Source: Marginal REVOLUTION
The economics of attention have inverted. Cheaper screens don't mean consumers get better deals—they mean the pricing mechanism that once constrained consumption has evaporated. When the product is free or subsidized by advertising and data extraction, "demand" becomes a hollow metric. The consumer story is about how quality-adjusted pricing breakdowns expose the inadequacy of traditional demand curves in markets where the customer isn't buying a product. They're becoming one.