligan's Island was a huge hit, even among people who had never smoked pot, the other shows must have been awesomely bad. (Don't ask me for details, I try to forget things like that.) The only problem with that argument is that now you have 100 channels - and quite often they're all filled with such dreck that Gilligan's Island reruns could still compete. So I just play a DVD...

Three car companies? Actually there were four US car companies up to the 80's, but in the 60's I think American Motors only made the Rambler, apparently for people who liked the tiny size and low power of the Volkswagen Beetle but didn't appreciate reliability, quality, and low price. Or maybe the Beetle just wasn't ugly enough for them. Anyhow, as far as the Big Three goes, it wasn't the number of car companies that limited choice as much as it was that most Americans were buying just one kind of car back then: big, roomy, powerful gas hogs. You could stick to one brand and still have a dozen choices - of course, each company had just two or three basic chassis underneath the sheet metal and gewgaws, and there was not much difference in the Ford, GM, or Chrysler offerings in the same price. Whichever brand you brought, it was still poorly engineered, poorly built, and bound to spend weeks out of it's first year at the dealers for repairs - unless it was a "luxury" model, which meant all kinds of extra things to break down, so by the time your mechanic got the manufacturing defects worked out, things would be breaking down from wear and age. Finally, just because the engine and transmission allowed it to go at 120MPH didn't mean it had been designed to stay on the road at that speed - in fact, stability or cornering ability might be iffy at legal highway speeds. Competition has definitely improved the situation here, although you have to buy a minivan or small SUV to get the room my Dad could get in an Oldsmobile. (OTOH, he also drove a GMC Carryall - aka the Chevy Suburban, this was a huge SUV built decades before the phrase "Sport-Utility Vehicle" was invented.)

Lileks' screed regarding The Olive Garden is at www.lileks.com/writings/screed/olivegarden.html.

Hasn't Procter & Gamble heard about the dumbing down of America? To say nothing of the fact that we have simultaneously managed to boil the political discourse down to red states vs. blue states.

Must say I particularly liked that line. Who's this "we" that boiled down the political discourse? Why, it's journalists and columnists! The other 99% of the country somehow manages to navigate the dental floss aisle. Knowing that, P&G has wisely decided to ignore what they heard about dumb consumers.

We used to be one nation, undivided, under three networks, three car companies and two brands of toothpaste for all.

What, is AMC forgotten so soon? PBS too?

More importantly, we all used to go to public school! (Unless we were black, then we went to the other school!) And we took the benefits Social Security gave us, and liked it!

Is it just me, or is there a flavor of "walked 10 miles thru the snow to school, uphill both ways" to all these too-many-choices arguments?

Tom West wrote: There are plenty of examples where simply the existence of new options makes the previous state unacceptable. In all likelihood, nobody is pining for pineapple flavoured toothpaste. But remove it once offered and many will feel unhappy.

Damn you Tom West, now how am I to live without pineapple flavored toothpaste?

I have had it with you "there is too much choice" and "people were happier in the good old days" types. If you really feel that way, go buy a piece of land somewhere and till it, I will keep my 300 brands of toothpaste, nigh-telepathy cell phone, and G**gle.

This new abhorrence of choice is just sour grapes because the free market has soundly kicked collectivist ideologies' ass from day one.

Virginia Postrel takes this telling quote from worrier Christopher Lasch: "[progress is]...not the promise of a secular utopia that would bring history to a happy ending but the promise of steady improvement with no foreseeable ending at all." What he sees as a bug is really a feature, and a damn good one.

Tom West,

Sorry, but I see no sign that our would-be rulers have gotten any wiser or more selfless in the last 40, 20, or even 10 years. I think I'll take my own chances with choice, thanks all the same.

We didn't need a central authority because the means to self-destructiveness through commercial availability wasn't there for the most part (and those that were available were illegal).

Meaning, what? The devil made me buy it?

The last time all humans spent nearly all of their time and resources on sustenance was several thousand years ago, and they still found opportunity to ferment nearly anything organic into some sort of alcohol, or else set it on fire and inhale the fumes.

Self-destruction through availability -- commerical or self-discovered, legal or otherwise -- has always been with us. The fact that some people evince more self-control in such matters is another thing that has always been with us.

Advertising, cleverly employed, can have a significant influence on human behavior by planting images and suggestions. Yet the presence of, say, television fast-food advertising narrated by slender, attractive models does not arrive in tandem with a carjacker who forces your fat, hypertensioned butt into the McDonalds drive-through line. An image of freshly-fried potato slivers may remind you that the option is available, and even wet your appetite for something unhealthy, but the choice yet lies in whether you act on that urge, or grab an apple out of the refrigerator.

PJ/Maryland, thanks for posting the Lileks link. I should have done it myself.

Meaning, what? The devil made me buy it?

Indeed, social recognition of the fact that self-control is not sufficient to stop a significant number of people from damaging themselves can be found in the fact that we (and almost every other successful society) has found it necessary to ban powerful narotics from general use.

As a society, we already recognize the fact that human physiology and psychological makeup does drive some significant portion of the populace to self-destructive acts. And unless you favour legalization of all drugs, you implicitly recognize that as well.

The matter is a continuum were we weigh the cost to society vs. the advantage of less restrictions. Hard drugs are on one far ends, and I'd have to say excess choice is on the other far end (in terms of making life worse rather than better, too much choice is pretty small potatoes in either positive or negative and the cost of regulating too much choice would be idiotically expensive).

But there's lots of middle ground where we commercial change has not made us happier as a whole, and has exacted a cost.

Until Glide dental floss was invented, I couldn't floss some of my back molars because they were so tight they ripped the old style stringy floss to threads. My husband has arthitis in his fingers and wrapping floss around them is painful. So he uses the little floss picks. If we were stuck with the original tooth twine, we'd both end up needing dentures before long. I wonder how many choices we'd have?

Half Sigma: "I'm fortunate living in a blue area of the country. In a red area there are often nothing but chain restaurants."

Wha?? OK, maybe your own favorite restaurants (which are not chains) aren't available in Red America (such as it is), but by NO means are red-staters limited to chains - and red-staters' favorites aren't available in your area either, because they're also not chains. Best seafood place in Houston is a hole-in-the-wall Latino fish market with an upstairs seating area north of downtown, where you can order a whole red snapper, planked, surrounded by fiery-hot grilled shrimp that'll make you moan obscenely and eat until one wafer-thin mint will cause you to explode. Admittedly, that's Houston - but there's a breakfast place on the edge of Mesquite, TX, with these amazing beer-batter biscuits... a steak place in western Montana on the road (not even in a town but just along the road) coming from Spokane where the "small" steak is the size of a dinner plate and fork-tender... a restaurant in Minden, Nevada, where you can get pretty d*mn good Maine lobster any night of the week in a surprising linen-napkins setting... And here in the western Philly 'burbs, an officially "Red" area, one can even find a killer tamale for a buck in Kennett Square.

The thing is, and IIRC as Lileks said, if you go to a decent chain you can get the food you expect at a price you expect. If you've never been to the chain, at least you can be reasonably assured that the chicken is really chicken and everything will be thoroughly cooked in a kitchen that meets minimum health standards - which may not be true in the bluest of blue areas at a non-chain. If you try a one-off restaurant you've never been to, you're taking a chance on the chef's palate and the quality of the food. You may love it and come back again and again, and get to know the owner and encourage him/her to open a new restaurant closer to you because you've told all your friends about it and they all want to go but don't want to drive so far, and write to Conde Nast and tell them they have to come review it, etc., etc.... and that is how favorites are born.

And chains are likewise available, often with parking, in San Francisco AND Manhattan.

When Gilligan's Island was a huge hit, even among people who had never smoked pot, the other shows must have been awesomely bad. (Don't ask me for details, I try to forget things like that.)

OK, I'll do it. GI ran on CBS from 1964-67. In the fall of '64, it aired Fridays at 8:30, up against Lawrence Welk on ABC and a long-forgotten half-hour drama called "Kentucky Jones" on NBC. When KYJ flopped, NBC replaced it with "The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo." Yes, a cartoon. Cartoons were big in prime time in the 60s. (It also meant Jim Backus was competing against himself, as he played the millionaire Thurston Howell III on GI and the voice of Magoo!)

In the fall of '65, GI was moved to Thursdays at 8:00, against the old warhorse "Donna Reed Show" on ABC and the second half-hour of "Daniel Boone" on NBC. By mid-winter, ABC moved Donna to Saturday, and "Gidget" took its place. Feh.

Fall of 1966: another year, another night for GI, now on Mondays at 7:30, against a western called "Iron Horse" on ABC and "The Monkees" on NBC. Hey, hey!

Actually, "Gilligan's Island" was never really a "huge hit": against the less-than-blockbuster competition described above, it placed 18th among all primetime shows in 1964-65, 22nd in 1965-66, then out of the Top 30 in its final season. But of course it's been in syndication for four decades now; anyone born after 1960 or so has this program practically ingrained in their DNA.

Now, sit right back and you'll hear a tale...

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time."

The rule of law is the recurrent suspicion that people are basically stupid, are not experts in politics, and should not be allowed to rule their neighbours' life.

Get a grip, Jane !

This was almost the perfect NY Times Op-ed; afactual, ignorant of even the most basic concepts of economics, and including a reference to EB White. Mo Do might become as famous as another mediocre New Yorker; Wally Pipp.

For the record there were never only three car manufacturers. In my lifetime, in addition to the Big Three, there were Studebaker, Nash, Kaiser, Packard and probably a few I've forgotten.

You could buy a Volkswagon as early as 1949. In the 50s you could buy DKW, Renault, Fiat, Alpha, Austin Healey, MG, Jaguar, Triumph, Volvo, Mercedes. By the 60s; Saab, Rover, Toyota, Datsun (Nissan) BMW, Audi, Peugeot.

The same for toothpaste. Somewhere in the archives of the original version of this blog I related the story (related by Barbara Branden) about Ayn Rand's sister, who returned to Russia because she couldn't cope with all the different brands of TOOTHPASTE available in American stores.

As for the three networks, well...that was because of U.S. government policy, not markets.

Half Sigma: "I'm fortunate living in a blue area of the country. In a red area there are often nothing but chain restaurants."

I can only assume you've never actually been to a "red area" of the country. I've spent a lot of time in red counties in Michigan and Ohio, and I've never seen a place where the local restaurants didn't outnumber chains four or five to one. If there even was the one -- a lot of red areas are too small to have chain restaurants at all.

Response to the update... My money is on judicial authority. This over-choice "problem" won't be solved legislatively. However, some filmmaker out there is probably already working on "Super Confuse Me". Ironically, some laywer will have to decide who to actually sue and the venue in which to sue them! Haha.

Patrick - you forgot that it also includes one other ingredient of the archetypal NYTimes editorial (or Bruschetta Orthodoxy if you like) - paternalist elitism. It is important to condescend to the general (red state) populace and/or suggest that they don't behave in their own 'obvious' interests.

A commenter reminds me of one argument that Virginia Postrel did not make (surprisingly). By what authority will choices be limited? Who will have such power to limit choice, and how will they decide? Even scarier, how will those who argue that we were happier when we weren't aware of other choices keep us in this blissful state of ignorance? Just how Soviet a system are they wishing for? ... and thus, the EU.

Um, simply acknowledging that a change has not necessarily made people happier does not mean that one necessarily wants anything to be done about it. You can believe that forcing more choice on people doesn't make them happier without believing that something needs to be done about it.

Some things that may make us unhappy is an inevitabile outcome given our occasionally self-defeating desires combined with entrepeneur's willingness to fulfil them. It doesn't mean that there exists any solution to this "problem" is better than doing nothing at all. It also doesn't mean we should pretend that no difficulties exist.

Reminds me of someone who posted that since we weren't going to anything meaningful vis-a-vis global warming no matter what the situation, could people please stop talking about it.

There is one thing about alot of choices that annoys me. Its when a new product hits the shelves by the dozen. Like the low carb products about a year or two back. All of a sudden theres a million types of "wraps" and such, and I dont even know what a wrap looks like, let alone if I want to buy one. Companies have to do a better job of making the public aware of exactly what their new product is. There's the assumption that everyone knows whats being marketed, the reality is alot of shoppers aren't nearly as informed and maybe not even as bright as they think.

Tom West,

Some things that may make us unhappy is an inevitabile outcome given our occasionally self-defeating desires combined with entrepeneur's willingness to fulfil them. It doesn't mean that there exists any solution to this "problem" [that] is better than doing nothing at all. It also doesn't mean we should pretend that no difficulties exist.

Well, I'm with you there. Death exists, for example, and could be construed as a "difficulty," and yet so far there exists no solution to that particular "problem."

But you are also leaving out of account the difficulties you're introducing merely by discussing them. Seriously. Suppose you've always bought the same plain toothpaste, year after year, and then you read an article about people who are paralyzed by the myriad choices in the toothpaste aisle. Wouldn't that make you look at all the choices next time you shopped — take you, in fact, a step closer to "paralysis"?

"Forcing choice on people"?

Oh, how, uh, violent an image that is. I'm assuming that many of the people expressing their little mock-bewildered pose in this thread are over the age of ten and possess at least the minimum amount of basic literacy and numeracy?

How did you pass math classes? I mean, there were SO MANY NUMBERS to pick the answer from. How did you manage to choose the words to write your posts? Weren't you just awfully frustrated and overwhelmed by the sheer choice of words?

Poor, poor, you, victimized by too damn much freedom. Idiots.

My largest concern with too much choice is how much of the cost for retailers' purchasing of less marketable goods is tacked onto the base cost of more marketable goods? And how long will a retailer carry marginally marketable goods to appeal to a niche of consumers while effectively subsidizing the holding costs for these goods with surcharges on the goods that move faster?

Over time the invisible hand will equilibrize and specialty retailers and staple sellers will undercut their competition, it would seem. But there is the chance that, in order to lure in the affluent shopper, certain goods that do not sell strongly will be kept on the shelves and that waste factor will be tacked onto the costs for other goods sold in the store.

The rule of law is the recurrent suspicion that people are basically stupid, are not experts in politics, and should not be allowed to rule their neighbours' life.

I hadn't ever formulated it this way... I've always considered the rule of law to be the result of the persistent (rather than recurrent) conviction (rather than suspicion) that the best way to protect individual and property rights is to subject everyone, regardless of rank or position, to the same irritating inconveniences in support of those rights... Of course, you have to start from the position that individual and property rights are good things to have.

A foreign exchange student we had for a year had been raised in former East Germany - "current" East Germany until he was eleven. He showed us a picture of himself and about six friends sitting on a low wall, taken when he was maybe ten, and all seven boys were wearing identical shoes: red-and-black "bowling shoes" with thick white laces. He told us they'd been the only shoes available in his town. Never once did he hint that the hundreds of variations on the theme Shoe that he encountered while living with us, or even the somewhat smaller but still much-increased number he could now find back home, cost him an hour's sleep.

Rex:

But how many "affluent shoppers" are you talking about? In order for a mfr or a retailer to create or stock a specialty product aimed at these affluent shoppers, the whole affluent-shopper market has to be worth their while, doesn't it? Because otherwise they'll lose market share among their less affluent shoppers, who are price-sensitive and won't take too much "subsidy" of "luxe" products by the more normal product prices, and unless there are a lot of affluent shoppers, the mfr/retailer won't be able to make up what they lose.

Clear as mud... Maybe an example? We just shopped for a gas grill. Each brand seemed to have its own not-too-broad price range. CharBroil, for instance, seemed to cater to the decent-to-good griller who might be a Bobbie Flay aficionado but can't or doesn't want to drop a grand on a grill. Dacor, on the other hand, was - based on prices I saw - completely uninterested in that guy and wanted the guy who has an "outdoor room," or maybe two, overlooking Napa Valley rather than a patio or deck overlooking the back yard. A retailer might have to make choices about how high (or low) end it wants to go, given limited shelf space, but manufacturers seem to me to build their brand in a particular range and stick to it. Or, like the whole carmaker thing, split their brand into different ranges, each of which is substantially answerable only to itself.

I also think the "subsidy" might run the other way instead: the less price-sensitive consumers might, unbeknownst to themselves, be paying up for their version of the product in order to bring the price down on the lower-end version that'll bring in the volume. ?? Maybe?? All this is seat-of-the-pants, my being illiterate in the economic realm.

As a society, we already recognize the fact that human physiology and psychological makeup does drive some significant portion of the populace to self-destructive acts. And unless you favour legalization of all drugs, you implicitly recognize that as well.

I recognize that government exists at a level beyond mere regulations-of-the-commons because, in government's absence, people generallly will not govern themselves (IOW, I'm not a libertarian, and I find the anarcho-capitalists a source of high comedy).

BUT -- I do NOT recognize that this decision to look out for number one is anything other than a concious choice. Certain items may be so potentially destructive that society agrees to limit or ban their use (e.g. narcotics, as you noted). And for items with addictive properties, once a person has started, quitting may be extremely difficult.

But the first decision to surrender is generally a conscious one, with or without advertising, and to start applying bans "for your own good, folks" as broadly as [insert aggrieved party here] thinks is applicable is, ultimately, to ban everything.

My largest concern with too much choice is how much of the cost for retailers' purchasing of less marketable goods is tacked onto the base cost of more marketable goods? And how long will a retailer carry marginally marketable goods to appeal to a niche of consumers while effectively subsidizing the holding costs for these goods with surcharges on the goods that move faster?

They seem to have dealt with that pretty effectively already. Premium goods inevitably cost more per ounce, and the price disparity is lightly disguised through creative packaging.

Example: Go take a look at your supermarket's snack aisle. You will probably find a Pepperidge Farms-branded chocolante and shortbread confection called the "Milano." An old-fashioned style upright paper package sits there, nice and pretty, and costs roughly $3.50. Nearby, you will find something called "Chips Ahoy!" This simple plastic package also costs about $3.50, and the product inside is considerably less delicate than the Milano, but by weight it contains something like three times as much consumable product.

Voila.

Are there really people who favor less choice? I suppose that is possible, though I find it difficult to imagine. For those of you who think you fall in this group, I suggest you try it. Catch a bus to some off the map destination, get a room, spend a few days, see how you like it. There are thousands of such places in America. I grew up in one. I chose to get the hell out as soon as possible. But give it a try. You might just like it. You might decide to get a job as a farm hand or grocery clerk and never want to leave. Your choice.

All you need to know about the three networks era:

Beverly Hillbillies was the highest rated show of 1962-1964. One of its episodes is the highest rated (Nielsen) half-hour show ever televised. (MASH and Cheers final episodes were higher rated, but those episodes were longer than 1/2 hour.)

Here's a great article about consumer choice, particularly in the realm of entertainment. More choice benefits the consumer, but it can also benefit the retailer.

"The Long Tail"

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

Let's not forget that the vast majority of new products introduced fail. The consumers voted with their dollars to do away with the choice offered. So, in a free market, the seller bears the cost of failure. If we let government offer the choices, what happens to failures? They get inshrined forever (e.g. Social Security) and the
taxpayer bears the cost of failure. (No, the politicians who brought you the failed product don't get kicked out of office - they spin the failure on blame it on foreigners, degenerate morals, greedy capitalists, or some other patsys.

If you're not happy with the number of choices, you remain free to pick one at random. Maybe you'll be happy with it, in which case, yay...you won. Or maybe you'll be unhappy, in which case maybe, if you're really really perceptive and more than a little humble, you'll realize why the rest of us prefer to have lots of options to choose from.

This thread is funny. It assumes the consumer can't see through the marketing bs and judge the products real worth. But you may have a point, theres nothing funnier then watching someone complain about $2.50 a gallon gas while they are drinking $8.00 a gallon bottled water.

That's only funny if people drink the same amount of bottled water per day as the gas they use in their cars.

What? You mean people can't drink $2.50/gal gas in lieu of $8.00/gal purified water?

"theres nothing funnier then watching someone complain about $2.50 a gallon gas while they are drinking $8.00 a gallon bottled water."

I dunno. I once watched Chuck Schumer hold a press conference in which he denounced the exploitatively high price of breakfast cereals while drinking bottled water all the way through.

I thought that was pretty funny.

I'm with Tom West on this. The discussion here seems to be set up as an either/or: you're either for more consumer choice, or you're a statist asshole who wants to Stalinize everyone else's life.

But why can't we take another tack entirely? Why not recognize that some if not many people -- OK, maybe not you specifically -- sometimes do find it more than a little bewildering to be living in such consumer cornucopia conditions? Why shouldn't stopping at this point for a few seconds not be legit? Why not just discuss what we (or many other people) find contempo life to be like without instantly advancing to the policy-decision stage?

Michael, it's not wrong to discuss it at all. Certainly there is a downside to voluminous choices. Hence brand names and Consumer Reports to lighten one's workload.

The problem is that whenever someone suggests limiting choices, the unspoken truism is that some unelected elites or the state will do the choosing for you. For your own good.

Hence the antipathy.

I read the Stacy Schiff column and didn't see any hint that she'd like to see choices limited. She's just saying: whew, it gets to be a lot.

Hence my small suspicion of those who jump all over columns like hers. Do they simply not want it noticed that some people find consumer choice overwhelming? If so, why not?

Michael, there's certainly nothing wrong with the observation, but where to from there? Griping for the sake of griping?

My suggestion is that those who are paralyzed by choice commit "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe" to memory, or just close their eyes and point randomly. If you really don't know which toothpaste you "need," then either of those two methods will lead you to a suitable tooth cleanser.

As for myself, my teeth naturally border on yellow, a trait which is amplified by a tremendous coffee and tea habit. The only type of toothpaste I've found that can keep pace is a baking-soda-and-peroxide formula. Thanks to proliferation of choice, such an option is usually present on the shelf.

Thus the griping by indecisive lackwits is vaguely threatening, because if they actually get an audience, the best option for me may be one of the first to go, since it is among the less-common whitening formulae available. As for Schiff's column in particular...prose-wise it was a gem, but said gem was torpedoed by illogical dillemas and non-sequitur. To name one, how do voter turnout statistics have any meaningful relationship to consumer choice? Even in satire?

Anony-mouse -- I didn't like Schiff's column either, but it isn't guilty of what many in this thread are semi-accusing it of, which is trying to Stalinize the market. And sure, I think there's lots of value in pausing over the "what it's like" part of the discussion before roaring ahead into the "what must be done" part. It's interesting in its own right, and it helps people get oriented. If the free market is about being able to participate as you want -- well, when you're feeling blurry and confused (ie., overwhelmed by huge amounts of choice), how do you figure out what you want? Comparing notes about questions like these is important in a free market, and (IMHO anyway) free market fans should encourage these discussions, not try to scold them away. Your rap about how you like the toothpaste you like is important. It's interesting. It's part of how you contend. If some people say they find ever-growing-choice overwhelming, then that ought to be taken note of, not suppressed or hustled out of existence. Perhaps someone will find your way of coping helpful. Perhaps you'll learn something from someone else. Perhaps someone will quiet down and realize he might shop the way you do. In turn, that'll have an effect on the market -- the market will become more (and not less) responsive to what people really want, which in some cases may be stores that carry fewer items on the shelf. Which is a way of freeing up the market, not narrowing it down. One person might shop where there are 99 kinds of toothpaste on display, but someone else might prefer to shop where only 5 are available. That's a freer, not a tighter, market. But how can we get to these points without first allowing the "what's it like for you?" conversation to occur?

Michael your point's well taken. In defense of reacting -

1) This is the NYTimes, who began the current anti-choice campaign among the bien pensant with Barry Schwartz' editorial, which clearly *does* advocate policies to restrict choice. Anything I see in these pages now provokes a 'here we go again' reaction. It's the spoonful of sugar..er..nutra-sweet to go with take-your-medicine progressive/statist policies.

2) I'm not sure 'conversations' are what's necessary. Just don't frequent places that provide confusing presentations and choices. I don't think the Nations' editorial pages are the place for cutting edge market research. The sample isn't significant or representative.

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