> If there is demand for dumb TVs and dumb cars, this supply will (eventually) be met.
Such demand will never rise to substantial levels. The moment your solution to a problem requires the general public to (change their behavior/become educated about something), your solution is unworkable.
If the general public regularly changed their habits out of principle, Windows would have been displaced by Linux in the 90s and the banana and diamond industries would be dead or dying.
It doesn't work that way, and it's unrealistic to assume it ever can.
> If the general public regularly changed their habits out of principle, Windows would have been displaced by Linux in the 90s and the banana and diamond industries would be dead or dying.
My argument has never been that the general public at a whole changes something out of principle. Some of us may, most will not. Sadly you're right on that account.
My argument was that if there is a demand for a product this will (eventually) be met by supply.
I don't know anything about the banana industry.
I do know that Windows is from the former monopolist Microsoft. I was there when the Halloween documents got released into the wild.
The diamond industry is a former monopoly as well (De Beers). The diamond industry furthermore has the advantage of tradition. However according to [1] "Synthetic diamonds sold as jewelry typically sell for 15-20% less than natural equivalents, but the relative price is expected decline further as production economics improve." A-ha we got incentive right there: a price of 15-20% of the natural counterpart which is going to drop further over time! What makes you believe this competitor is irrelevant, unable to compete with natural diamonds? I see the exact opposite. So we have two incentives now: the principal, ideologic one (sadly usually doesn't fly; we agree there) and a money one. Diamonds lose their value the moment they're bought. There's no second hand market for them. It is a stupid investment. If you can save 80-85% on a stupid investment that seems like a pretty good incentive to me.
> It doesn't work that way, and it's unrealistic to assume it ever can.
If we're talking about monopolies, no, but those monopolies stay monopolies due to lack of government intervention and because the wheels of justice grind slowly. Microsoft eventually got what they deserved by courts, and they failed to compete with the successors of the PC which ran the 'children' of Linux and macOS (Android and iOS). Microsoft even had to change their business model, giving away Windows 10 and focusing on advertising instead.
And my point was that there never will be enough demand for such a product for it to be anything but a niche product sold to first worlders. And that goes double on commodities with few differentiating features like TVs.
Such demand will never rise to substantial levels. The moment your solution to a problem requires the general public to (change their behavior/become educated about something), your solution is unworkable.
If the general public regularly changed their habits out of principle, Windows would have been displaced by Linux in the 90s and the banana and diamond industries would be dead or dying.
It doesn't work that way, and it's unrealistic to assume it ever can.