Why our greatest inventors are supreme hucksters

People often tell me I have a strange way of looking at the world. Obviously, it doesn’t seem strange to me. But I do tend to see the world backwards. For instance, most people think the principal obstacles to economic and technological growth are all about supply. To me, it’s all in the demand.

I have met one Italian economist, Mario Fabbri, who agrees. But apart from him, me and maybe Matt Ridley, there’s nobody else. Now, how crazy is this idea? What if the biggest constraint to progress really is a question of psychology, not economics?

Certainly, if it is true, it should not surprise us that economists and policy–makers are reluctant to believe it. The knowledge and influence they possess would be instantly devalued. As Upton Sinclair put it: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.’