Over at Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin commented on anti-market types who point out the banality of consumer choices, and its burdensome qualities. He quotes Barry Schwartz who hates making difficult and nuanced consumer choices. I was thinking about this recently in reference to typical laissez faire arguments against state sponsored quality control organizations like the FDA.
The typical argument is that voluntary organizations and companies dedicated to researching, promoting, and even certifying product qualities could and most certainly would emerge on the free market. After all there are private organizations already in existence, Consumer Reports, The Better Business Bureau etc. I agree that this argument is generally correct, but I think it also overlooks the argument that Schwartz is bringing up. Maybe it’s a stupid argument but I think that there’s a response nonetheless. The bottom line is that Schwartz is burdened with making consumer choices less and less in real terms as markets mature. In today’s internet savvy world he can free-ride off the efforts of others who love that kind of thing. Today, the information is at his fingertips even without formal firms and organizations dedicated to providing the service at a profit.
We have overlooked the comparative value of communication technologies to solve this issue of consumer awareness. Today we have the advantages of going online and reading real testimonials from dozens sometimes hundreds of consumers who use and test products in a variety of new and innovative ways. We can read where they bought stuff, what they paid for it, we can even watch videos of them using it. People even articulate complaints and coordinate efforts amongst shoppers to communicate to companies and seek future changes in products and services all through the internet.