Imagine that we made just as many cars, houses, clothes, meals, furniture, etc., each one just as big with just as high quality materials and craftsmanship. But instead of the making these in the stupefying variety that we do today, imagine that we made only a few standard variations, and didn’t update those variations as often. A few standard cars, standard clothes, standard meals, etc. Enough variety to handle different climates, body sizes, and food allergies, but not remotely enough to let each person look unique. (An exception might be made for variety in music, books, movies, etc., since these are such a tiny fraction of total costs.)
I’d guess that this alternative could plausibly cost three to ten times or more less than what we pay now. Let me explain.
Thanks, that’s a great blog post and very relevant!
I don’t think I agree with Robin’s proposal that the main reason for all this product proliferation is that we want to have unique items—it seems to me that we have a lot of proliferation in domains where we aren’t particularly keen on expressing ourselves, like brands of pencils, consistent with the standard explanation that each entrepreneur needs a tiny bit of market power to profit from his/her innovation. But whatever the reason, I agree that Robin could well be right that in some sense we get way too much (trivially distinct) product variety by default.
Thanks for sharing this!
Your last paragraph reminded me of this blog post from Robin, where he argued
Thanks, that’s a great blog post and very relevant!
I don’t think I agree with Robin’s proposal that the main reason for all this product proliferation is that we want to have unique items—it seems to me that we have a lot of proliferation in domains where we aren’t particularly keen on expressing ourselves, like brands of pencils, consistent with the standard explanation that each entrepreneur needs a tiny bit of market power to profit from his/her innovation. But whatever the reason, I agree that Robin could well be right that in some sense we get way too much (trivially distinct) product variety by default.