re: #101 wrenchwench

Read Virginia Postrel on how we benefit from a wide variety of choices. And how it makes things more efficient.

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

Who woulda thunk it? Here we are, in the early years of the twenty-first century, being driven bonkers by the staggering array of consumer goods from which we must choose. Choosing something as (seemingly) simple as shampoo can force us to wade through dozens, even hundreds, of brands. We are, the author suggests, overwhelmed by choice, and that’s not such a good thing. Schwartz tells us that constantly being asked to make choices, even about the simplest things, forces us to “invest time, energy, and no small amount of self-doubt, and dread.” There comes a point, he contends, at which choice becomes debilitating rather than liberating. Did I make the right choice? Can I ever make the right choice? It would be easy to write off this book as merely an extended riff on that well-worn phrase “too much of a good thing,” but that would be a mistake. Despite a tendency toward highfalutin language (“the counterfactuals we construct can be tilted upward”), Schwartz has plenty of insightful things to say here about the perils of everyday life.