
There Is Too Much Stuff - SQL2219
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/too-many-options/590185/
======
jen729w
I don’t want to come off as all holier-than-thou, and probably will, but here
goes.

My girlfriend moved in with me about a year ago and, in the process, we
cleaned out a lot of ‘stuff’. Personal stuff, kitchen stuff, knick-knack
stuff, furniture stuff, memento stuff, clothes stuff ... just all the stuff
that you accumulate as you move through life. (We’re both ~40.)

Since then, we’ve been very careful not to accumulate more stuff. I’m not
exaggerating when I say that we deliberate over a new kitchen utensil. We
don’t buy _anything_ unnecessary.

It’s amazing. Our home is amazing. We live in a mid-sized apartment but it
feels spacious because it’s not full of stuff. Life is simpler. There’s less
to clean. What there is to clean is easier because—you guessed it—it’s not
covered in stuff.

Buy less stuff. Throw most of your stuff away. You almost certainly don’t need
it.

~~~
tty2300
Sell or give away before throwing away. I have listed a bunch of stuff I don't
particularly want on eBay it costs me nothing and often someone near by
eventually finds it and wants it. I recently sold something I listed in 2017.

~~~
jen729w
Yep, anything useful goes on Gumtree for $0. Usually disappears within the
hour.

~~~
ruvis
Listing anything for free makes the crazies come out of the woodwork though.
Usually too much hassle than it is worth imho.

~~~
TheBeardKing
I've found it's actually better to list things for a small price than to try
to give it away for free. When you list for free, tons of non-committed people
contact you and it's too difficult to hold for someone who ends up falling
through. And sometimes you upset the beggers who think they claimed it first.
When there's at least a small transaction price, you have a much better chance
of getting a serious buyer.

------
jakobegger
There are alternatives to Amazon!

For general household stuff, my go to store is manufactum.com

They only offer very few things, but the things they have are very high
quality. If you buy something from Manufactum, you know it'll last for the
rest of your life.

The stuff there is of course outrageously expensive compared to the plastic
crap from Amazon, but for me that means I really think about the purchase. Do
we really need two of those metal baskets for the shower that hold your
shampoo bottles? Not if it costs 100€.

For tools, there's dictum.com, which follows a similar philosophy. They don't
offer a million choices; they make a very deliberate choice which products
they sell, so you don't have to make the choice. You can rely that something
you order from them is a good choice.

~~~
gridlockd
> If you buy something from Manufactum, you know it'll last for the rest of
> your life.

That sounds like the opposite of how I want to shop. I don't want to have to
think really hard about which trivial household item I want to spend the rest
of my life with. I'd rather pick a random cheap one and then not feel too bad
about replacing it, if necessary.

~~~
jfk13
And you don't feel any qualms when your random cheap stuff breaks (or simply
doesn't do the job very well) and ends up in landfill?

Sorry to sound critical, but you (and millions like you) are a problem.

~~~
pnutjam
Sorry, but I've moved at least 6 times since my kids started school. I rent
and rents go up or I need to resize my home.

All of these moves have been within the same elementary school district, but
it's really turned me off lasts forever stuff.

If it doesn't break, it gets lost in storage, or left behind on accident.

edit: I'd love to buy a house, but prices...

------
corey_moncure
One of the frustrations of raising young children in the USA is the monthly
ritual of birthday parties where everyone takes turns being the recipient of
two cubic yards of "stuff". The gifts are almost invariably plastic junk from
China via Walmart or Amazon. They hold my children's attention for about a
week and then spend the rest of their lifetime occupying space in my house or
in a landfill.

I absolutely hate this. Why can't we stop doing it? I look around and it's
like no one sees the futility and stupidity of it. The social manipulation is
so effective and complete that there's not even a single thought of the
consequences of all this waste to the environment or even our own lives.

Recently, everything is covered in this pernicious glitter that rubs off when
you touch it and leaves a trail of microplastic pollution everywhere it goes.

It's not hyperbolic to say that I put on a stoic face but inside I am on my
knees begging for us to wake up and stop the madness.

~~~
GEBBL
Here in Ireland we got around this by providing a small sum of money (agreed
by parents) in a card in lieu of cheap presents. That way the child gets to
put the money towards savings, or a great present like a computer game.

------
torgian
"The internet-shopping boom has spawned an excess-stuff economy, in which
retailers such as Overstock.com buy up extra product from full-price
retailers."

It was a problem _before_ internet shopping.

The article focuses on America, but it's a problem all over (obviously). For
example, online shopping is so bad in mainland China, that people don't even
trust major retailer stores on Taobao or Tianmao. It might be fake (at least,
in their eyes).

That said, it's striking how much stuff there is. Walking around outside,
you're kind of sheltered from it, but go into any market, mall, or shopping
district and just... stand there and look.

There's so much _stuff_ that it's insane. How do these stores stay in
business? Why is there so much crap all over the shelves?

Speaking as one person, I don't buy much. And I understand that these stores
need to be able to potentially sell to a lot of people, but is there really a
need for this much?

~~~
crispinb
Insane indeed. As someone who lives in the bush, the craziness of it all
smacks me in the face when I make city trips. It's a prime example of the
boiling frog syndrome - generations have become insensible to physical
reality. As waves of consequent ecological catastrophes wash over our
'civilisation', violence will inevitably ensue: citizens against governments,
governments against citizens, communities against communities, all against
all.

Some will ask whether it was all worth it for temporary abundances of cheap
plastic crap. Most will just be helplessly enveloped.

~~~
ip26
IMO it's the twin problems of the relatively high price of labor here, and the
relatively low price of labor elsewhere. E.g., I don't _want_ to accumulate a
ton of stuff, but an entire pipe sweating kit that I might use once or twice a
year costs less than one ten minute visit from a plumber. (multiply by every
single other trade applied around the house)

~~~
jmb12686
As a homeowner, I completely relate to this. Every single task around the
house requires "stuff" that you may or may not ever use again. That is of
course unless you pay $100+ an hour for a contractor, and that's IF (and big
if) they are even willing to show up for a small simplistic job. Many
contractors worth their salt are only interested in larger jobs that are more
profitable. Good luck finding someone to do handyman work.

~~~
mc32
It’s too bad tool-banks (communal or otherwise) aren’t too popular. One
alternative (for seldom used things) is renting tools from home improvement
centers/large hardware stores. Even auto parts stores have rentals or loaners
for a deposit programs.

~~~
marcosdumay
Tool renting is complex. Is the renter open at the time I need the tool? How
long does it take to go there, get it, and come back?

Many of the stuff I have is there just because I can't rent it when I have a
bit of time to use it.

~~~
twothamendment
It doesn't have to be complex to be useful. I had a small plumbing project,
needed a pex crimper. My local plumbing store will loan it to you for free if
you buy the parts there. There is no schedule, no set time to return it. If it
is there, you can have it. If not, you can wait, they will call you when it
comes in.

~~~
jfk13
Ah, the wonder of old-fashioned hardware (etc) stores. I bet your local store
could not only lend you the tool but also give you useful advice on using it,
or on your project in general.

What a loss to our communities as online retail drives them out of business.
If I can get my supplies from Amazon for 20% less, but then have to buy the
tool that I could have borrowed from the local store, and spend twice as long
doing the job because I didn't talk it over with the experienced guy behind
the counter, have I really come out ahead?

------
esotericn
I find online shopping far more frustrating than in-person because there's
seemingly no minimum standard, or at least if there is, I'm not attuned to it.

There's just too much absolute codswallop out there. Amazon and eBay are the
pound shop/dollar store for low value items.

I can go to a supermarket and buy an economy brand tin of beans and it's going
to be.. a tin of beans. It might, if I'm not careful and don't check, have
added salt or sugar or something.

By contrast if I go and buy a low value item on Amazon like, say, a USB cable,
3.5mm cable, whatever, there's a really good probability of it being utter
bollocks. Either broken in some way or just terrible to begin with.

I really, really wish this sort of thing could somehow be eliminated. Reviews
don't cut it because even if they're not fake, I don't want to read reviews. I
want your store to not sell dogshit items.

~~~
Xcelerate
It would be nice if there was a website like Amazon, but that had some sort of
editorially vetted product line. I just want a cheese grater that works well
and isn't counterfeit. I'm willing to pay a few dollars more for the work that
goes into verifying the products. It really seems like there would be a market
opportunity here...

~~~
evil-olive
Wirecutter seems to be the closest to what you're looking for. Here's their
"best grater", for example: [https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-
grater/](https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-grater/)

For larger purchases, a $30/year Consumer Reports subscription is absolutely
worth it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Wirecutter is great, can recommend. They don't always have reviews for
particular things I want, but when they do, I end up going with one of their
picks and I _never_ had a single problem with these purchases. For instance,
the first thing I bought off their recommendation was a Bluetooth earpiece,
some 3+ years ago, and unlike my previous attempts at buying one, this one not
once had a problem with any of my devices, and works perfectly to this very
day.

I heard good things about Consumer Reports, and I wish there was something
like this for the EU market. I found Wirecutter useful because the things they
tend to review are available both in the US and EU (read: electronics), but if
I wanted to buy regular life items off recommendations, I'm not sure what to
follow locally.

~~~
mmikeff
In the UK the Consumer Association product the Which? magazine and website.
which.com

------
harimau777
The solution that I would like to see is for online stores to add the ability
to refine your search by what you DON'T want. For example, when looking for a
game on Steam it would be helpful to exclude features that are deal breakers
for me (e.g. permadeath). Or on Amazon it would be useful to be able to
exclude Chinese brands.

I don't know how it would be implemented, but it would also be useful to be
able to see what the "standard" and "entry level" products in a given category
is. For example, I might be looking for a piece of equipment for a hobby that
I am trying out and I want to know "what is the cheapest thing that isn't a
shoddy knockoff". Or when I'm looking for a tool I'm often looking one that "I
may replace it with a more expensive version when I become an expert, but I
would never HAVE to replace it in order to progress".

------
ianai
Want less stuff cluttering people’s lives? Divorce them from having to ensure
their basic survival and self worth in a zero sum economy. I genuinely think
if people didn’t have to sell the largest, most productive parts of their
lives to someone else they would focus more on social connections instead of
social status. It feels pretty humbling to spend almost all of your day doing
something you otherwise would never do, perhaps hate doing, only to be passed
by a car worth more money than you’re likely to earn in your entire life
summed altogether. But if I spent my day doing things I love doing, and would
gladly do them over and over every day, I just might see that same car and not
internalize it.

~~~
Bakary
If you value your freedom this strongly, then it's time to make bold choices
regarding the rate at which you save money.

Since there is such a huge gap between people who hold a lot of material
status and the rest, why even play the game at all?

~~~
djrobstep
Most people like not being homeless and not starving, I guess?

~~~
Bakary
This is a false dichotomy. I'm not advocating for living in the woods, but
just taking a hard look at the choices you make everyday and how much actual
utility and satisfaction you get from them. Are those expensive clothes and
cars worth it to you? Maybe they are. But you have to compare them to the
months or years of labor you could avoid if you saved that money instead, or
perhaps even invested it.

Perhaps our world is extremely proficient at generating insane amounts of
envy, but that doesn't mean you are completely powerless to respond in a life-
affirming way.

~~~
ianai
Ultimately your way asks people to change their innate behavior.

~~~
Bakary
Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me. I seriously doubt that there is
an innate barrier against regulating your consumption at least a little bit.
If you blame external factors exclusively then you will obviously never change
anything about your life and never discover what was inevitable and what
wasn't.

You can try your best and still fail, but what you can't do is pretend that
you don't have a choice presented to you from the outset.

------
rland
Every now and then in the grocery store, a thought comes up: this is an
exceptional circumstance. I can walk in here and grab as much nutrient content
as I can hold, for only a couple hours of labor?

That situation is something that only appears for brief flashes in the natural
world: when the ecosystem is tremendously off balance and some organism
manages to capture the difference.

------
abathur
I've been daydreaming about a new sort of consumer's union to address this,
among other problems (designed obsolescence, meaningless redesign cycles that
make an existing product more cheaply--but not cheaper, astroturfed reviews,
etc.)

The part I'm not so sure about is how to prevent
infiltration/compromise/hostile takeover. I think I would prefer it to not
exist than to make something useful and principled only to see it turned into
a trojan horse.

~~~
Misdicorl
I also have daydreamed about this on and off for the past couple years. In the
end, it doesn't look much different from consumer reports, but with broader
scope for both reviewed items and reviewers.

Authentication is a hard problem, and I've not really hit on anything that
seems feasible besides a paycheck.

~~~
abathur
Not unrelated to CR, but I'd like to take it further than they do. A more
comprehensive effort to cobble together a purchasing block as leverage to
encourage better behavior from producers, develop lists of
design/production/marketing/sales/support practices that'll earn blacklisting,
distribute the costs of trialing new products, hire experts for teardowns,
etc.

------
RickJWagner
It seems like a problem that's related to wages and consumption.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, there was just less stuff to be had. My family
(8 kids, 2 parents) had one car for a long time. Today, it seems every high
school kid has a car.

The same is true of other things. Bicycles, furniture, house size, etc. There
is just more stuff today. A lot of it comes from lowest-cost retailers.

A visit to a GoodWill or Salvation Army outlet shows lots of product for very
low prices. I don't remember it being this way in past years.

I'm not saying it's bad-- today's poor people seem to have more basic stuff
than yesterday's-- but it is different.

~~~
foobarian
I feel like the manufacturing complex just got a lot more efficient at making
pretty much everything, so the costs are down a lot in relative terms. It's
probably mainly due to offshoring and automation.

Coincidentally I feel that burglaries got a lot less frequent. It's almost as
if the flow of value reversed - burglars don't want any of our crap, and the
equivalent to a burglary today would be dumping a truckload of stuff in
someone's house.

~~~
MagnumOpus
> burglaries got a lot less frequent

Burglaries are less frequent because your TV is too big and your laptop has a
near-zero resale value, but cell phone robberies are up 10-20-30 times [1] in
some places -- because even when sold for parts, a $1000 phone is worth some
risk...

[1]
[https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/69E6/production/...](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/69E6/production/_100001172_percentageincrease.png)

~~~
EADGBE
TVs have exponentially lost weight over the last few decades.

------
perfunctory
It is particularly sad when you realise that all this stuff drives climate
change. While not necessarily making anyone happier. And then people advocate
to expand nuclear power so we can produce even more stuff.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's not why we need nuclear energy. We need it for two things. One, it's
very unrealistic to expect people to cut down on this stuff in meaningful
amounts and short time (and if you tried to force them, a lot of blood would
be shed and a lot of misery caused; we've covered that topic in other threads
of the past few days, I saw you there ;)). Two, we kind of need clean energy
for other things as well. Undoing the environmental damage, in particular,
will be energy-intensive.

~~~
perfunctory
Hi there. I hope the discussion is not over yet :)

It depends on what you mean by "unrealistic". If you mean politically
unrealistic, then it's hard to disagree. Entrenched interests are too powerful
and motivated to give it up easily. (That's not to say that we shouldn't try)

If you mean it's unrealistic because it's human nature to consume more and
more, that it's inherent human desire, then I will disagree. We don't need to
force anyone to stop consuming. It's the other way around - we need to stop
forcing them to consume. And force them we do. It takes a massive constant
propaganda campaign to keep the desire to consume alive. Campaign that costs
us about 1% of GDP. You know what I am talking about. Marketing.

If you mean it's unrealistic because most people already consume the bare
minimum to guarantee their livelihoods and there is not much to cut. Well, the
good news (or bad, depending how you look at it) is that most people don't
emit most emissions. David Wallace-Wells in "The Uninhabitable Earth" writes:
"If the world's most conspicuous emitters, the top 10 percent, reduced their
emissions to only the E.U. average, total global emissions would fall by 35
percent." Is it too much to ask the rich to lower their emissions to the E.U.
average?

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's never over :).

When I say cutting down consumption to meaningful levels is unrealistic, I
mean a few things.

One, the level itself isn't "EU average"; to offset the expected rise of
emissions of developing nations, EU and US need to become carbon neutral.

Two, it's not necessarily human nature to consume more (but it is to improve
one's life when one has means and options for it). It is human nature however
to not like having freedoms, choices and comfort _taken away_. This (among
other things) makes voluntary cuts unlikely (not at the level that's needed),
and forced cuts painful. Carbon tax is probably the least unrest-building
option here (it's not really about cutting consumption, just moving it around,
but at least initially, reduced consumption is expected), and plenty of people
are already up in arms about it (c.f. yellow vests in france).

Three, related to point two - even if, by means of a miracle, consumption went
down significantly and rapidly, the effect on economies of western countries
would be severe to disastrous. Our economies are too strongly tied to
consumption at this point. That's another argument for why we need emission-
free alternatives to consume instead of just trying to get by without buying
stuff.

Ultimately, I believe we can kick the habit of consumption. It'll just have to
happen very gradually, on the order of decades (at least).

------
coldtea
"Too much stuff" is the gift of death:
[https://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/10/the-gift-of-
death/](https://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/10/the-gift-of-death/)

------
gridlockd
George Carlin on "Stuff":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac)

~~~
theandrewbailey
That is my favorite Carlin bit.

------
pdonis
The thread title is misleading: the article is about consumers being presented
with too many options, not about there being too much stuff.

------
dsfyu404ed
This isn't even first world problems, this is just rich people problems.

You sort by price from low to high and buy the highest up thing on the page
that meets whatever your criteria are.

If you are constantly buying the cheapest thing that meets your criteria
sometimes you get burnt but that's very rare.

~~~
dual_basis
Finding out what thing meets the criteria is sometimes hard.

I wanted to buy a set of nail clippers the other day. I wanted a nicer set
than the last one I had, which had slowly loosened up while I used them which
led to me twisting and ripping my nail a few times. There is also this feeling
that there might be better designed products than the cheap $3 ones you buy at
CVS. So many basic products have been improved recently (or perhaps we just
have greater access to better products that always existed before), at least
in my opinion, that I thought there might be some overall better option.

Well, there are options on Amazon, as you will see, but it is very difficult
to tell which is better. The reviews are a disaster. Many fake reviews, many
products with multiple distinct and unrelated products under the same listing.
Even when I found some that I thought seemed good, I would find a review
saying that the machining was off with a picture of the front of the clipper
misaligned, which caused their nails to be bent instead of cut... etc.

It was not clear at all, even ignoring price, which was the best option.

------
noonespecial
Amazon used to be my go to place precisely because they provided working tools
to _help_ me wade through that mountain of stuff.

Recently not so much. Not a good sign.

~~~
anonymous5133
Same here but now amazon has so many of these knockoff type Chinese products
that you don't even know what to pick. Most of it ends up being of
questionable quality as well.

------
temp99990
This is partially why I like shopping at Costco. Usually there is only one or
at most a few of one thing, and usually it’s of good quality.

------
JamesBarney
Sometimes I feel like life has gotten too cluttered. And I imagine that if I
got rid of a lot of my stuff my life would feel less cluttered as well. But
honestly I don't think getting rid of a bunch of random stuff in my apartment
will make life feel less cluttered. I think figuring out how to slow down,
spend more time away from my phone, in nature, and with close friends and
family would have a much larger impact.

~~~
perfunctory
> But honestly I don't think getting rid of a bunch of random stuff in my
> apartment will make life feel less cluttered.

You will never know unless you try.

------
mapcars
>The human brain can’t contend with the vastness of online shopping

This doesn't matter much since our brains can not contend with the vastness of
the universe, existence, life and death and many many other things anyways

------
gridlockd
I agree, there's too much stuff. In particular, there's far too much
_software_.

If you advocate against too much stuff, just don't forget that making
someone's stuff is someone else's livelihood.

------
AgentME
This paragraph mirrors something I'd been thinking for a while:

>For a relatively new class of consumer-products start-ups, there’s another
method entirely. Instead of making sense of a sea of existing stuff, these
companies claim to disrupt stuff as Americans know it. Casper (mattresses),
Glossier (makeup), Away (suitcases), and many others have sprouted up to offer
consumers freedom from choice: The companies have a few aesthetically pleasing
and supposedly highly functional options, usually at mid-range prices. They’re
selling nice things, but maybe more importantly, they’re selling a confidence
in those things, and an ability to opt out of the stuff rat race.

I really value it when companies offer some simple differentiated product
lines, and are confident enough in the products to recommend one. If you go to
Apple.com wanting a computer and click "Mac" at the top, then the site breaks
it down into only a couple categories. The page has big pictures of one of
their flagship desktop options and of one of their flagship laptop options.
You're probably not going wrong in picking one of them. Apple stands by them
and updates them and those machines have their current recommended experience
and software setup, though really that also goes for any of the other
machines. The other laptop categories are mostly about how thin you want your
laptop; the categories aren't perfect but it's not hard to imagine how to pick
between them.

Now go search for "dell laptops" or "lenovo laptops". You get pages leading to
giant grids of laptops with no obvious categorization or ordering. -- Do I
consider myself as looking for a "professional" laptop or a "home office"
laptop? Do the "gaming" laptops have the best hardware, or do they just have
the same hardware as the "professional" laptops with flimsier gamer-themed
cases? Which models do they put the Superfish crap/malware on again? -- The
part that really feels the strangest to me is that there's no flagship model.
My eyes are glazing over looking at these grids. If I were in a store, this is
the part where I'd tell the salesman that I'd love it if they could recommend
me their standard new general model, and I'd hope they'd hand me a machine
they were confident in. I feel like the Dell site isn't confident enough in
any of the models to push it onto shoppers. It makes me want to run away back
to Apple's site.

Maybe my thinking is really influenced by my phone experience. Years ago, I
used to have a certain popular but cheaper phone carrier. When I went to their
site, they had a big grid of phones to choose from. I picked one of the ones
near the top that wasn't the cheapest, that I think I remembered from some ad,
and assumed it was one of their flagship choices. It was slow, didn't support
certain features like tethering, was on an old Android version, and never got
updates. I spent a long time wondering whether this was really the average
customer experience of theirs, or did I just accidentally pick an old model
that they hadn't gotten around to de-listing?

Eventually I decided to switch phone services, and most phone carriers looked
pretty much the same. A billion phone options, and also lots of plan options.
Even if I'd heard good things about the company and they presumably had a good
average customer experience, I was worried that I'd pick a wrong choice and
have a worse experience. Then I found Google Project Fi, which just had one
plan option, and heavily recommended the Pixel phone. I went with them and
haven't regretted it. The Pixel has good hardware, but it also has regular
Android on it, regular updates, and a lack of crapware. I'm sure there's other
providers that offer good choices like that, but it feels like it would take
some research and risk to figure out the non-risky "right choice" at a
different provider.

~~~
Bakary
It all depends on your 'hunter-gatherer' personality type. The age-old Apple
vs. Android war illustrates this fairly well. One group wants simplicity and
predictability and can't understand why someone would waste time on fiddling
around. The other group wants personalized and specific features and can't
understand why someone who choose something with so many limitations.

~~~
martinpw
The problem is that sites like Dell do not satisfy the fiddler either. Behold
the terribleness:

\- Head over to dell.com and search for Products->Desktops->For Home (already
forced into one choice I don't want to make, Home vs Work)

\- Look at the AMD options. Threadripper is listed under processors, so pick
that (noting in passing that "AMD Radeon" is somehow also listed as a
processor option, and remind yourself this is one of the largest PC retailers
in the world not knowing the difference between a CPU and GPU.)

\- Get presented with 12 options, _none_ of which are ThreadRipper machines.

\- Notice the box at top right that says "Sort By" is set to "Lowest Price".
Change it to sort by "Relevance". Finally a ThreadRipper model shows up - but
only in 2nd place after an Intel system (!)

~~~
Paperweight
I wonder if they make it intentionally confusing so that high volume corporate
clients can get gouged...

~~~
virusduck
If you've ever seen a Dell quote, this wouldn't even be a question. The quotes
are HTML tables of random items in no particular order, including such line
items as "No Mouse," "Power cable," etc. It is near impossible to compare
quotes machine to machine, even those generated by the same sales associate.
It's horrid.

------
raz32dust
The article is not about stuff itself, but the issues caused by the amount of
choice such variety offers and the inability of humans to cope with the
choice. Choice and freedom certainly increases stress, but I'd take that any
day over less choice or less freedom.

What we need to ensure is that the choice we have is effective choice - e.g,
the same company selling the same product with different names is just adding
stress without any value. That is increasing choice in name but not
effectively. Likewise, companies not properly listing what exactly makes their
product different, apart from marketing buzzwords - this increases choice, but
effectively the choices remain the same.

------
return1
In fact i think there is a startup opportunity there, because cleaning up /
getting rid of stuff is work.

------
rdm_blackhole
I have already talked about it on another thread, but that is the reason why
my wife and I shop at Aldi. Less choice, good prices and we can do our weekly
grocery shopping in less than 20 minutes.

I don't need 20 different kinds of hangers and 30 types of hot sauce. That
doesn't mean that it shouldn't exist but simply that it is not a necessity for
some people like us.

The paradox of choice is a pretty powerful phenomenon.

