A few years ago, through one of those pleasant TED conferences that spread like wildfire on social networks, barry schwarz popularized the expression “the paradox of choice” and which can be summarized as follows: choosing between too many options produces paralysis and dissatisfaction, which would cause a kind of very negative stress in modern industrial societies.
None of this will happen to the customers of the Panamericana store on Rancho Boyeros and Camagüey avenues, in Havana, whose shelves looked almost completely empty this Monday.
“How is this around here!” One of the very few clients who were in the store, selling in freely convertible currency (MLC), was surprised. An employee responded, sighing with resignation: “Did you see how this is? The last time there was a more or less decent assortment here was in December and we’ve been like this ever since.”
Gone are those images of the establishment in which the refrigerators looked full and the lines at the door stretched four blocks.
For sale there were hardly any very expensive products that people do not usually buy, such as beef that is unaffordable to the average Cuban, or Christmas cravings at 16 MLC, or the occasional wrinkled and expensive package of beans.
Far away are those images of the establishment in which the refrigerators looked full and the lines at the door stretched four blocks. That was in July 2020, just after the Government announced the sale of food and toilets in MLC, a measure harshly criticized by the population, a large part of which does not have access to foreign currency.
Even though one year later The same market, one of the largest in the capital next to Cuatro Caminos, in Centro Habana, and 3ra y 70, in the municipality of Playa, looked in crisis due to shortages, cannot be compared to its present state.
“Nothing, this is bare, Let’s go,” a couple commented to each other.
To explain the “paradox of choice” there is scientific studies who speak, for example, of the harm of an “overload of alternatives” in the brain if you have many options to choose from. Thanks to the Revolution, the Cuban brain is safe.
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