“The Simplicity of Shopping in the Past vs The Overwhelming Choices of Today”

For example, there were two types of milk in the store: blue and red. Blue was semi-fat and red was full-fat. Done.

There were two types of processed cheese in the shop: green thirty and red seventies. Done.

There were two types of toilet paper: rolled and folded. Done.

I still fondly remember the wonderful tangy taste of yogurt in a glass, how I took off the aluminum lid and had to use a long spoon to reach the bottom to stir the strawberry jam at the bottom…

And I also like to tell our children how two types of canned food were displayed on the shelves of grocery stores: pork and beef. Done.

From an aesthetic point of view, an interesting spectacle: on the right, beef is neatly laid out in several rows on top of one another, on the left, pork is arranged in the same way. Simple and beautiful.

The choice of pastry was equally simple: rolls or bread. Done.

Although, now I remember the great taste of Karlovy Vary rolls, so there was probably some choice after all. It’s just like this in my memories. There were few goods, the selection was small, and therefore the purchase was very simple and quick.

Of course, I’m quickly led astray when looking at period photos, and I just don’t like to fill in the gaps of my selective memory. You can see from the photos that there were more goods than I remember, but the selection was very limited after all.

And also in the days of central planning, goods had fixed prices that were printed directly on the packaging. So it didn’t really matter which store you shopped at because everything cost the same. Today we make every purchase an event of the season, we prepare for it, we read flyers where it is as cheap as possible and on sale. And we drive like crazy from one store to another, because there is cheap milk and there is cheap beer…

Of course, as a passionate defender of capitalism, I know that the essential condition for a healthy market is competition – but the result is almost unlimited supply in any field. The rule has worked well for manufacturers: when one margarine is sold, the other margarine must be sold as well. And when these two margarines are sold, the third margarine must also be sold. And so on. This brings increased demands on our attention and orientation in products and prices. In the end, we are standing in front of a shelf with margarine and we don’t know which of the twenty types to choose.

Well, those are the intricacies of those rapid changes and choices.

But in the end, artificial intelligence will pull us out of all this, which will deprive us of free thinking and, in the end, will subtly advise us who to vote for in parliament and what margarine to buy.

(By the way: if you think something strange about the opening photo of the article, you’re right: it was generated by AI – artificial intelligence.)