[mindslight]

I definitely agree with this point. I'd say food is a special case though, where the US really did have much more than Europe after WWII. Why do most Americans seem allergic to spices and flavor? I wish I knew. And this applies even to food that is supposed to be flavorful like burritos when scaled to national chains - eg Chipotle/Qdoba/Fresh City.

But economics shapes culture, too. There are certainly no shortage of subcultures trying to swim against the grain - buy American, local/organic food, German tool enthusiasts, even the tech community's libre software and anti-cloud. It feels like they remain subcultures because they're fundamentally fighting an uphill battle against top-down prices/advertising/etc set by large market makers. Which is why I initially took issue with your comment, framing it solely in terms of individual choice.

But the dynamic extends other places too, say the housing market with everything "move in ready" being beige, spec grade fixtures, and "fancy" appliances bought from a market for lemons. Trying to chew on that it still feels like not exactly what people prefer, but rather what people don't disprefer - the least offensive option to enable economies of scale (which once again comes down to monetary policy supporting the housing bubble, but I'm certainly not trying to ram the whole topic back into that)