The Myth of Choice_ Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits - Kent Greenfield [11]
Not everyone will see their desire for extra tomatoes on a Whopper as self-expression. Some people might, though, and the campaign’s point is worth emphasizing: Choice is in.
America’s fixation on choice is apparent whenever you turn on the television. My cable provider gives me hundreds of channels, augmented by hundreds of additional viewing options on demand. DirecTV tells me that isn’t enough, that its satellite service can give me even more channels—they call it their CHOICE ULTIMATE Package. If that doesn’t satisfy me, I can use my Netflix subscription to order from more than one hundred thousand DVDs, several of which I can have at home at any one time. If I can’t wait for the DVD to arrive in the mail, I can choose among thousands of Netflix films to watch instantly on my computer or Internet-enabled television. And if that’s not enough, there is always Hulu, which offers thousands of TV shows, movies, and even commercials for free viewing on my computer. A popular advertisement for Hulu starred Alec Baldwin, who promised “more of those cerebral gelatinizing shows you want, anytime, anywhere, for free.”
The grocery store where my wife and I sometimes shop, Whole Foods Market, offers perhaps twenty kinds of apples, some organic, some not so. There are hundreds of different kinds of cheese available. Milk, a relatively straightforward product, is offered in organic and non-organic; skim, 1 percent, 2 percent, and whole; lactose-free or not; soy or cow; chocolate or white. The variety of choice is remarkable. Once, as I stood befuddled in front of the pita chip section, scanning the shelf to locate my wife’s preferred whole wheat, low-fat variety, I heard a man ask his wife: “Did you get the agave nectar?”
Not everyone, of course, lives near such a market or has the inclination and the coin to buy organic apples for their kid’s lunch or agave nectar to sweeten their tea. But there is no doubt that the modern grocery shopper expects a wide range of choices, even if they never take advantage of them. Food Lion, though not as fancy as Whole Foods, also focuses its advertisements on the benefits of choice. A recent Food Lion television ad claimed that “Options are good. And when you shop for groceries you sure have plenty to choose from.” Indeed, the notion that choice is good flourishes in grocery stores—the typical supermarket carries about forty-five thousand different items.2
It’s easy to see the benefits. People can satisfy their desires, no matter how precise and idiosyncratic. Greater satisfaction of desires presumably leads to greater happiness. And happiness, by definition, is good. No wonder “Have It Your Way” is the slogan that won’t die.
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The problems with choice are harder to see.
Providing choice is costly. I once dated a woman who was in charge of a line of men’s clothing for Levi Strauss & Co. The difference between profit and loss for her line was often determined by whether she had developed just enough variety of pattern, color, and cut to appeal to most shoppers, but not so much variety that the production costs swamped the profits. Once you have the choices you need, producing more is a dead loss.
Often, choice is unnecessary. Of the hundreds of TV channels I receive, most merely pose obstacles to my switching between college basketball games and reruns of House. I pay hundreds of dollars a year for channels I never watch. (Research shows that most people regularly watch only about 16 channels.)3 What’s worse, some of the channels I do watch I only like because they are there—my life would be none the poorer if I lost access to the Syfy channel. Sometimes people want something only when it’s there. Preference