Z:gnu-www-ja-free-world--f64482-In the market equation, demand/en

In the market equation, demand is equal to, and in many ways the master of, production. Yet in the world we live in, production is highly organized and efficient and commands enormous financial resources and seductive powers of persuasion, while demand is fragmented, uninformed, and powerless. While consumers can still kill a product that they have no desire for, they are nearly powerless to direct or even influence the detailed designs of those products. For software products, consumers can only choose among a given set of alternatives, which are extremely complex, dauntingly impenetrable, and generally designed more for the company's anticompetitive purposes than for the user's tasks. (Even the old fashioned option of doing without is often impossible due to the intricate web of interdependencies as new hardware and software march in lock step into the future.)