Posted on 10/22/2015 2:11:08 PM PDT by RightCenter
Once upon a time in Springfield, the Simpson family visited a new supermarket. Monstromart’s slogan was “where shopping is a baffling ordeal”. Product choice was unlimited, shelving reached the ceiling, nutmeg came in 12lb boxes and the express checkout had a sign reading, “1,000 items or less”. In the end the Simpsons returned to Apu’s Kwik-E-Mart. In doing so, the Simpsons were making a choice to reduce their choice. It wasn’t quite a rational choice, but it made sense. In the parlance of economic theory, they were not rational utility maximisers but, in Herbert Simon’s term, “satisficers” – opting for what was good enough, rather than becoming confused to the point of inertia in front of Monstromart’s ranges of products.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Perhaps, Corbyn’s political philosophy suggests, what we need is not more choice, but less; not more competition but more monopolies. But before you counter with something along the lines of “Why don’t you go and live in North Korea, pinko?” consider this: Paypal founder Peter Thiel argues that monopolies are good things and that competition, often, doesn’t help either businesses or customers. “In the real world outside economic theory, every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot. Monopoly is therefore not a pathology or an exception. Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.” Competition, in short, is for losers.
That, of course, doesn’t mean that successful capitalists like Thiel would be supporting Corbyn in his plan to recreate the state monopolies of yore or submit schools once more to local education control, but it does mean the rhetoric of choice and competition is at least being challenged and not only from the political left.
“At least we are talking about a political and economic choice,” says Salecl, “and are not simply following the ‘desires’ of the market.” Perhaps: if she’s right about that, then we are opting for something we haven’t done for a long time.
I saw a program on Costco and their CEO made a point of talking about how they deliberately limit choices because it encourages people to buy.
For instance they usually only have one or two brands of peanut butter because even though there’s a whole pallet full of peanut butter in front of you the fact that there’s just two brands makes you think that peanut butter is scarce so you go ahead and buy it.
Freedom is always stressful to the liberal thug.
Brutal oppression is the salve.
Freedom of Choice, is what you’ve got.
Freedom from Choice, is what you want.
-DEVO
“But the idea that choice is bad for us flies in the face of what we’ve been told for decades.”
LOL. An academic justification of the Bernie Sanders “one-state-issued-deodorant” and one state issued tampon theory.
What the author doesn’t understand is that time is part of consumer choices. I could spend an infinite amount of time making the perfect choice. But many would rather spend 5 seconds making a choice that’s just OK (husbands at grocery stores, for example).
So the stores referred to are selling time and convenience in addition to deoderent. Consumers may prefer to trade off convenience for extra choices. If so, the store will be successful.
Push limiting choice too far (Bernie Sanders) and you get neither time nor convenience but “State Issued Deodorant #1”.
So differentiating a company offering in a market where there are many competitors is a monopoly? The fact that there are many viable competitors proves it's not a monopoly.
As a social or economic theory, this idea is pure rubbish.
Ultimately, this sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo to justify the government stepping in to limit our choices for our own good.
Meanwhile, the only real monopoly is the government.
A few super-cheap options for each of a few common categories. Great place to shop, in & out in minutes.
“the fact that there’s just two brands makes you think that peanut butter is scarce so you go ahead and buy it”
More like: if you want peanut butter, you’ve got two choices so make up your mind already.
In most other stores you’re likely to get caught up in all the differentiators, trying to figure out which combination is perfect - and if there isn’t a physical match to the perfect theoretical combination, you then spend more time deciding what to compromise on.
If Bernie wins the Democrat nomination, he will be a sitting duck in debates and ads for any Republican nominee with half a brain:
Bernie, you said: “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.”
So let me get this straight, Bernie . . . you're going to set up an agency or a czar to determine how many kinds of deodorant, and how much of it, can be permitted by law?
Will you do the same with toilet paper? I mean look how many brands of toilet paper there are. Shall we just set up a monopoly of one company, or better yet, a government monopoly, to produce exactly the right amount of toilet paper, or otherwise limit the amount of toilet paper that gets produced?
Are you going to hire Michael Gruber to be the guy who figures out the correct amount of toilet paper that people should be allowed to use? He's smart. He teaches at MIT. So why shouldn't we put him in charge of figuring out exactly how much of everything should or shouldn't be produced for the American people?
Have you been to socialist Venezuela lately, Bernie? They seem to have solved the problem of too many toilet paper brands. Because right now there is no toilet paper to be had at all in socialist Venezuela."
So tell me Bernie, what exactly will you do to feed starving children by reducing the amount of toilet paper we have in this country? And by the way, when you close all the toilet paper companies, how will the people who used to work at them feed their own starving children?
Bernie? . . . .
I make my consumer choices based on quality and price....
I go with the items I am familiar with...
No stress, no confusion, no doubts if I made a bad choice...
It’s really that simple....
If the wife makes the choice, I don’t interfere.....
I may be a simple man, but I’m not dumb....
Golly gee wiz. I guess we otta ask the government make our choices for us like Michelle Obama does for my kids school lunch.
I shop in a similar manner. No stress here.
This story gets recycled once a year. Choice and competition are good. Monopolies more often than not lead to poor quality. Comcast cable service in my area was horrible until they had to start competing with Verizon. Suddenly my Comcast service improved by leaps and bounds.
Oh, wah. Life is soooo hard. /s
I would always rather have a choice than be told what I must have.
Choice paralysis is well known. The human brain really doesn’t like having more than 3 options, it gets confused, the brain likes to be able to chunk things up Goldilocks style: too much one way, too much the other way, just right. With many options the brain panics and thinks it’ll never find “just right”. Try it out in a section of the grocery store you don’t normally frequent, go buy stewed tomatoes if you don’t normally, the first thing that will happen is you get confused. You’ll find stewed and whole, stewed and peeled, stewed and peeled and chunked, and all 3 of those in low salt, and with Tabasco, and 5 different brands. And you’ll probably just stand there for a couple of minutes thinking “I just wanted stewed tomatoes, why is it so complicated”. Or pickles, holy crow have pickles gotten complicated.
You can also see it in businesses. In most business categories we don’t have room for more than 3 major chains, sometimes 2. Everything was nice and smooth in the world of office supplies with Depot and Max then up came Staples and things got weird and Depot and Max merged but they still kept separate stores, and then it turns out you can get your office supplies from Amazon and Depot/Max and Staples are taking on water and closing stores.
We really don’t like choice.
Shopped there for lunch today. Got a loaf of bread, can of tomato soup, onions, tuna fish, cheddar cheese, all the fixings for a nice tuna melt meal (I already had mayo), for under 3 bucks.
You can’t beat that nowadays!
Oops, my mistake, it actually came in a little under 6 bucks today. My lunch from aldi yesterday was under 3 bucks. Guess I splurged today :)
The government taking over and making choices for you is not a means of reducing your stress, it's a means of increasing their control. And that's what this "ideology" of less choice is really all about.
Yeah, tell my wife to pick a paint color... Or, give her a menu at a Greek diner...
As always, the market will find a happy medium.
My local grocery store is smaller and has fewer choices. But it is closer, and cheaper, and most of the time I can get what I want, or at least something close to it.
When I want something specific, I drive the extra miles to the Mega-shop, pay a little more, and get what I want. They’re happy to take my money, too.
Capitalism rules.
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