"By the time you read this essay, no matter the hour of the day, you will likely have already made some kind of choice: coffee with skimmed milk, whole milk, cream, or black? Sugar or no sugar? Tea instead? Personalised, preference-based choice is, at present, a deeply familiar aspect of life in much of the world, though perhaps most markedly so in the United States, where I live and work."
"Perusing a menu of options to decide what best matches individual desires and values - which is what we generally mean today by making a choice - is a key feature of modern democratic and consumer culture alike. It is also an exalted one. People may disagree about what the possibilities should be, but rarely about the principle of maximising arenas for choice-making or the options themselves. For many of the world's citizens, this is simply what freedom feels like."
Personalized, preference-based choice pervades daily life, from beverage preferences to housing, education, work, and insurance. Perusing menus of options and selecting what best matches individual desires and values characterizes modern democratic and consumer culture. Maximizing opportunities for choice is widely valued and associated with freedom. Abundant choice can produce difficulties: many people struggle to make optimal decisions, excessive choice can encourage selfish individualism and weaken collective action, and societies that prize choice may blame individuals who face limited options for their misfortunes. The ideal of abundant choice coexists with practical and ethical challenges.
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