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.
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.
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.
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...
It’s not so much too much choice, but there is not enough choice in quality ... at least for me.
I find that having 15 different choices of all about the same quality (low, made in China) is not much of a choice.
Real choice would be the similar item made at vastly different levels of quality.
As with most things, it gets more interesting when you consider the exceptions to the rules. For example, a lot of products have brand names that are significantly more expensive than the generic variety, though they are exactly the same otherwise, even made in the same plant, just with different labels.
A great example of this is wine. The same wine, made from the same grapes at the same winery, in the same bottles with no difference but the labels. It is so common that some wineries use unusual and unique glass bottles so that people know that “their wine is their wine”.
And a lot of discount liquors are just water, ethanol, and flavorings. A lack of choice and a lot of choice amount to the same thing, just fewer labels to choose from.
Fruit juices are usually deoxygenated to extend their storage lives, stripping them of their flavor, color and odor. Then “fruit derived” artificial flavors and odors and colors are added. Perfume dumped into pulp water. This is why different brands taste different, but always taste the same for that brand.
It goes on and on. Choice, or lack thereof, is just a marketing gimmick.
OK, this is me dealing with a choice:
“Man, it might rain, I should take the Ron Cooper to the lake tonight instead of the Paramount, it has fenders. Naw, my Matt Chester, that bike is just fine whenever I ride it. Or maybe the Breezer, yeah, it has the right tires. I really should take the Cimarron to get ready for winter. Aw hell, I’ll just grab another beer and think on it.”