I noticed myself disgusted at dinner Tuesday night. I had to decide on the same meal, one I had to assemble or one that was already assembled. I chose the latter and was then disappointed in that I had to do the work to assemble it before i could eat. Yet I chose it for the freedom of making how I wanted.

How many times a week does this happen to everyone? You make a choice for a perfectly logical reason, but the outcome isn’t what you had expected and you’re disappointed. Barry Schwartz uses the example of jeans and dressings in this TED video, but it’s anything that offers you a choice with to many alternatives. You psychological punish yourself afterward because your afraid you made the wrong choice.

The same issue occurs in a democracy, we provide to many options with to few choices of representation. It is the flaw in democracy those who vote decide who represents their group, but the people who don’t vote are free from having to decide on inadequate representation. They should also be able to own up to their choice of inadequate representation rather than attack the person that was chosen for them by the masses who did vote. If the person is a horrible representation, “Hey, you had nothing to do with it so you shouldn’t care. You didn’t care enough to vote on time, so don’t cast your ballot after the fact.”

Like they say in court, ” If you can’t afford a representative, one shall be provided to you by the state.”