单选题
Spoilt for Choice
Choice, we are given tol believe, is a right. In daily life, people have come to expect endless situations about which they are required to make decisions one way or another. In the main, these are just irksome moments at work which demand some extra energy or brainpower, or during lunch breaks like choosing which type of coffee to order or indeed which coffee shop to go to. But sometimes selecting one option as opposed to another can have serious or lifelong repercussions. More complex decision-making is then either avoided, postponed, or put into the hands of the army of professionals, Iifestyle coaches, lawyers, advisors, and the like. waiting to lighten the emotional burden for a fee. But for a good many people in the world, in rich and poor countries, choice is a luxury, not a right. And for those who think they are exercising their right to make choices, the whole system is merely an illusion, created by companies and advertisers wanting to sell their wares.
The main impact of endless choice in people's lives is anxiety. Buying something as basic as a coffee pot is not exactly simple. Easy access to a wide range of consumer goods induces a sense of powerlessness, even paralysis, in many people, ending in the shopper giving up and walking away, or just buying an unsuitable item that is not really wanted in order to solve the problem and reduce the unease. Recent surveys in the United Kingdom have shown that a sizeable proportion of electrical goods bought per household are not really needed. The advertisers and the shareholders of the manufacturers are, nonetheless, satisfied.
It is not just their availability that is the problem, hut the speed with which new versions of products come on the market. Advances in design and production mean that new items are almost ready by the time that goods hit the shelves. Products also need to have a short lifespan so that the public can be persuaded to replace them within a short time. The classic exampie is computers which are almost obsolete once they are bought. At first, there were only one or two available from a limited number of manufacturers, hut now there are many companies all with not only their own products but different versions of the same machine. This makes selection a problem. Gone are the days when one could just walk with ease. into a shop and buy one thing; no choice, no anxiety.
The plethora of choice is not limited to consumer items. With the greater mobility of people around the world, people have more choice about where they want to live and work--a fairly recent phenomenon. In the past, nations migrated across huge swathes of the earth in search of food, adventure, and more hospitable environments. Whole nations crossed continents and changed the face of history, so the mobility of people is nothing new. The creation of nation states and borders effectively slowed this process down. But what is different now is the speed at which migration is happening.