After surveying 3,000 people on their attitudes to choice, Bradley says: “I believe most people want the state to make these big decisions for them.” This is not only because, in many cases, consumers are well aware that the choice of, say, school or hospital is – unlike a commercial selection of jams or phones or holidays – an utter fiction. The process of choosing is itself oppressive when the issues are life-changing, relating to health, money or careers.
“The last thing people want is having more choices thrust on them,” Bradley says. “They don’t want to be perpetually having to make decisions.” Regrettably, pending a general roll-out of the “no decision about me without me” principle, that choice does not appear to be recognised in the array of acceptable responses.
Okay, on a free market there is a simple solution: create agencies that handle all of these “tough” decisions for you so you don’t have to exert the amount of energy it takes to think and purchase a good or service
I,Ryan , that was great and something I didn’t consider
Better yet, let the agency approach them, tell them that taking their money coercively is really in their best interest, and then after being riddled with corruption, ponzi schemes, and lying s.o.bs, they can get away with it!
You hit the nail on the head, people in fact dislike to make choices all the time, which are pressed upon them by the markets. I get sick all day having to judge and evaluate all the market info and disinfo that is daily being promoted to us. I think less choice, unless the pre-made choices are demonstratebly better, is better. Less choises mean less worries, and more time to put into things that really do matter.
It’s only in the fiction of fundamentalist free market proponents, that such a system is ever favoured by real people.
They fantasize that people are able to make rational decissions about what products are better. The studies of behaviour of people (neuro-psychological studies) have again and again demonstrated that this is not true. A famous example is people having to make a choice between 4 identical socks. Even when the socks were exactly identical, people still made a choice (in most cases the last or pre-last one) and argumented why they choose that one. We have however in reality other motivation for picking that sock, instead of the identical others, already made for us by our subconsciousness, while our consciouss (verbalized) choice, was in most cases “just a story we made up” to defend the choice we already had been making. The process that really goes on in our brain is very different then most people tend to believe. The brain in fact has not some kind of central focus points where all the different choices come in, and one is selected for rational reasons. Instead, different parts of the brain compete with each other, and result in one part winning the game, and turning off the other parts. Only is seldom cases there is a near exact match and no definitive winner, which causes us to have erratic accidental behaviour (like trying to do two different things at the same time, leading in both attempts to fail).
Free choice and free will in fact are fictions, the reality of our behaviour is very different from that.
I hit the nail on the head? I was just having fun with that response.
And I agree that some people don’t like having to make tough decisions and would probably delegate that option to someone who they think has authority to help with that decision or make it for them. For example I like to have options to choose from and often spend a lot of time doing research on something before I make my decision. This often leads to me having doubts but it’s fun for me.
Okay, non-federal, it was kind of tongue-in-cheek, but if you insist…
Something like that could potentially happen on a market. If people decide they would rather do something else than compare defense, legal, grocery, and clothing prices and select certain ones, then maybe something would arise that would do all of their thinking for them and guarantee that their experience will be better with them doing all of the worrying. Instead of comparing prices and advantages of 30 different sectors of the economy, you just compare 1 sector of the economy (decision making agencies). Whatever floats people’s boats.
Obviously this is highly facetious and I doubt anybody would agree to it. But if push came to shove, there’s no reason why something like that could not theoretically arise on the market.
First off, what you are advocating is nothing short of totalitarianism. Just be sure to accept this definition going forward. Regulation of behavior by telling people they don’t really know what they want has no limit. The limit extends from legal codes to which flavor of ice cream they “really” prefer. No free market advocate is saying that human beings make rational choices 100% of the time. The idea is that when their decisions are tied closer to their own preference sets and when their decisions have more of an effect on their lives, the motivation in making accurate decisions increases. The problem is, who decides which bureaucrat is most efficient at making other people’s choices for them? Are they not under the same delusion of not being able to make rational choices? Are they elected? If so, they’re being elected by dumb, moronic, automatons who don’t know which sock they “really” want.
“If people decide they would rather do something else than compare defense, legal, grocery, clothing, prices and select certain ones, then maybe something would arise that would do all of their thinking for them and guarantee that their experience will be better with them doing all of the worrying.”
ALL of their thinking for them? What happens when this central planning board (which it is) decides for everyone that nobody can take back their decision making power? And how does it guarantee that everyone’s experience will be better if it can’t perform economic calculation?