Scarcity Was Forced Upon Us
I am not sure how much the average person thinks about scarcity versus abundance. It is a topic that does not come up often in conversation, at least for the typical Joe and Jane. I would presume a big part of the reason is most of us experience scarcity which is not really an uplifting conversation piece. Abundance is something that tends to be fleeting.
Many think that scarcity is a choice. That people somehow choose to be poor or go without. This mindset is changing since there are so many who "follow the rules" like going to school, getting a good job, and working hard. The only problem with this is that, for millions, the payoff promised is not there. People in the developed work are struggling. The system is against them yet many still support it.
The reality of the situation is we are not aware of how many choices are made for us. This is especially true throughout history. Fortunately, things are changing which also brings up a situation that many cannot believe, let alone handle. Talk of the Age of Abundance seems to get people freaked out. I guess it is something that is too hard for them to comprehend. Hence, they go back to their default programming.
Here is a prime example of how our options were limited. Let us use music. Before the digitization of music, how much did you have access to? Initially, we were limited to what was played on the radio. Thus, the Top 40 became a major part of our music selection. In addition to this, we could walk into a store and buy a record, cassette, or CD. This raises the question, who decided which ones to carry?
Obviously, we did not have unlimited music choices. Millions of songs were out of our reach simply because they were not part of what the decision makers opted for. Since shelf space was limited, choices had to be made and we were not the ones doing it.
We could do the same with books. It is said that the average bookstore was able to carry 130K titles. This is an impressive number. Again, we see physical locations with space constraints. That means someone had to decide which books were chosen.
The Internet changed all this. It ushered in abundance in some areas. Music is no longer limited to the top choices. Instead, there is tens of millions of songs on a platform like Pandora. Amazon carries millions of books with more than half their sales coming from outside the top 130K of old book stores.
Essentially, the reach is much greater since the cost to "carry" is not any more. Does it really cost Amazon more to have 10M books listed versus 100K? Once it is programmed in, the cost is minimal. Selling even one of the 9 millionth title is a gain for the company.
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These are examples of abundance. Now we have choices beyond what others decide. YouTube was another wonder that gave us access to enormous amounts of video. What was once only in the hands of the mega studios is now accessible to anyone with a smart phone and an internet connection. YouTube provided billions of hours of video content for free.
That was until recently. Of late, there appears to be a censorship campaign taking place meaning that certain content is no longer available. This is upsetting to many people, both from a practical standpoint and based upon principle. Regardless of the reasoning, people are not liking having their options limited.
Over the next decade, we are going to see much more of our world digitized. This simple act means that something that was once scarce is now abundant. It is hard for people to fully grasp onto until you look at the history of the Internet and what it did. Sure, Web 2.0 comes with many problems, the biggest being centralization. However, even though controlled, it did create abundance in many areas.
The next evolution is going to do a lot more. Web 3.0 moves passed the centralization into a world where abundance is combined with individuals control. We need to make power abundant and not just in the hands of a few people. This is one of the overriding elements to the next evolution.
We are the forerunners for the new Internet. There are so many out there who are not aware of what is taking place. That said, there are at least 50K people on here daily who I bet would not engage in blogging or other social media activities for free. The days of providing content for big corporations to profit from are behind us. We are now indoctrinated into the "Get paid to ________" movement.
Our choice, when available, is abundance. Cryptoeconomics is providing this. Certainly, we are so early there are not a ton of options but they are spreading. Over the next couple years, the tokenization of everything will start to emerge. People will see that whatever can be represented via a token on a blockchain, will be.
This is not a passing trend.
It is all part of the Age of Abundance.
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I'm really interested to see how television shows fare into the new age....
Free to Air showed us everything that was available... and then Cable came along and gave us a trillion more channels, but we still had to deal with commercials and being available when the programs were aired... then streaming services came along and we could watch way too much content, with no commercials... all while online content is getting better and better...
It looks like now the bigger companies are now trying to limit our abundance and are all creating their own platforms; Disney, DC, etc etc so people will have to subscribe to a larger number of services to watch the particular programs they like... which they'll do for a short time until a better system comes along.
Obviously at some point, these large companies will be competing with each other to offer us more and more tokens to watch their programs.
Product placement can be subtle and lucrative.
Even locations are products.
Come shoot your teen drama at my tropical resort with naming rights, I'll pay for production.
I miss the days of less choice. We used to get a lot of music via alternative record stores and alternative radio stations comma as well as people we knew that travelled or have the money to order Final from overseas. It was a long process to get the music comma I mean you had to work harder for it. In many ways this made it even more pleasurable. You were taking cassette around to someone's house and then have to wait a week or so for them to get around to do it for you comma but when you finally got the album and your Hans it would be the best thing on Earth. There was also a real pleasure in building a physical collection. I also used to like the sharing culture as well where you would borrow someone's book or lent went out and talk about it. Nowadays people say oh don't worry I will just download it on my Kindle. In many ways it is great having access to stuff colour a positive abundance . sometimes I think scarcity is better for the soul xx
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I really think people underestimate the internet, as a technology it is still so young, just over 20 years. I think once there is global 5G networks we will see just how powerful the internet can be. It will fundamentally transform the way we live..... again.
It’s not crystal clear to me how tokenization of everything leads to abundance. I have a vague idea but I would like to explore this line of reasoning further.
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There will be something to take over steem as well, that's how the world works.
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