I've been wrestling a bit with the idea of scarcity recently, especially as it relates to crypto and AI. Crypto is in many ways about creating scarcity in the digital realm, while AI recently has been more about increasing the abundance of creativity in the digital realm. 1/x

Web3 founder/developer. Pushing the boundaries of web3 experiences on Sui. https://ethoswallet.xyz

On its face it would seem that creating abundance is better than creating scarcity, but scarcity plays an important role in any group of sentient beings that have complex motivations. Scarcity always exists and will always exist. We're different from each other and those differences are examples of scarcity. 2/x

We value those differences in different ways which will result in collaboration or attraction between people, etc. In many ways we need scarcity that is more merit-based (based on our actions rather than our genetics) to even the playing field. 3/x

I think that's a different problem than the question of whether digital scarcity is potentially valuable. I do think digital scarcity is valuable, potentially very valuable, but if the scarce resources are distributed very unevenly it can cause big problems. Digital abundance can help with that, but you still see 5/x

scarcity arising out of that digital abundance because most of what is created through AI is not great and the few great things get a lot of attention. This draws more people into an arena that they will struggle to succeed in. I think these challenges are quite difficult and unfortunately it's not really about 6/x

scarcity or abundance because not only will scarcity always exist, but it becomes more pronounced through digital abundance and, as humans, we both want and need it. We just need to try and figure out how to keep it somewhat balanced somehow...

So creating digital scarcity in many ways is a powerful way to level the playing field as it's so easy for people to engage in the digital realm. Unfortunately the accessibility of the digital realm also creates winner-take-all dynamics where the best song gets far more attention than the second best.