Against Scarcity - by David Phelps - Three quarks
davidphelps.substack.com · 3,801 words · saved by 2 readers
Online, goods and services are infinite. What are the costs of making them artificially scarce?
I. One reason that it can be hard to appreciate transformative technologies early on is that they are seldom, well, transformative, instead replicating old technologies in hamfisted new forms. Early railroads were powered by horses, only substituting animals for steam when engines were invented for ships. Early cars, in turn, were modeled after railroads and steamships in drawing power from slow-starting steam engines, only shifting to gasoline and consumer popularity many decades later. Similarly, early internet media replicated analog 2D media, reproducing entire scans of NYT front pages…
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