In healthcare, the doctor used to tell you what to do, but now she says, ‘You could do A or B. A has these benefits and risks; B has these other benefits and risks. Now, what do you want to do?’ This is more choice, but it is also shifting the burden of responsibility from someone who should know the right answer to someone who does not.
And what about work? We are now blessed, Barry says, with technology that enables us to work every minute of every day, anywhere on the planet–except, he adds to appreciative laughter, in the Randolph Hotel, which has almost no Internet connection. So (except in Oxford) we have freedom of choice regarding work–for every waking moment, whether to work or not.
But is all this choice good news or bad news? ‘The answer is “yes”,’ says Barry. Everyone knows the benefits of choice already, so he is going to talk about two of its bad points. The first is that too much choice induces paralysis. Barry cites research into the choice of pensions. When people were offered more choice, fewer of them participated because it was too hard to decide between the various funds. ‘So, not only will they have to eat dog food when they retire, but they are also giving up matching funding from their employers.’
The second bad point is that we are less satisfied when we have more choices than when we had fewer. More choice means more ‘opportunity costs’–what we could have been doing if we hadn’t decided to do what we are doing. Barry displays a cartoon of a couple on holiday in the Hamptons–they have a beautiful beach to themselves and the sun is beating down. The man says to the woman, ‘I can’t stop thinking about all those available parking spaces back on West Eighty-fifth Street.’ Barry seems to take this joke literally, as an expression of genuine angst.
More choice also means that expectations escalate. Barry tells a long story about buying a pair of jeans, spending an hour trying on numerous different pairs. He walks out with the best-fitting pair of jeans he’s ever had, but is dissatisfied because, although they’re good, they’re not perfect. ‘I did better but felt worse,’ he says, ‘so I had to write a whole book to try to explain this to myself.’ He shows another cartoon, with a man saying to his wife, ‘Everything was better back when everything was worse.’ Why? ‘Because back then, pleasant surprises were possible.’
Who is responsible for everything not being as wonderful as we expect it to be? Well, you and I are. Given all the choices you had, if you had made the right decision at the right time, you could have done better. Clinical depression and suicide have exploded over recent decades. One reason for this, Barry says, is that too much choice makes people miserable.
‘We have long since passed the point,’ he concludes, ‘where more choice is better.’ In his aforementioned book, he says, ‘After millions of years of survival based on simple distinctions, it may simply be that we are biologically unprepared for the number of choices we face in the modern world.’34
Some economists, in particular, have taken issue with Barry Schwartz. Certainly, some of his illustrations–particularly those related to shopping–seem a bit far-fetched. Choice in trivial matters is no big problem, and it is hard to believe that buying a decent pair of jeans caused him so much distress. But let’s relate his views to the choice of hubs. He does not discuss this issue, but the problem of choice is greatest with regard to hubs–the families we start; the groups of friends we choose or create; the work groups, churches, clubs or gangs we join.
Why is the choice of hubs so hard today? Because the choice is almost infinite; because each choice we make will change our lives; because those choices may not easily be reversible; and because none is clear cut–the information regarding potential new hubs is ambiguous and we will never know what they are really like until we are living inside them.
It is vital to choose well, yet, as we will see, forces at work within hubs can lead us astray.
In the summer of 2008 the Japanese Ministry of Health ruled that a forty-five-year-old lead engineer working on Toyota’s Camry hybrid project had died of karoshi, clearing the way for his widow and child to receive benefits from his former employer.35 The official count of karoshi in Japan runs between one and two hundred each year, although some estimates put it at over ten thousand. The English translation is ‘death from overwork’.
How alien to those of us in the West. Then again, maybe not. Do you know someone who sacrificed their marriage for work? Compromised their ethics? Lives somewhere they don’t like? Endangers their health through stressful work? Or makes life miserable for themself and their loved ones by staying in a job or social group too long? There can be forces acting within hubs that are not in our best interests.
The Bay of Pigs, Cuba, 17 April 1961
In January 1959, Fidel Castro’s troops stormed into Havana to popular acclaim and overthrew the hated Batista dictatorship, proclaiming a new era of democracy. In April, Castro visited New York on a charm offensive. He ate hotdogs and hamburgers and told New Yorkers, ‘I don’t agree with communism. We are a democracy. We are against all kinds of dictators.’
But when he didn’t secure the American support he wanted–President Eisenhower refused even to meet him–Castro started cosying up to the Soviet Union. Before long, Eisenhower instructed the CIA to start planning to topple Castro. When he became President at the start of 1961, John F. Kennedy took over the invasion plan. The CIA trained about fourteen hundred Cuban refugees who were to land at the Bay of Pigs, which would be the signal for a popular revolt against Castro. No American forces or air cover were to be provided, as the Cubans, it was confidently asserted, could do it all themselves. Almost to a man, the Cuban exiles in Miami were anti-Castro. Kennedy’s advisers and generals were unanimous that the plan would work, just as Eisenhower’s advisers had been–a rare example of Republican/Democratic bipartisanship. Everyone agreed that the invasion was essential, because Castro was known to be shipping in Soviet nuclear missiles, and their presence so close to the United States was totally unacceptable.
The intelligence about Soviet missiles was correct. But the Americans were wrong to assume that Castro lacked popular support. When the Cuban refugees landed at the Bay of Pigs they were easily defeated by Cuban forces, while in Havana Castro’s victory was widely celebrated. Kennedy took responsibility for the debacle, and his reputation was so badly tarnished that he began to contemplate a dangerous gamble to force the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, to withdraw the missiles.
Curiously, before the invasion, the Institute of International Social Research at Princeton had conducted a survey of Cuban public opinion, and concluded that Cubans ‘are unlikely to shift their present overwhelming allegiance to Fidel Castro’. The survey was published and copies provided for the US government. There were no contradictory opinion polls, either public or secret. The warning was very clear, yet the Princeton findings were completely ignored–at a high price.
Washington, DC, 17 June 1972