Choice is Good

Consumer Vertigo is about why having tons of choices is a great thing, even though most social critics would disagree. I agree with Postrel, choices are a great thing to have. We have so many choices, I don’t know what I would do if they all just went away one day. “Choice is everywhere, liberating to some but to others a new source of stress.”

We have so many different things to choose from, so many different options that the choices can be overwhelming at times, but mostly, only when you are stressed out about something else. Like, when I went to the store the other day, when I should have been studying for a test and writing a paper, but I needed tennis shoes that didn’t have holes in the sole, so I had to go, but could only be there for a certain amount of time. But when I got to the store they had so many different kinds of shoes, and none like the ones I was looking for, Converse like shoes, which frustrated me because I wanted to get what I wanted and I wanted them now. So I ended up not getting any shoes and just wearing the holey shoes until I had more time to look for the ones I really wanted. Like Postrel said, “people are in fact less likely to make a decision when they face too many alternatives.”

But on the other hand why do my grandparents, who live in a town of just a few hundred people, which only has a couple small antique stores and a convenience store, go on bus tours to malls in different parts of the state just to go shopping? Because they want choices. They want to be able to say ‘yes I want that shirt but not that one,’ even if they look exactly alike. They want variety. Like the author says, “people are different—in size and shape, in personality, in tastes, in values.” My grandparents, like most people, have different tastes than those who live in the town they live in, different from those people who own those shops that are in their town.

I too, like having many different choices. I love that I can go to the movie theatre and have the choice of two different romantic movies, a horror movie, a thriller, an action movie, and a comedy, all playing at the same time, but also throughout the day, sometime that would work for my schedule.

“Would you be able to go back to the world with fewer options?” I think that question kind of settles the whole articles argument for me. Even if I did think that choices were bad for us, I would never be able to go back to a time of one size fits all. We are so used to choice that going to one choice would just make everyone mad. So I think that we should just embrace the choices that we have and look at them as a good thing. What’s wrong with making up your own mind?