A Beautiful Lack of Identity?

My Pakistani friend, Ali, offers some great insight into the state of affairs in America:

One of the things that foreigners seem to notice first about the US is how uniform it is. You could roll into a small town and not know whether it is on the East Coast or West, or somewhere in between: you'll find the same companies, the same sort of governance, the same rules, the same architecture, the same layout within shops belonging to the same chain, the same everything.

This frustrates a lot of people, and it does take away some of the variety that is the spice of life. Yet I was reminded today why this uniformity exists, and why it is so wonderful: I went shopping for hardware and strayed into the furniture section. On display was exactly the same bookshelf I have at home. It is a little annoying knowing you're just one of thousands of people living in the same sort of environment. But if you think about it, a lot of human progress has come on the back of taking a complex process, simplifying it, and repeating it in large numbers: desks and chairs in Pakistan are all in different shapes and sizes because we haven't mastered the art and science of mass-production. My desk in Fairfax is half the size of my desk in Lahore, uses material of cheaper quality, and probably took half the time to construct, but because it has been afforded better engineering, it is no less useful, no less sturdy. And ultimately, it cost less than half as much.

The one problem with the Ikea way of doing things is that variety is sacrificed, but then again, it is sacrificed voluntarily: it is still possible to buy hand-made, designer objects, from desks and shoes to cars, but not too many people see interested in paying for them, and that's not really a bad state of affairs at all. If only we could all figure out how to be as boring as the US...

I must say I never thought much about this until Ali mentioned it over coffee one day. It is an important point that can be easily missed by those of us who have grown up in such a "homogeneous environment". From an economic standpoint, this uniformity in our culture reduces transaction costs of nearly every activity we engage in which translates into one of the sources of wealth in our country.

Traveling in different parts of the world, I have been struck by the non-uniformity (in Europe for example), where languages, stores, customs, etc. can radically change over very short distances. While it can be charming to the tourist, it can also be incredibly frustrating when you want to buy a simple item commonly available at home or when you have to know how to say words in three languages over the course of a five-hour train ride or need a translator or two in order to conduct business with another firm only two hours away...