Too Many Choices?

My wife is from Texas. When I was stationed in a distant location, she would write home and ask for a "care package" of essentials, including Ro-Tel tomatoes, an essential ingredient in chili con queso. There was never any confusion. Go to the store, find the canned tomato section and pick out one or more cans of Ro-Tel tomatoes.

No more. Now we have choices. There are at least four recipes of Ro-Tel tomatoes. Plus Ro-Tel tomato sauces. I have to read the labels. Before, if we wanted to spice up the con queso, we could add stuff to the tomatoes: a bit of lime juice, some chopped up cilantro, maybe some more jalapenos.

What if none of the four recipes is exactly what I want? Then I can add spices, just like I used to.

Am I happier? Not necessarily. Has life improved now that the various recipes are canned by Nebraska food conglomerate ConAgra instead of some small outfit in Texas?

Is it possible to have too many choices?

Take a look at the rest of the cans in the tomato section. Several different brands. All offer canned, peeled, whole tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes (with and without peppers), reduced sodium tomatoes, tomatoes with and without basil, plum tomatoes, round tomatoes. More labels to read.

How many years has it been since the US Supreme Court decided I need more choices in my telephone service? I stubbornly stayed with AT&T. I can't have them for land line, but my wireless and e-mail service are with AT&T.

I know people who change their wireless service at the slightest whiff of a possibly better deal. I prefer stability. I still get occasional e-mails from people I haven't heard from in decades.

Works for me.

The problem is, I feel afflicted, not freed, by the multiplicity of choices I have to make. All these choices appear to have been inflicted upon us by the children of Tom Brokaw's "greatest generation." I have a hard time accepting that characterization. I think the baby boomers are arguably the worst generation. Self-centered. Not all of them. Some of our children fall in that cohort. They aren't self centered. But many are and they have dominated markets and dominated intellectual and political discourse for too long.

We hear a lot of assertion of rights. Currently it's about "our second amendment rights." We hear very little discussion about obligations.

Society is the poorer for the absence of such discourse.

All is not lost. At least one author has undertaken a thoughtful examination of choices and markets. He is a Canadian scientist, and I just came across a link to the first chapter of his new book, No One Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart. Check it out.