We can even say something more. When they manufacture popcorn, they do so because they expect to sell popcorn. If you choose to be the type of person who would buy popcorn, this is plausibly correlated to others’ similar decisions to buy popcorn and to the perception of demand for popcorn by those making popcorn. One way they observe popcorn demand is through popcorn sales, and there are many others. So if you buy a unit of popcorn, you are not only causing them to create the popcorn to replace it (since they now own less popcorn to sell to others or future you) but you also raise anticipated future demand for popcorn (and you’d also do that in any number of other ways). And you can make a case that you actually acausally caused the manufacturing of more popcorn in the past, as well. Markets can be weird, man.
We can even say something more. When they manufacture popcorn, they do so because they expect to sell popcorn. If you choose to be the type of person who would buy popcorn, this is plausibly correlated to others’ similar decisions to buy popcorn and to the perception of demand for popcorn by those making popcorn. One way they observe popcorn demand is through popcorn sales, and there are many others. So if you buy a unit of popcorn, you are not only causing them to create the popcorn to replace it (since they now own less popcorn to sell to others or future you) but you also raise anticipated future demand for popcorn (and you’d also do that in any number of other ways). And you can make a case that you actually acausally caused the manufacturing of more popcorn in the past, as well. Markets can be weird, man.