The fact that someone does not buy something tells you some combination of: they don’t need it or they don’t want it, or they can’t afford it.
+1, further decomposition on ‘don’t want it’ of don’t understand need for it and/or ‘outside of normal variance needs’ aka insurance subsidies. This is a useful inroad for thinking about the way price signals collapse certain sorts of information and what sort of markets that capture that information (and sell it?) might look like. E.g. many humanities departments basically specialize in repackaging this sort of lost info as politically relevant narratives.
+1, further decomposition on ‘don’t want it’ of don’t understand need for it and/or ‘outside of normal variance needs’ aka insurance subsidies. This is a useful inroad for thinking about the way price signals collapse certain sorts of information and what sort of markets that capture that information (and sell it?) might look like. E.g. many humanities departments basically specialize in repackaging this sort of lost info as politically relevant narratives.