When I was an undergraduate nearly 97 years ago, I had a professor [Ada M. Harrison] who opined that we didn't really need all those different brands of toothpaste or bar soap. I questioned her assertion, suggesting that consumers like choice and value different flavours, smells, textures, and packaging. She essentially poo-pooed this thought. She was a brilliant professor, probably the best professor I had in economics as an undergraduate. And yet she had this notion that variety and consumer choice is somehow somewhat wasteful.
She got her PhD from Harvard/Radcliffe, though, so I guess it's all understandable.
The elitist centralist interventionists of this world tend to downplay the value consumers attach to choice and variety.
E.g. Bernie Sanders, as is emphasized in this meme that has circulated on Facebook [via Leon Drolet and Tom Palmer]:
She and my other profs at Carleton College also poo-pooed Hayek's Road to Serfdom. They really needed to read and study more F.A. Hayek,
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.