The market is a listening device
It’s the most resilient, most granular technique available for us to figure out what people want.
When individuals have the freedom to choose, they often do.
At the same time that markets enable choice, large-scale industrial capitalism works overtime to remove it. The main job of most big company CEOs is to figure out how to lock in customers, because customers without choices stick around longer and pay more.
Some organizations exist to satisfy market demand.
Some work hard to create market demand.
And some are focused on capturing demand and then eliminating the market itself.
The internet has created changes in both directions. We have dramatically more choice when it comes to ways to spend/waste our time, but we also have to deal with the natural monopolies created by the network effect and the hidden levers that drive toward lock in.
If we’re not alert, many of the choice-driven markets we depend on will disappear.