What people want, say they want, and how they act are separate things. For example, no one has ever said "I want to spend hundreds of dollars on a pointless mob

What people want, say they want, and how they act are separate things. For example, no one has ever said "I want to spend hundreds of dollars on a pointless mobile game", yet that is what a lot of people end up doing. Conversely, people have plenty of problems that they are not willing to spend (enough) money on solving, at least not until it is socially common to do so. However, I think you're on to something here -- something like a reversed kickstarter; anyone could post something they would want to have and how much they would spend on it, more people could join the campaign and creators could get to work on solving it. Probably people already tried it, but off the top of my head I can think of about 10 reasons why it won't work...