The Paradox of Choice

I like this talk by Barry Schwartz who challenges the freedom dogma




I like the closing remarks

If some of what enables people in our societies to make all of the choices we make were shifted to societies in which people have too few options, not only would those people's lives be improved, but ours would be improved also. This is what economists call a "Pareto-improving move." Income redistribution will make everyone better off -- not just poor people -- because of how all this excess choice plagues us. 

So to conclude. You're supposed to read this cartoon, and, being a sophisticated person, say, "Ah! What does this fish know? You know, nothing is possible in this fishbowl." Impoverished imagination, a myopic view of the world -- and that's the way I read it at first. 

The more I thought about it, however, the more I came to the view that this fish knows something. Because the truth of the matter is that if you shatter the fishbowl so that everything is possible, you don't have freedom. You have paralysis. If you shatter this fishbowl so that everything is possible, you decrease satisfaction. You increase paralysis, and you decrease satisfaction. 

Everybody needs a fishbowl. This one is almost certainly too limited -- perhaps even for the fish, certainly for us.But the absence of some metaphorical fishbowl is a recipe for misery, and, I suspect, disaster. Thank you very much.