On 2004-01-06, Fred Foldvary uttered: >> He says that as the number of choices we have grows (for products) we >> become less happy, > >Is he just guessing, or is there evidence for this?
I seem to have heard of some controlled experiments to this effect, in the psychological literature, so I think there might be a small grain of truth to the claim. (As usual, no cite. Take the grain of truth with a grain of salt.) But I also think the problem is elsewhere. Basically, lots of choices are only a problem when you habitually look back, mull over the opportunity cost, and start to hesitate with choice because costs are involved. That's a sure sign of a mindset where people refuse to understand that choices are by definition about not having it both ways. Some of the problem also comes from not acknowledging that sunk costs are indeed sunk, and that that's just fine. >From this perspective the idea that lots of choices are bad is simply a symptom of people's unwillingness to conceive of choice the way orthodox economics does. But what really makes me wonder is why these ideas are becoming so commonplace right now. Have people in fact been more economically savvy in the past, or what? And if they have, why the change? (It shouldn't come as a surprise that, as a libertarian, I'm prone to blaming creeping socialism for these sorts of things. ;) -- Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2