[xorbie]

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While what he is saying is very relevent on a psychological level, he completely ignores the economic ramifications of artificially restricted choice. In fact, he opens up the speech by openly ignoring the benefits. "We all know what's good about it, so let's focus on what's bad." This is like lecturing the pros and cons of Wal Mart without talking about the increased convenience and savings to consumers, and just talking about how moms and pops are going out of business. While there are some psychic detriments, the economic benefits provide for so much that we can make them up very easily, and that is how the civilized world progressed. Are we better off living in the dark ages when there were extremely few choices? Pretty hard to obsess over what "could have been" in that case. He is literally advocating shutting down civilization.

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I'm not sure what you mean by "economic ramifications" and why they matter. The whole point of studying economics is to try to increase human welfare, and I think he's just pointing out a counterintuitive finding. He quite clearly states that some choice is better than no choice.

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Happiness is not an economic issue. It is a personal issue.

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Happiness is actually quite literally the central economic issue.