How can more choices be less freedom?

Jiacui Li

Dr. Hélène Landemore

POLS0820D: Freedom

15 December 2008

 

Do more choices mean more freedom? Usually, the answer is yes. When eating at a restaurant, we hope for more alternatives on the menu. When registering courses for next semester, we hope for more choices offered, so there can be a better chance of finding the right fits for us. However, I will argue that simply having more alternatives in decision making does not necessarily mean more freedom.

There are two leading explanations, each approaching from a different perspective. The first theory, which is frequently adopted by libertarian paternalists, centers on people’s inherent irrationality. The second, less well know theory shifts the focus from the chooser to the choices, and argues that the sheer bulk of alternatives creates a “burden of choices”. In this paper, I will briefly summarize the first theory, introduce the second, and offer a third, tentative theory that speculates about the nature of choices. This third theory argues that some choices are inherently bad and encroach on our freedom as long as they exist. These three arguments are thus sequenced because each one is, in some sense, stronger than the previous one: the second holds true when assuming the first one does not exist, and the third theory works even when the first two are not considered.

People have been praising reason and denouncing irrationality for centuries. This sentiment is strongly captured in this line from British sociologist Barbara Wootton: “The sordid and savage story of history has been written by man’s irrationality, and the thin precarious crust of civilization which has from time to time been built over the bloody mess has always been built by reason.” The confidence in human reason, in a large part, leads to the conclusion that more choices means more freedom, because we assume that people has the ability to make reasonable choices. However, there are objections.

 

First argument – “Irrationality”

In the first argument, psychologists, sociologists, economists and cognitive scientists tell us that people are irrational. Quite different from the theorists before who wrote long essays arguing about the logic, they relied on statistics and controlled experiments to show their point. Their conclusion, that people are irrational, is not very counterintuitive, but it is still disturbing to see our thinking patterns analyzed and put forth on paper. Their work implies that people get lost with too many liberties, and they need guidance to correct their irrationality. Thus, since people do not always choose the right choice before them, it follows that simply stacking more alternatives in front of them does not necessarily enhance their freedom.

 

Second argument – “a burden of choices”

The second argument of “a burden of choices” is essentially the argument in my pervious paper ^[1] applied on an individual scale. Instead of considering the expediency of decision making in society, this time the focus is on the decision-making of individuals. More choices require more time and effort in deliberation, and when there are too many choices, this cost may well exceed the benefit of reaching a sound judgment. Consider dining in a restaurant with a menu thicker than dictionary. Will you read through the whole list? Definitely not. Why? Because when there are too many options, it becomes a burden, and the cost of reading more far exceeds the benefit, which is a well ordered dinner. By the time you finish reading the menu, it is already time to order for the next day’s dinner.

This concept of “burden of choice” is broadly explored by American psychologist Barry Schwartz. He approached the question from a psychological perspective, and explained why too many choices usually become a source of unhappiness. This is also not very counterintuitive in our age when consumers get lost in an ever-growing abundance and variety of goods in stores, and web browsers get lost in the bloom of information online. Likewise, while students enjoy the “core-less” open curriculum in Brown University, they also experience frustration from picking four courses out of two thousand alternatives every semester. More is not always better, because we are not ready to handle too many of them. In his book The Paradox of Choice: why more is less (2004) ^[2], Barry Schwartz says it well:

Freedom of choice is essential to self-respect, public participation, mobility, and nourishment, but not all choice enhances freedom. Increased choice among goods and services may contribute little or nothing to the kind of freedom that counts. Indeed, it may impair freedom by taking time and energy we*d be better off devoting to other matters.

This argument is stronger than the first one in the sense that, even if we assume that people are perfectly rational (therefore discarding the irrationality theory), the second argument still holds true. No matter how rational you are when it comes to decision making, an excess of choices is always a burden.

 

The third argument – “options and traps”

This argument rests in distinguishing two types of choices and categorizing them into “options” and “traps”. By “options”, I refer to the beneficial choices that expand the degree of freedom people have in decision making; by “traps”, I refer to the alternatives whose presence endangers the free choice of people. I would argue that choices that fall into the first category increase freedom for the decision maker, while those in the second category work in the opposite direction.

Choices enhance our freedom as long as we are their masters. A master tries, compares, chooses and sometime discards different options for his own benefit, and does all these with ease. But this only holds true as long as the choice is a true “option” that is innocent and does not tamper with our ability to choose freely. “Traps” are different. Fundamentally, for a choice to be an option, it has to be an elective that we can freely 1) experiment with, 2) choose and 3) get rid of. Again, consider the scene in a restaurant. The newly added entries on the menu enlarges your freedom of choice because you can taste it to see if it fits your appetite; afterwards, if you like it, you can decide to order; and you can order some other dish next time. With the freedom to experiment, freedom to choose and the freedom to discard, this new entry clearly serves as an “option”, and enhances your freedom as a diner.

At the same time, there are addictive choices that fall into the category of “traps” whose mere existence threatens our position as their masters or even turn us into slaves. We cannot experiment on them without a penalty; we choose them compulsively even when our reason tells us otherwise; we cannot quit them without experiencing pain. These “traps” erode our sound judgment by coercing our weaker, pleasure-oriented self into addiction, and force us to choose them despite the sober protest of our stronger, reasonable self. People choose such “traps”, but seldom out of free will, but because of lack of free will. Moreover, once such addictive “traps” enter one’s life, they keep on deepening his dependence until he is enslaved. Such choices definitely do not enlarge our freedom of choice, but eats it away.

Have you ever seen people addicted to hard drugs? They apparently lose their freedom of choice when it comes to those chemicals. It is not that the abuser is not aware of the health hazards, or that he does not want to get rid of it, but that he cannot get rid of it. The addictive drug erodes his mind, enticing and forcing him to indulge in the immediate pleasures in every inhale or injection. It can be said that, although it is the addict who take up the drug every time, he is not really choosing, because he has lost the ability to choose, and it is actually the drug choosing him; he is no longer a master who can choose whether to take the drug, but a slave to it. If we come back to the fundamental definitions of a beneficial “option”, we see that the drug, as a “choice”, violates all three of them. Heroin simply cannot be experimented on without a risk of losing-control; people who choose it seldom do so out of self-will, but are coerced by its effects; it is painful to quit, even with the help of meditation and external forces. Drugs do not tie addicts up with steel chains and locks, but are more restrictive, since chains can only enslave the body, while drugs enslave the mind. It follows naturally that freedom to such mind-enslaving choices are not real freedoms, but potential traps that lie there waiting for innocent prey.

Drugs are extreme examples, and there are also lots of other “traps” that enslave minds with various degree of enslavement. They may not be physically addictive, but they also tamper with the faculty to choose the right choice by habit-forming. The categorization of choices into options and traps is not a clear cut distinction, but rather two ends on a graduated scale. For those choices that fall in between, whether they enhance your freedom or not depend on your strength of will, for people with a stronger self-control are master to such choices, while people who give in to their weakness are not. Every year, there are tens of millions of smokers who want to quit but fail (recall the third definition). It is the same situation with alcoholics. Financially irresponsible get addicted to credit cards that provide a false sense of confidence until they see the accumulated debt on the monthly bill. Students addicted to video games forget about their studies or even their regular life, not because they enjoy their life style, but they feel helpless with the lure on their desks. Impulsive eaters cannot follow the diet they prescribed to themselves. Such choices appeal to the weakness of human mind – shortsightedness, pleasure-seeking, indecision, caprice, obstinacy, procrastination, imprudence and compulsion. Depending on the strength of the individual, this list may go on and on.

 

A collective anti-liberal endeavor

As you can see, these arguments challenge more than “more choice is more freedom”; they are actually attacking the belief in human reason, which carries much more significance than most have realized. In literature, human reason, as a central topic, has trigger great works for tens of centuries. In economics, the belief in human judgment lays the foundation of free market economy. In politics, voter reason justifies the efficiency of democracy. In political philosophy, the basic liberalism claim that people are best judges for themselves cannot hold without the trust in human rationality.

The ancient philosophers made numerous famous arguments for human reason, but now they are faced with a group of empiricists who prefer statistics to rhetoric. Behavioral economists are attacking the assumption of market efficiency; Bryan Caplan’s “The Myth of the Rational Voter” ^[3] points straightly to democracy; and all those efforts, combined together, attempts to undermine liberalism. This somewhat anti-liberal endeavor has not made a big influence yet, but we should also see it is a trend that just started for a couple of years. The scientists are trying to modify the conclusions made centuries ago, and they need more time for such a daunting task. Let us have some patience, and we shall see where the future leads.

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References

[1] Jiacui Li, “The falling point of Utility”. Available at http://eagerminds.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/the-falling-point-of-utility-a-utilitarian-critique-of-mill/

[2] Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. Harper Perennial.

[3] Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. Princeton University Press.