{"id":1436,"date":"2005-06-09T07:31:35","date_gmt":"2005-06-09T07:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2005-06-09T07:31:35","modified_gmt":"2005-06-09T07:31:35","slug":"too_much_choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=1436","title":{"rendered":"Too Much Choice?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dynamist.com\/weblog\/archives\/001745.html\">Virginia Postrel<\/a>, writing in Reason:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>When customers enter the Ralphs supermarket near UCLA, they see a sign announcing how many different fruits and vegetables the produce department has on hand: &#8220;724 produce varieties available today,&#8221; it says, including 93 organic selections.<br \/>\nSixty dozen varieties is a mind-boggling number. And that\u2019s just in the produce department. Over in the cheese section, this pretty run-of-the-mill supermarket offers 14 types of feta alone. Not so long ago, finding feta of any type required a trip to a specialty shop.<br \/>\nDuring the last couple of decades, the American economy has undergone a variety revolution. Instead of simply offering mass-market goods, businesses of all sorts increasingly compete to give consumers more personalized products, more varied experiences, and more choice.<br \/>\nAverage Americans order nonfat decaf iced vanilla lattes at Starbucks and choose from 1,500 drawer pulls at The Great Indoors. Amazon gives every town a bookstore with 2 million titles, while Netflix promises 35,000 different movies on DVD. Choice is everywhere, liberating to some but to others a new source of stress. &#8220;Stand in the corner of the toothpaste aisle with your eyes wide open and&#8211;I swear&#8211;it will make you dizzy,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metropolismag.com\/cda\/story.php?artid=1126\">writes design critic Karrie Jacobs<\/a>. Maybe the sign in Ralphs is not an enticement but a warning.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virginia Postrel, writing in Reason: When customers enter the Ralphs supermarket near UCLA, they see a sign announcing how many different fruits and vegetables the produce department has on hand: &#8220;724 produce varieties available today,&#8221; it says, including 93 organic selections. Sixty dozen varieties is a mind-boggling number. And that\u2019s just in the produce department. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}