Comment by bhauer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhauer | Hacker News Reader

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Therein is the problem with all of these prescriptive theoreticians who say we would be happier with fewer choices. As someone who is routinely "Consumer A" in nearly all walks of life, I would find it inordinately frustrating and harmful for society to offer fewer—potentially no—choices. It would be stifling, and I think worse still, such a monoculture would encourage shunning of those who want something other than the singular option.

I'm all for assisting Consumer C by way of tools like Consumer Reports, and modern evolutions of the same notion of helping fill information gaps. But I rail against the idea that choices should be eliminated to curtail the stress of Consumer C.

No surprise: I am not an Apple consumer. In fact, I routinely write about how every technology company is not yet making the devices and technologies I want in my life (e.g., [1]). Choice is absolutely not hurting progress toward my ideal, though. Choice is, along with purchasing power and my (small) voice, among the few forces that allow me to exert a proportionate "steering" effect on the industry.

Studying the purported satisfaction gap of Consumer C versus the free market and concluding—as the very title of the article does—that it is definitely "stressing us [all] out" rings of thinly-veiled authoritarianism. And that is bad. Luckily for me, for the time being, many manufacturers and vendors have elected to (mostly) ignore these researchers. For example, most of the US food industry continues to give me a broad spectrum of choices from everything from breakfast cereal, to iced tea, to ice cream. I hope their own market research has revealed the combined voices of Consumer A & B are too loud to suppress in an ill-advised effort to satisfy C. Help guide C, but don't assume A & B do not exist.

[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao

@bhauer, I agree. My point is: give the user the opportunity to decide how much effort to put in the process. In a digital environment, this means giving her millions of alternatives, but helping her to prune them based on some principles that derive from the cognitive sciences. For instance, the faceted navigation allows the consumer to eliminate the alternatives she is not interested in. This is the B consumer, who knows what is important for her (e.g. "a 256GB SSD and 16GB ram"). If you are the consumer C (and everybody of us is in such situation when we have to buy something and we are not expert at all) can be helped using the best sellers (see Amazon.com), the suggested for you, the ratings of other consumers, and so on. In a physical environment, however, you can not filter, and cutting the less selling products helps the majority of customers in the decision making effort, even if this means giving less choice.

You're attacking a straw man. There's a difference between a limited choice offered by a particular company and a limited choice in the marketplace. No one is arguing for the latter.

OP used Apple as an example so let's stick with it. If someone wants to buy a laptop to browse the internet, use e-mail, organize photos etc. they learn very quickly that MacBook Air is for them. Then they need to pick a screen size (11" or 13"), decide if they need more storage than in the base model and they're done. Apple is essentially a curator, which is a very valuable service. But we would be much worse off if we only had Apple clones on the market.

People around here know much more about computers and smartphones than an average consumer so these examples are not convincing. But consider microwave ovens. Recently I had a displeasure to look for a new one. If some company decided to scrap their entire line and settle on two or three base models with clear differences between each, it would be a great benefit to many costumers.

There's a difference between a limited choice offered by a particular company and a limited choice in the marketplace. No one is arguing for the latter.

From the article:

"...too many options create anxiety and leave us less satisfied. Could one answer lie in a return to the state monopolies of old?"

"consider jeans. Once there was only one kind, says Schwartz – the ill-fitting sort that, fingers-crossed, would get less ill-fitting once he wore and washed them repeatedly. Now, what with all the options (stone-washed, straight-leg, boot-fit, distressed, zip fly, button fly, slightly distressed, very distressed, knee-holed, thigh-holed, knee and thigh-holed, pretty much all holes and negligible denim), Schwartz feels entitled to expect that there is a perfect pair of jeans for him. Inevitably, though, when he leaves the store, he is likely to be less satisfied now than when there were hardly any options."

"Corbyn’s political philosophy suggests, what we need is not more choice, but less; not more competition but more monopolies."

The other point that this sort of thinking misses is that first time buyers are often just not educated. For instance, I don't know how many times in my life I decided I needed X. I bough X thinking it would fulfill my needs. After talking to the X owners group, I realize that my variation of X doesn't do this other thing that I now find would be very useful. Now I want X' that has this feature.

This goes on and on. However, unless a company makes X''' that has every feature available in the known universe, I have no shot of finding what I really want/need.

This also boils down to good advice I got long ago. Buy once, cry once. Meaning: do you research, determine what you need and buy that thing, not the entry level thing.

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