No doubt Barry Schwartz has never lived without choice. He's wrong, and obviously so. Freedom of choice is vastly superior, in every possible way, to the alternative.

A nicer Soviet-era grocery store:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWTGsUyv8IE

The stories are overly plentiful of people that were held in low-choice captivity in the former USSR, breaking down in tears upon seeing western grocery stores. I know several people who lived under Communism in Romania, their experience was identical. I'd suspect that very few people arguing against choice, have ever lived in a situation where they were actually deprived of it. They're essentially spoiled brats.

I think the key here is the Goldilocks principle: too little or no choice is bad, but so is too much choice. The key (from a marketing perspective) is finding just the right amount of choice that does not overwhelm, but gives a range of varying options. Other commenters have mentioned finding a sweet spot - Apple's x/y axis that leads to four product categories; trimming the number of potato chip options on the rack from 12 to 5 and seeing sales jump.

I was just going to post the Google Talk with the same guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ELAkV2fC-I.

Choice is good as long as people don't feel like they need to optimize, but instead feel they can settle for good enough.

And here some of the other side--that the paradox of choice might be s myth: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-...

The linked story mentions "professor of social theory Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice" and links to his book.

"Freedom is the state of not having to choose" -Alan Watts