Too Many Choices?

In the movie "The Hurt Locker" Sgt. James returns home from a tour in Iraq as the leader of an Explosive Ordinance Disposal team. One scene finds James standing in the cereal aisle of a grocery store, apparently bewildered by the endless choices. Recently I had a similar feeling standing in the potato chip aisle. From the front of the store to the back, a good 150 feet, nothing but potato chips, pretzels, tortilla chips and popcorn.

As Americans, we expect choice. Choice in chips, cars, computers.... almost everything. Furthermore, it is choice that drives innovation and competition. What motivation would there be to make a better (well, at least different) potato chip if it weren't for the opportunity to increase market share.

On the other hand though, the choice does not come without a cost. Some amount of choice provides competition, which, hopefully, keeps prices down. However, each time a product or service is replicated in the name of choice/competitition, several parts of the costly infrastructure are also replicated. Design, development, HR, procurement, transportation and manufacturing to name a few. So, while some amount of choice is good for innovation and cost control, too much leads to unnecessary replication of costly infrastructure.

In the long term, this excess "choice" is not sustainable. We recently found out we really didn't need so many car choices. We really didn't need Chrysler, Dodge and Plymouth did we? But where do we draw the line and how is it drawn? While it seems extremely wasteful to me to have an entire grocery store aisle dedicated to snack foods, apparently the manufacturers of these different varieties are just responding to the wishes of the market. My gut feeling is that we could be perfectly satisfied with half as many kinds of snack food and cereal. Assuming consumption stays constant, the remaining half would have to ramp up production and perhaps become more efficient, while duplicated infrastructure of the removed half would reduce cost. In other words, surviving providers would sell twice as much product for the same design and development cost.

Which products should we eliminate and what should the displaced personnel do? Well, the answer to the first will have to wait for future blog posts because, as with many things, we humans seem to be able to agree that reducing cost is good, as long as I am not the one inconvenienced. Think of energy independence, health care and budget cuts resulting from falling tax revenues.

And what should the displace personnel do? I might be a little over optimistic, but if we spend less time, money and effort searching for the next best potato chip, perhaps we can spend more on how to reduce energy consumption while maintaining a high standard of living.