Even if you reduced every variant of an item in a supermarket from the 80s down to its essence, a supermarket would still cream a Soviet-era food market in selection, and most especially, reliability. I tried to find a "fair" picture of a Soviet-era market for you to see in Google images, but, all I could find were pictures of empty shelves. While this is not 100% representative, it does say something real.

If it is an "illusion", it's still built on a solid base of real choice that centralized government management completely failed to produce.

No one is really knocking substantive choice, just the fake illusory choice such as the toothpaste manufacturer with 15 lines of effectively identical paste.

Really? Here is the subtitle of the linked article:

> From jeans to dating partners and TV subscriptions to schools, we think the more choices we have the better. But too many options create anxiety and leave us less satisfied. Could one answer lie in a return to the state monopolies of old?

Perception is reality. I'm not a psychologist but if someone is fooling themselves into thinking they're consuming a better product, so much so that they actually pay a premium for that product, who are you to say that it's not "substantially" better? The connection many people have in consumption is very personal. Imagine someone telling you their spouse is better than your own in all objective criteria.

I've heard (although can't verify) that products were differentiated in the Soviet Union by where they were made. So essentially, the consumer would have a choice of "factory 1 shampoo", "factory 2 shampoo" and so on. Meaningful? Sure, but seems silly to me.

As for differentiation of goods in Soviet Union it went as: - made in USSR: hard to buy - made in USSR for export: takes a bribe to buy - made in Soviet block countries (DDR, Czechoslovakia): requires bribe and connections - made in Western countries: you better be high-profile member of a communist party

Indeed. Try finding food containing little or no refined sugar in a regular supermarket. Good luck :)

This doesn't make a lot of sense as a critique of choice. If you don't like the options available in a regular supermarket, you can go up one level and visit higher-end supermarkets, or even smaller specialty stores instead of chains.

Now, it is true that it requires more effort to find the foods you're interested in. That's because most people aren't interested in the same foods you are. There's no way to "fix" this problem beyond heavy-handed government intervention, and in a socialist society I can guarantee you that -- unless the Supreme Leader is also keen on foods without refined sugar -- you're going to find it even harder to locate anything which isn't preferred by the mass market.

Well, I can shop at Whole Foods instead of at Safeway. Choice isn't just what exists inside one store.

Go around the periphery, the "real-food", instead of all the fabricated food-like items in the aisles. ;)

The same applies to General Motors' cars - same lousy styling and reliability in different packaging (sub-brands) :-).