Service availability creates demand rather than merely satisfying it
Evidence
Overt expressions of demand for services tend to be more responsive to changes in the perceived availability of services than in changes in the underlying conditions that are commonly supposed to affect demand. In other words, perceived availability of service “pulls” demand, not the other way around. To illustrate: when cities introduce “g11” programs providing for central reception of public safety telepbone calls, an easily memorized telephone number and publicity to instruct the public in its use, they discover an untapped reserve of requests for public safety assistance. Indeed, New York City at one point undertook a public campaign to urge people to use the gIl system less because the increased demand outstripped the city’s ability to respond. When Boston introduced its Little City Halls program, providing a municipal presence in the neighborhoods, requests for city services through complaints increased by a third. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 292
Categorization
- XREF: Connects directly to Supply creates its own demand / Say’s law concepts and to the classic claim that building highways increases traffic (induced demand) — institutionalized as a general mechanism. — connects to: Frontline workers teach clients to expect few services, dampening demand in advance — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 487; Waiting-list persistence is ambiguous evidence of genuine client need; Expanding emergency access triggers new rationing that caps the client gains. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1038 (+4 more)
- SEED: Angle: the g11 example (NYC urging less use) parallels how modern bureaucratic capacity itself manufactures reported need — worth a piece on how ‘recorded demand’ is an artifact of machinery of intake.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 292
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
Broader Connections
- Manufactured scarcity and disposability sustain value by regulating perceived demand
#expands(0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1879