This is a Lexicon entry: the mechanism, when it shows up, and the countermeasure. The full correction, with real-world cases and the audit prompt, hasn't been written yet.
Definition
The economic system that has evolved to exploit the brain's reward circuitry for profit - engineering addiction to food, drugs, pornography, social media and news as its primary business model. The market doesn't just respond to desires; it creates them, escalates them and then monetizes the inability to stop. Where capitalism once competed on product quality, it now increasingly competes on the virulence of its addictions.
When it shows up
Consumer products built around brain reward systems: social media, gambling, processed food, pornography, addictive gaming. Industries whose products are the dopamine loop itself.
Failure mode
Market incentives reward products that maximally hijack reward systems. The individual's interest in wellbeing and the firm's interest in engagement diverge. Regulation lags technology; consumption effects are invisible per-encounter and compound over years.
Countermeasure
Recognise the category. These products are not neutral tools; they are engineered dependency. Use deliberately with hard limits. The individual cannot beat the research budget of the industry; environmental control is the only durable defence.
Related traps
Also connected in the map3 more, locked
Credit & first seen
PopularizedDiscussed by Gurwinder Bhogal,40 Useful Concepts(Spring 2023, https://gurwinder.blog/p/40-mind-expanding-concepts-spring). Related to Robert Lustig's The Hacking of the American Mind (2017).
Also revealed
Entry #602 of 631 in The Lexicon · see the full Lexicon