Consumer Democracies' Present Bias

Representative market democracies structurally favour immediate consumption, electoral short horizons and quarterly financial feedbacks, producing weak political constituencies for long‑term investments like industrial strategy, climate infrastructure or frontier science. This bias channels public resources and policy attention toward near‑term gratification and away from collective, future‑oriented commitments. — Recognizing this systemic present‑bias reframes debates over why democracies underinvest in strategic sectors and helps explain the political appeal of rival state‑led industrial models.