---
description: Menger's imputation principle meets attractor dynamics -- value flows backward from consumer needs to industry structure, and the attractor state is the configuration where that backward flow encounters least resistance
type: claim
domain: teleological-economics
created: 2026-02-18
source: "Menger Principles of Economics 1871; Christensen Competing Against Luck 2016; Max-Neef Human Scale Development 1991; Musk first principles reasoning; Schumpeter Capitalism Socialism and Democracy 1942"
confidence: likely
tradition: "Teleological Investing, Austrian economics, complexity economics"
---

# industries are need-satisfaction systems and the attractor state is the configuration that most efficiently satisfies underlying human needs given available technology

Industries exist because humans have needs. This sounds obvious, but the implications are profound when combined with attractor state analysis. Carl Menger established the foundational axiom in 1871: value flows backward from consumer needs to producer goods, not forward from production costs to prices. "Man himself is the beginning and the end of every economy." An industry's value is determined by how well it satisfies the needs it serves, not by how much it costs to operate. Industries that spend heavily but satisfy needs poorly are structurally vulnerable; industries that satisfy needs efficiently capture value.

The attractor state, then, is not just the "most efficient configuration" in some abstract sense -- it is the configuration that most efficiently satisfies the underlying human needs given available technology and physical constraints. Since [[attractor states provide gravitational reference points for capital allocation during structural industry change]], the gravitational pull comes from unmet or poorly met human needs. The gap between current industry structure and the attractor state is the gap between how needs ARE being served and how they COULD be served. This gap is what Musk calls the "analogy premium" -- the accumulated cost of doing things the way they've always been done rather than reasoning from what consumers actually need.

Christensen's Jobs-to-Be-Done framework operationalizes this: "When we buy a product, we essentially 'hire' it to make progress and get a job done." The milkshake study is canonical -- a fast-food chain couldn't improve milkshake sales by asking what customers wanted in a milkshake. The breakthrough came from asking what job the milkshake was hired to do: commute entertainment, one-handed consumption, slow satisfaction. The "competitors" weren't other milkshakes but bagels, bananas, and boredom. Industries defined by need rather than product see an entirely different competitive landscape and an entirely different attractor state.

Max-Neef provides the crucial analytical distinction: needs are finite, universal, and stable on evolutionary timescales (since [[human needs are finite universal and stable across millennia making them the invariant constraints from which industry attractor states can be derived]]). Satisfiers -- the products, services, and institutions that address needs -- are infinite and culturally variable. Industries ARE organized systems of satisfier production. When technology creates better satisfiers, industries restructure around them. Since [[the universal disruption cycle is how systems of greedy agents perform global optimization because local convergence creates fragility that triggers restructuring toward greater efficiency]], what the disruption cycle is actually optimizing toward is better need satisfaction. Creative destruction (Schumpeter's "perennial gale") is the mechanism that realigns industry structure with consumer needs when incumbent structures have drifted from this purpose.

This reframing transforms attractor state analysis from "what configuration is most efficient?" to "what configuration best satisfies the needs this industry serves?" The questions become: What needs does this industry actually serve (not just the obvious ones)? How well does the current structure serve them? What would it look like if the industry were designed from scratch to serve these needs given current technology? That redesigned industry IS the attractor state.

Mises called this consumer sovereignty -- consumers are "the true masters" and entrepreneurs who fail to serve consumer preferences lose their capital. Adam Smith stated it even earlier: "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production." The market process is fundamentally a mechanism for consumer preference to direct the structure of production. When that mechanism is distorted -- by regulatory capture (since [[proxy inertia is the most reliable predictor of incumbent failure because current profitability rationally discourages pursuit of viable futures]]), collective action problems, or information asymmetries -- industries drift from their attractor states. First principles reasoning cuts through the accumulated distortions to ask what consumers actually need.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[attractor states provide gravitational reference points for capital allocation during structural industry change]] -- this note provides the foundational "why" behind that framework's gravitational metaphor: the pull comes from unmet human needs
- [[human needs are finite universal and stable across millennia making them the invariant constraints from which industry attractor states can be derived]] -- the epistemological claim that makes need-based attractor analysis possible
- [[the universal disruption cycle is how systems of greedy agents perform global optimization because local convergence creates fragility that triggers restructuring toward greater efficiency]] -- creative destruction optimizes toward better need satisfaction
- [[companies and people are greedy algorithms that hill-climb toward local optima and require external perturbation to escape suboptimal equilibria]] -- individual firms hill-climb the current landscape; the attractor state is the global optimum defined by consumer needs
- [[proxy inertia is the most reliable predictor of incumbent failure because current profitability rationally discourages pursuit of viable futures]] -- the primary mechanism preventing industries from reaching their consumer-efficient attractor states
- [[first principles industry analysis reasons from human needs and physical constraints treating everything between inputs and need satisfaction as convention subject to disruption]] -- the methodology that operationalizes this framework

Topics:
- [[livingip overview]]
- [[attractor dynamics]]