Cross posting.

[nolawitch58]

In the marketplace, which came first supply or demand?

An argument can be made that supply came first as someone had to invent goods or services.

The counterargument is that demand came first as someone had to want a gadget that did something or a task they could not do or disliked doing themselves.

Comments

[real-skeptic.livejournal.com]

My vote would go for supply.

In the current marketplace, you know people buy stuff that they don't need and never thought they wanted until there was advertisement or "buzz" or any of the other modern marketing ploys. Things like iPads are sort of "useful after the fact". They don't do anything we didn't do before, and we wouldn't have looked for them if they weren't invented.

In a historical perspective, the marketplace started after agriculture started, and people started bartering the extra food they had. So somebody had to have an extra heap of wheat. I mean, sure there were people who needed that wheat even before agriculture was invented, but hungry people don't have much to barter for the missing food. So it must have started with surplus food produced, and people vying for it by offering things they had.

[ms-issicran.livejournal.com]

In the marketplace, I too think it was supply. You can traipse around the entire village, or you can go the marketplace where everyone is gathered with their goods. More recently we've been supplied with every possible good and service, at the mall. Should we talk about how we've been subtlely coerced into the marketplace mentality?

[saminz.livejournal.com]

I'd go for supply, as well. That food argument, indeed. Even when a whole village planned and stored together, there was still a surplus, now and then. Hunters might have too many bones and skins, as well.

And very early on, there was the traveling salesman, showing exotic goods besides telling interesting stories - early marketing at its best, I'm sure ;-).

[wisedonkey.livejournal.com]

It's not so much about which came first, as neither supply nor demand matter if the other does not exist. What really matters is dissatisfaction with status quo. When dissatisfaction with status quo exists, the drive to change comes into play. That dissatisfaction could be, "I'm starving and that guy looks like he has plenty of food." Maybe it's, "Damn, I have too much wheat and too many berries. All this stuff will rot if I don't find someone to take it quick." Throw in some shiny metal some guy found in the dirt, let someone discover that if they control the way those berries and grains rot they get booze, and suddenly civilization is formed.