Consumer vertigo

I am grateful for the opportunity to offer some comments on Virginia Postrel's thoughtful but critical article ("Consumer Vertigo," June) about my recent book, The Paradox of Choice.

I have encountered two major criticisms of my book from libertarians. Some say things like "If people are too stupid to take advantage of freedom of choice, then the hell with them." I hope that when those people ask their children for help figuring out Medicare prescription drug choices, their kids are more sympathetic. Others say things like "It's a pity that too much choice causes people to suffer, but freedom is so important that it is worth suffering to enhance it."

My own response was different. I took the evidence to indicate that perhaps we can't just assume that increased choice means increased freedom. Perhaps we need to find out what kinds of choices, in what areas of life, actually promote freedom, and what kinds of choices restrict it. Perhaps we need to stop assuming that adding options is Pareto-efficient, and instead try to measure the social harm that too many choices can create. Perhaps the relation between choice and freedom should be a topic for serious empirical inquiry instead of being settled by assumption. Finally, though my book does not discuss social policy, perhaps we should ask, whenever a social policy is proposed that is designed to enhance collective welfare simply by giving people choice, whether the choices involved actually will enhance collective welfare after the costs of increased choice are counted.

Now a few small and specific points:

1) I do not discount the benefits that some derive from increased choice. I simply want us to appreciate that the benefits of increased choice for some may entail costs for many.

2) Postrel asserts that people adapt pretty well to all the choice they face, in large part by relying on habits. People certainly adapt, but where is the evidence that they adapt well? Which habits can you rely on when the products and services being offered keep changing?

3) I see no evidence that the marketplace has any interest in helping people solve the choice problem. The marketplace may get interested in helping us by simplifying what it offers, but only if we demand it.

4) Postrel calls it an "obvious truth" that many options can be overwhelming. It may be obvious now, but it has been invisible rather than obvious (both to rational choice theorists and to marketers) until now.

5) Postrel asserts that I never consider whether I would like to go back to a world with fewer options. Actually, I do consider it, and I would--as would many, many people who have corresponded with me.

6) Finally, Postrel describes my book as offering a "scientific-seeming alternative to public policies that expand choice" (my italics). First, Postrel's article accepts virtually all of the "seeming" points I make in my book but quarrels with the implications--so why that dismissive "seeming"? Second, scientists are the least likely people to use the word "scientific" as an honorific; they know better than anyone how today's truths can become tomorrow's artifacts. But scientists do honor evidence. And my book tries to substitute evidence--fallible and incomplete though it is--for assumption and assertion.

Barry Schwartz

Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social

Theory and Social Action

Swarthmore College

Swarthmore, PA

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