Tragedy Of Choice

And herein lies the tragedy of choice: we have unprecedented abundance of choice and yet we don’t know how much choice we really have, we let others choose for us and even when we do the choosing we are really bad at it. cf Too Many Choices

Fear of the Tyranny of small decisions: The tyranny of small decisions is a phenomenon explored in an essay of the same name, published in 1966 by the American economist Alfred E. Kahn.[1] The article describes a situation in which a number of decisions, individually small and insignificant in size and time perspective, cumulatively result in a larger and significant outcome which is neither optimal nor desired. It is a situation where a series of small, individually rational decisions can negatively change the context of subsequent choices, even to the point where desired alternatives are irreversibly destroyed. Kahn described the problem as a common issue in market economics which can lead to market failure.[1] The concept has since been extended to areas other than economic ones, such as environmental degradation,[2] political elections[3] and health outcomes.[4] A classic example of the tyranny of small decisions is the tragedy of the commons.