I used to fly a lot on business trips. Without the commentary about doing the biz trips (No, not glamorous and not “touristy” that many think it is), I had piled up a lot of frequent flier miles. While most of them were earned (and used) on United, I do/did have a smattering of miles on different airline left over – just not enough to use for an actual trip. So, I get offers to turn in some of the miles for magazine subscriptions.
Sidenote: capitalism at its best – I voluntarily trade something that has little worth to me for something that holds much more value in the form of reading materials. A win-win situation!
Well, this time I decided to try out Real Simple. Now, I know it is a “womens magazine” having never read it before the first issue made it to my mailbox – I won’t try it again (I don’t fit their demographic, obviously) and will know not to spend my time reading it. The other reason was when I read the Editor’s Note which made clear the obvious philosophical difference:
…THen I got a new job with a much more serious guy, who told me that everyone on this earth is a bull, an owl, a lamb, or a tiger. This personality exercise was fun but not as much fun as Bird or Bunny, because everyone knows that few choices are almost always preferable, which is partly why Real Simple exists in the first place.
Now, one would think, and rightly, that a magazine with “Simple” in its name is talking about simplifying one’s life – and you’d be right. I’ve been driving TMEW crazy for a few years in looking at things and going “hey, we haven’t used in this in DECADES – time to get rid of it”. Yes, simplifying by getting rid of the clutter (yes, our “junk draw” still is in need of further downsizing). But getting rid of no longer needed stuff (or habits, by the way) is not the same as having or mandating fewer choices.
Choice is the epitome of Freedom – as stated before, choice is the quantification of Freedom. Restricting your choice by the actions of others lessen your Freedom. Having fewer choices placed upon you is a form a tyranny, both on you and the folks what want to provide more choice. But there are those, like Bernie Sanders (“You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers”) and Hillary Clinton (“We’re going to take things away from you”).
Yes, having MANY choices means you have to think about what properties of that “thing” are most important to you (“which deoderant is best for me?”). But choice, like speech, is ALWAYS better with MORE rather than less. Yes, it seems, that folks like Sanders, Clinton, the editor of Real Simple don’t believe it. The first two simply want to reduce your choice because of that Progressive “tell”: “You don’t need that”. In their minds, they believe THEY can better use those resources supplying that choice than those supplying that choice and care not a whit that they can, because of the force of Government, take it away from you (either outright as in Hillary’s decades long attempts at civilian disarmament) or tax you to make something’s cost so artificially high so as to “make it” your choice not to buy it (e.g., tobacco products or soda drinks).
So all in all, this lady editor is wrong – simplification is not done through the diminishment of choice. Instead, it is, and should be, a choice of the individual based on a person’s individual need.
And not “just because” fewer is better – it isn’t. We all should celebrate the choices that capitalism and the freedom our Founding Fathers enumerated this year.
May this New Year, 2016, hold more choices for you than you could ever choose!
