The+Paradox+of+Choice

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Schwartz wants to make us question the idea that all this choice we have nowadays is an unreservedly good thing. His thesis statement is that "freedom can be paralyzing and now we have a wealth of freedom." Yes, this is probably true. That doesn't mean we should consider trading it in for what we used to have!

I disagree with Barry Schwartz's decision to speak of the past as though it were not a nightmare. Okay, okay - many billions of people have lived and died in societies where the local religion is law, where heterosexual marriage before 20 is expected of everyone, where morality is literally and figuratively "written in stone." Maybe some of these people were even happy, but for most people, let's not kid ourselves about the consequences of such a choiceless society. In the old, feudal societies without freedom, Schwartz would have been burned at the stake just for asking too many questions.

Anyway, then Schwartz's talk breaks down and becomes a stale stand-up act about the difficulties of buying jeans, and generic whining about how he's not as happy as he feels entitled to be. He has a much clearer focus and sense of direction than Louis C.K. does when he discusses these same ideas, but he doesn't do anything new with them, and he's not as funny.