The selfishness motive for increasing demand is actually weaker than you might think. In the three examples you chose, climate change, Tesla, and Apple, I’d make the case that all three, even Apple(?) pulled demand because they are socially desirable at the same time as personally beneficial.
Having thought it about this some more, I think my point actually buttresses your thesis.
Lets imagine that humans are adaptable to the living standards of current circumstances and have finite competition points. Along the dimension of current circumstances there is zero-sum competition for status and relative power. Demand for status, relative power, and group belonging can swamp demand for a brighter, more efficient future.
So under this theory climate change action is an example where demand moved from the scientific community who identified a negative externality from carbon emissions to a marker of group solidarity and desirability. In this case, the competition to do something about it is probably net-good (although the anti-natal doomerism is a pretty high cost already, if that birth-rate effect is real), since many climate actions are productive.
So a model for boosting demand would be something like:
Identify goods where when demand increases there are long term positive effects. Thinkers and prophets.
Produce media content and communities around those effects. Enthusiasts and fandoms.
Create institutions that actually facilitate those effects. Innovators and political possiblity.
Each of these points requires a population that is not stuck trying to find ways to conform to their dis-innovative peers full time. “Freedom for alternative demand,” you might call it.
(This reminds me of Tyler’s comment on dentists. The marginal dentist doesn’t create much in the way of public goods. But the marginal innovative firm changes the equilibrium of society.)
Thanks Sebastian. I think this is a good way to think about it. “Nudging” demand away from the more zero-sum endeavors and toward productive ones.
Awareness and action on climate change is an especially good case study. Of course as other things, climate-related tech is both demand and supply driven, but there’s no doubt that overall climate awareness has pushed sales of things like solar, EVs, plant-based meats, etc. “goods where when demand increases there are long term positive effects” is a good way to put it.
Your steps 2 and 3 are obviously less clear how implement in practice. Especially finding ways to measure these effects. I mean, it’s pretty hard to measure how much good sci-fi has affected tech progress but long-term I think it’s clear it has.
Regarding the ‘demand cycle’, I thinkTechnological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez is relevant here. Basically technological progress goes through two broad phases of installation and deployment, each with two parts. Installation seems to relate to your 1 and 2 above, while deployment is #3, and it seems to me where progress has stalled. When the progress we have made and the demand we’ve created for that progress is deployed in a way that seems arbitrary or lackluster, the problem goes from stagnation (agent-less) to strangulation (agent-driven).
Perez frames the deployment period as a golden age of synergy that leads to maturity, where the cycle starts over. If that golden age is poorly distributed, then maturity looks less like well-earned growth and more like ossification. Related is the literature on the psychological effects of unfulfilled desire, including being unable to complete things, the inability to acquire, realize gains, pull things in and compose with them.
To take two examples from above, Apple and climate change have both successfully injected demand across the cycle, rather than just frontloading it and letting the chips fall. Apple’s deployment as a firm is much more ‘orderly’ than climate change (a broad movement), whose deployment ranges from dematerialization to anti-natalism to summits with world leaders. Satisfying our desire for Apple products is pretty straightforward, while satisfying our desire to prevent the worst of climate change is much more complicated.
The selfishness motive for increasing demand is actually weaker than you might think. In the three examples you chose, climate change, Tesla, and Apple, I’d make the case that all three, even Apple(?) pulled demand because they are socially desirable at the same time as personally beneficial.
Having thought it about this some more, I think my point actually buttresses your thesis.
Lets imagine that humans are adaptable to the living standards of current circumstances and have finite competition points. Along the dimension of current circumstances there is zero-sum competition for status and relative power. Demand for status, relative power, and group belonging can swamp demand for a brighter, more efficient future.
So under this theory climate change action is an example where demand moved from the scientific community who identified a negative externality from carbon emissions to a marker of group solidarity and desirability. In this case, the competition to do something about it is probably net-good (although the anti-natal doomerism is a pretty high cost already, if that birth-rate effect is real), since many climate actions are productive.
So a model for boosting demand would be something like:
Identify goods where when demand increases there are long term positive effects. Thinkers and prophets.
Produce media content and communities around those effects. Enthusiasts and fandoms.
Create institutions that actually facilitate those effects. Innovators and political possiblity.
Each of these points requires a population that is not stuck trying to find ways to conform to their dis-innovative peers full time. “Freedom for alternative demand,” you might call it.
(This reminds me of Tyler’s comment on dentists. The marginal dentist doesn’t create much in the way of public goods. But the marginal innovative firm changes the equilibrium of society.)
Thanks Sebastian. I think this is a good way to think about it. “Nudging” demand away from the more zero-sum endeavors and toward productive ones.
Awareness and action on climate change is an especially good case study. Of course as other things, climate-related tech is both demand and supply driven, but there’s no doubt that overall climate awareness has pushed sales of things like solar, EVs, plant-based meats, etc. “goods where when demand increases there are long term positive effects” is a good way to put it.
Your steps 2 and 3 are obviously less clear how implement in practice. Especially finding ways to measure these effects. I mean, it’s pretty hard to measure how much good sci-fi has affected tech progress but long-term I think it’s clear it has.
Regarding the ‘demand cycle’, I thinkTechnological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez is relevant here. Basically technological progress goes through two broad phases of installation and deployment, each with two parts. Installation seems to relate to your 1 and 2 above, while deployment is #3, and it seems to me where progress has stalled. When the progress we have made and the demand we’ve created for that progress is deployed in a way that seems arbitrary or lackluster, the problem goes from stagnation (agent-less) to strangulation (agent-driven).
Perez frames the deployment period as a golden age of synergy that leads to maturity, where the cycle starts over. If that golden age is poorly distributed, then maturity looks less like well-earned growth and more like ossification. Related is the literature on the psychological effects of unfulfilled desire, including being unable to complete things, the inability to acquire, realize gains, pull things in and compose with them.
To take two examples from above, Apple and climate change have both successfully injected demand across the cycle, rather than just frontloading it and letting the chips fall. Apple’s deployment as a firm is much more ‘orderly’ than climate change (a broad movement), whose deployment ranges from dematerialization to anti-natalism to summits with world leaders. Satisfying our desire for Apple products is pretty straightforward, while satisfying our desire to prevent the worst of climate change is much more complicated.