Schwartz: I hope so. You know, Bush missed a terrific opportunity after 9/11, by not asking much of us. And so we've now got another crisis that's quite a different crisis, and I hope that Obama does not make the same mistake. I hope that he demands things of Americans, sacrifices of various kinds of Americans, that get us sort of re-engaged with the fabric of our institutions and our social lives and get us to stop thinking of ourselves as free agents.
Kall: Have you seen that put on the table yet? I don't think I have, I mean he's talking about tough times, but I don't think I've seen him do it either. You're right, there was a lot of talk about how Bush missed an opportunity, but I wonder, there is a great opportunity now, and has Obama really asked us to do anything yet?
Swartz: Not yet, but he's only been in office a month, and I think that what he needs to do, and he probably thinks he needs to do, is restore some confidence that there will be a tomorrow and then once that's done, he can start making demands of us about how we're going to act.
Kall: Maybe some of us need to be telling him, "Obama, you need to be asking more of us. Maybe we need to speak up and say that that's something we're willing to do, rather than this libertarian kind of approach of "leave us alone and it'll take care of itself."
Schwartz: Maybe. I certainly think that if we don't start hearing stuff like that in the not-too-distant future, then it ought to bubble up from the bottom, that it's ok to ask us to do stuff. I'm inclined to think that, it's a month and he's got all his fingers in different dikes and when things settle down a little bit, maybe he will start asking us to be citizens.
Kall: You said you do research. What kind of research do you do?
Schwartz: Well, I do research on how people make decisions and whether the decisions people make give them the satisfaction that they expect and aspire to. I wrote a book a few years ago, called the Paradox of Choice, that's about the paradoxical result that when people have too many options, instead of being liberated, they become paralyzed. They can't pull the trigger; they walk out with nothing. If they walk out with something, they're convinced they picked the wrong thing. Giving people all this freedom of choice, as it turns out, is a burden not just a blessing, so I wrote a book about that.
Kall: So what is the answer?
Schwartz: Well, the answer is, you're not going to pass legislation that says supermarkets can only carry 30 kinds of cereal, so the answer is, in the world of consumer goods, we have to figure out ways to limit the options that we consider ourselves, because society is not going to do it for us.
In other areas of life, like say, Medicare Part D, the government can at least avoid adding to the burden. In Medicare Part D, there were 50, 60, 70, 80 different drug plans for senior citizens to choose among, and it created mass confusion, mass panic and mass dissatisfaction with a government hand out.
Kall: That's interesting. So what I'm hearing... In my exploration of bottom up, there are all these different possibilities that happen and what ends up happening is a small percentage of them get paid attention to and emerge as the "chosen ones."
Schwartz: Uh-huh.
Kall: But I've also concluded that when that happens, it takes leaders, and again, 5 to 20% of the population are the people who make the choices, that are the influencers, who end up making those decisions that lead to fewer choices or to the more apparent choices, shall I say, because on the web, things kind of sink or swim. Am I making sense?
Schwartz: Sure, and I think that that's a good thing. I think if it weren't for the existence of these people you are calling the leaders, the shapers of options that the rest of us get to choose among, we would all be completely bewildered and be unable to get ourselves out of bed in the morning.
Kall: This is kind of like what, oh you just mentioned his name-he wrote "The Tipping Point."
Schwartz: Gladwell, Malcom Gladwell
