The Provisioning Trilemma: Cost, Quality and Universality

I believe goods and services in an economy suffer from a trilemma similar to those found in other fields, such as distributed systems (CAP Theorem), project management (Iron Triangle), and energy policy (Energy Trilemma). The triangle looks like the following:

Each corner of our shape is defined below:

It is hard to have good conversations about what we desire as people because we don't acknowledge this trilemma and don't accept that we can choose our tradeoffs. We aren't beholden to choosing and applying one pair to everything in an economy. For example, the United Kingdom has made market-based decisions for its tech industry, prioritizing quality and cost, which differs from its healthcare system, prioritizing universality and cost at the expense of quality.

By choosing a pair, we acknowledge a patch is required for the third leg. Let's examine these pairs and their tradeoffs through a philosopher's favorite technology: hammers.

Optimizing for cost-effectiveness and quality mirrors the market systems we operate within today. Markets efficiently produce high-quality goods at competitive prices, evidenced by the diverse and innovative hammer options. However, a crucial element is sacrificed in our market pursuit: universality. There's no guarantee everyone will receive a hammer, even if it's a functionally essential tool for everyone. Access is determined by purchasing power and market forces, not by inherent need or right.

The above patches are mostly government-driven programs, given they can create regulations and develop the requisite programs to make these hammer dreams a reality. While these patches improve universality, the core principle remains: market-driven systems prioritizing cost and quality will inherently lead to unequal access unless actively and continuously mitigated by government intervention.

Optimizing for quality and universality shifts us from pure market reliance, necessitating intervention to bypass market-driven cost constraints. Under this model, we aim to provide the highest possible quality of goods and services, the "best hammer ever invented," and ensure everyone receives one, regardless of their ability to pay or market demand. However, defining the ceiling of "quality" becomes problematic, and consequently, the overall cost can become unsustainable.

Our final optimization prioritizes universal access above all else while tightly controlling costs. This choice leads to producing and distributing the cheapest possible goods and services. The tradeoff is a drop in quality. Everyone gets a hammer, but it's likely to be of low quality, prone to breaking, and requiring frequent replacement.

What are the tradeoffs we are willing to make?

This trilemma is not a golden truth but a way to frame goods and service provisioning in an economy. I ignore important implementation details such as decentralized vs centralized systems, pricing mechanisms, etc. However, we should have a frame for only discussing the tradeoffs without slowing ourselves down to a halt in useless low-level conversations when we don't understand our high-level aims.