#44 The Lure of the Limbic Economy
Does a Large Portion of the Economy Run on Soft Addiction?
BEEP BEEP BEEP
You slowly open your eyes.
Looking groggily to your alarm clock, you see that it’s 7:00 am.
It’s time to start the day.
Right before you get up from your bed though, you decide to check your phone, and swipe up to see your notifications. Your friend Duncan has sent you an Instagram reel. You like the different, funny reels that he sends, so you check it out thinking that it won’t take that long.
An hour later, you’ve looked at about eighty-five reels, checked everybody’s story, and scrolled through some of your friend’s posts. Why does it seem like they all are always having so much fun?
You didn’t know why, but it seemed like you were in a trance while you were on the app and now that you’re out of it, you got shit to do.
You go downstairs, quickly chug half a bottle of Mountain Dew that you had started drinking the night before, and fetch some eggos from the freezer to which you add some sugary syrup. Yum, yum, yum!
You check your phone again—it feels natural to do every now and then even if you don’t have a reason—and see that the bet you placed on the Warrior’s game worked in your favor. DraftKings will be paying you out handsomely.
Just from that, you get a surge of adrenaline and feel alive.
You scroll more mindlessly on your phone for some time while you wait for DoorDash to deliver your extra large Grande to give you some real energy. Also, you decide to order some clothes off of the website Shein. It’s cheap, easy to access, and you just got some money in your pocket from gambling, so it’s time to cash out.
An hour later, after drinking the grande, vaping, and checking OnlyFans (you’re a fein if you actually do this combo in real life), you decide it’s time to get some deep work done and study for the midterm you have next week.
All of a sudden, something occurs to you.
You can’t focus at all and surprisingly, after all the good, momentary feelings you had early in the day, you feel like shit now.
What happened?
One of my favorite books of all time is, The Almanck of Naval Ravikant, curated by Eric Jorgenson. Naval Ravikant is an angel investor who has invested in early-stage companies like Uber, Postmates, and Twitter. The book organizes all of the wisdom and insights that Naval has shared from different talks, podcasts, and tweets that he has done over the years. I include a few tweets of his below.
Naval has made me think about a range of different topics—one of them being the ‘problems of abundance’ that we face in modern society.
Naval talks about problems of abundance when asked the question, “What about the modern world steers us away from the way humans are meant to live?”
His reply is,
“We’re not meant to check our phone every five minutes. The constant mood swings of getting a “like” then an angry comment makes us into anxious creatures. We evolved for scarcity but live in abundance. There’s a constant struggle to say no when your genes always want to say yes. Yes to sugar. Yes to staying in this relationship. Yes to alcohol. Yes to drugs. Yes, yes, yes. Our bodies don’t know how to say no.”
Just this one paragraph opened my eyes to think more about how we evolved evolutionarily, and why we have a tendency to do certain things certain ways.
A prime example of this is how we as humans like to seek out dopamine. In an evolutionary context, the release of dopamine motivated us to hunt for food and pursue mates. Another example, is our search for novelty or new information. Evolutionarily, this could lead to better tools and better environments, which again helped with survival.
The key component which unites these two examples together is the system from which they came - the limbic system.
Humans always had problems of scarcity, and the limbic system helped us make better choices that would keep us alive for another day. The limbic system is located deep inside the brain, and encompasses different parts of it such as the amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and more.
There are many different functions of the limbic system, so let me point out a few.
First, is emotional regulation, influencing mood and feelings. Second, behavioral responses trigger necessary behaviors for survival like feeding, reproduction, and fight-or-flight reactions. Third, memory formation forms new memories and links emotions to these memories which can aid in learning from experiences. Lastly, is motivation and reward, reinforcing behaviors through pleasure sensations.
Just to give a little history, the roots of the limbic system can be traced back to early vertebrates like early fish and reptiles. Their primitive brain structure, which included a basic limbic system, allowed them to react to their environment with basic emotional and survival responses.
As mammals evolved, they developed a more complex limbic system, allowing for greater emotional depth, memory formation, and social bonding.
As I said before, these were all necessary to have to survive.
Let’s look at what the four main functions of the limbic system evolved to be, and why they were useful for early humans.
Fear and Detecting Threats
This was the primary role of the amygdala, which recognizes different threats in an environment such as predators or other humans. We all have a fight-or-flight response which prepares the body to double down or GTFO. If you as a human had a more sensitive fear response, you were more likely to survive and pass on them genes.
Social Bonding and Cooperation
Humans also evolved mainly to live with one another in groups so that they could hunt, gather, and better defend themselves. Someone who was alone, had slim chances of survival. It seems that the limbic system played a huge role here with forming trust, love, social bonds, and in releasing oxytocin - the bonding hormone.
Reward Seeking Behavior
Humans needed to rely on dopamine-driven motivation in order to get food, warmth, and sex. The hypothalamus played a big role in this context by regulating dopamine, so we would be motivated to pursue what we actually needed to pursue.
It also seems that dopamine-release reinforced behaviors like hunting, foraging, and tool-making, actions that increased survival chances.
Memory Formation
The hippocampus itself evolved to help humans store and recall important memories, such as where food sources were located, and who was trustworthy or dangerous. Emotionally intense experiences—like near-death encounters—were stored more strongly in memory, so one could avoid them in the future.
These four functions were necessary for humans to survive all throughout our early history for about 200,000 - 300,000 years.
Fast-forward to the modern world, our limbic system is still necessary to survive, but now it also introduces other problems.
We humans still have that same limbic system, and use it in our day-to-day lives, even if we are not aware of it. Sometimes, we do use it for what it was designed for, like motivating ourselves to get work done at our jobs or bonding with a loved one, but other times, it can get hijacked against us. Honestly, it seems that today, it’s being maliciously used against us.
This is where the term “Limbic Economy” comes in.
I don’t quite know where or when I heard this term, but it changed the way that I view what certain companies are really selling — soft addictions.
Let me give you some background.
“Limbic Economy” was coined by historian, David Courtwright, who explained the meaning and idea around the term in his 2019 book, The Age of Addiction, How Bad Habits Became Big Business.
I personally haven’t read the book, but I have read articles written by the same author where he gives an overview of the main argument of the book.
Just to give you a quick explanation, this is a short synopsis of the book by ChatGPT:
"David T. Courtwright’s book, The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business (2019), explores how businesses systematically exploit human psychology—specifically the limbic system—to create addictive products and behaviors. He introduces the concept of "limbic capitalism", which describes a profit-driven economic system that thrives by hijacking the brain’s reward system to maximize consumption.”
After digesting the main argument from the articles of the author and thinking about the topic on my own, I’ve come to a similar conclusion.
I believe that in the modern age, many products and services subtly exploit the limbic system — without many people realizing it. These services and products have the potential to form into some sort of addiction—especially an addiction that is not generally recognized by modern society.
Let me give you some examples of services and products, and I’ll explain how they can take advantage of a user’s limbic system.
Social Media and Short Form Content:
The first, and I would argue most widely recognized product, that affects users’ limbic system is social media.
The most popular social media platforms like Instagram, X, Facebook, and YouTube implement infinite scrolling and algorithmic feeds in their services.
These two features largely play on anticipation and a variable reward schedule, a reinforcement strategy where rewards are given unpredictably after a random number of actions. This takes advantage of the nucleus accumbens in your limbic system, which is the reward and motivation center. Implementation of these two features can get a user to stay hooked and make them continue scrolling for long periods of time.
Scrolling itself, can elevate a user’s dopamine levels. This is because someone doesn’t know when they will see the next post or reel that will give them a dopamine hit, so they keep on scrolling for longer periods of time.
Personally, I’d say this is the reason why me and most people I know don’t feel totally awesome after scrolling. I feel stimulated to a higher level and when I return to reality, I experience a noticeable come-down in both my mood and energy.
Online Gambling:
Similar to social media, online gambling and even-quicker-to-access apps can have comparable effects on users. Whether it’s betting on sports, pulling levers on digital slot machines, or wagering on the rise of a memecoin, all can have the similar effect of creating anticipation.
You don’t know when you are going to win, but every now and then, you randomly do win. This can give a euphoric feeling, and make you want to keep playing or betting.
The amygdala, hypothalamus, and nucleus accumbens—parts of the brain and limbic system that are responsible for risk, reward, pleasure, and arousal—are activated when you bet or gamble on these apps.
There are also several design tricks that are used on these gambling apps to get users to come back. Examples being bright lights and different sounds for visual and auditory stimulation, free chips and “daily” spins to get you to log in again, and push notifications that extend a hand out to pull you back in.
I would say that some of these principles apply to popular gaming apps like Clash Royale or Fortnite as well.
Fast Food and Processed Food:
Ahh. Good ol’ fast food.
Fast food itself, as of 2023, is a $1.1 trillion industry and is still growing per year. I would say that you can go to any fast food place and have a meal that you find tastes good, but doesn’t make you necessarily feel good afterwards.
Why is that?
It seems that fast food and the majority of processed foods are hyper-palatable foods. These are foods that have been scientifically engineered to be rewarding and irresistible, as they combine certain levels of salt, fat, sugar, and refined carbs in a way that overstimulates certain parts of the brain.
Why do we crave salt, fat, sugar, and carbs? Well, evolutionarily, we evolved in environments of scarcity where these types of ingredients were limited and provided more energy. Whenever our ancestors discovered these types of easy-energy foods that had these ingredients, they were incentivized to eat as much as they could and remember where they found them.
Let’s quickly look at each of those four ingredients and why they were valuable.
Sugar was mainly found in fruits, honey, and other seasonal foods and gave a quick burst of energy. Fat is more calorie-dense than protein or carbs and was obtained from nuts, seeds, and fatty animals, which were harder to find and acquire. Salt, which contains electrolytes, is essential for nerve function and hydration and was extremely rare to find in natural environments. Lastly, carbohydrates, found in roots and grains, offered a more stable source of energy which helped fuel longer activities.
It seems that these types of ingredients—especially when combined and engineered for maximum tastiness—activate the nucleus accumbens in our brain and release dopamine. We taste a Dorito that is perfectly salted, fried, and dusted with umami-rich artificial flavoring and the whole system goes brazy, begging for more.
Again, this lab-designed food backfires on us and takes advantage of our limbic system by giving us pleasure momentarily, while delivering food that is non-nutritious.
Pornography & Adult Content
Now, let’s talk about a taboo—if not the most taboo—topic in modern society, pornography.
Today with the modern internet, you are literally two clicks away from seeing millions of videos of random, naked strangers having sex.
And oh boy, do people use those two clicks.
Experts estimate that 4% of the internet is pornography.
From a 2018 study, 91.5% of men and 60.2% of women reported consuming pornography in the past month.
61% of the general population report viewing pornography, 78% of men watch pornography. 44% of women watch pornography. 12 is the average age of exposure.
The global adult entertainment market was valued at $182.05 billion USD in 2024 and is projected to reach $275.18 billion USD by 2032, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 5.3%. (Source)
A 2020 survey of thousands of pornographic videos found that 45% had at least one act of physical aggression.
From an evolutionary standpoint, we want to procreate and reproduce so that the human species can keep on surviving. Many parts of the brain and limbic system reward this pursuit of sex.
The hypothalamus is responsible for sex arousal by releasing hormones that trigger testosterone and estrogen production. It also activates physical signs of arousal like increased heart rate and genital blood flow. The familiar nucleus accumbens again releases dopamine due to the anticipation of sex or engaging in sex itself.
The understanding of how the activation of the hypothalamus and the nucleus accumbens drive the desire of sex connects with why pornography is so popular and widely consumed.
Besides the easy availability, novelty and variety of different videos with different sexual fantasies can stimulate the limbic system even more and encourage excessive consumption. There even seems to be an escalation effect where some users seek more extreme content over time.
These videos are basically the sexual equivalent of fast food, taking the intimacy and connection away from perhaps the most intimate activity that a person can do.
The abundance of porn videos forms other new problems for humans in the modern age. These include compulsive pornography use, erectile dysfunction tied to porn, difficulty forming relationships, and social withdrawal and reduced motivation.
A good question to ponder after all of this is: How do XXX websites make so much money, especially in an industry that is worth 182.5 billion? My guess—without any research—is it is just one of the most widely consumed services online, and that more people are hooked or softly addicted to this type of content than any other service.
So after giving a couple examples of how modern-day products can take advantage of our limbic system and ourselves—often without us realizing—I hope that you, the reader, are able to see the perspective that I view these services with.
Honestly, I don’t even think there was a real intention of these companies to try to exploit their customers when they first created their products. Instead, over time, they discovered that their product had addictive qualities and customers could get easily hooked.
David Courtwright writes about this in a more detailed manner,
“Though the internet supercharged limbic capitalism, it did not invent it. In fact, no one invented it. It emerged from an ancient quest to discover, refine and blend novel pleasures. New pleasures gave rise to new vices, new vices to new addictions—for some people, anyway. Addictive behavior was, to repeat, seldom majority behavior. But the risk of such behavior grew as entrepreneurs rationalized—that is, made more scientific and efficient—the trade in brain-rewarding commodities.”
To sum it up, there’s a clear mismatch between evolution and modern society: the limbic system originally evolved for scarcity and high-risk survival but today, we have abundance, instant gratification, and engineered products that take advantage of us.
I think that the best way to end this article is to first acknowledge that there is nothing wrong with indulging in these types of products from time to time. I use them myself on occasion, and I’m not here to shame anyone who does, especially since quite everyone indulges.
I personally think that if a person doesn’t realize and acknowledge to themselves that these products can affect them if used in a wrong way, it can lead them to be dependent on it—especially if they use it in a negative emotional state.
You can also lessen their power by applying some self-conscious strategies in order to mitigate reliance on them such as:
Delaying gratification
Taking breaks from using the product or service
Participating in positive dopamine activities like exercise, deep work, or time in nature.
Setting limits
I hope you enjoyed the article and I’ll leave you with one final quote by the Courtwright to end things off.
“The deeper truth is that we live in a world nominally dedicated to progress, health, and longevity but in fact geared toward getting us to consume in ways that are unprogressive, unhealthful and often deadly…. It requires understanding the history of novel pleasures, commercial vices, mass addiction and limbic capitalism’s ever-growing power to shape our habits and desires.” (Source)
Hasta la Vista,
-Justin
One of your best articles yet, Justin! Really interesting to see you break down how our brains have been hijacked :)