The Problem With Abundance

I keep hearing a certain word from the techno-optimist world when it comes to what AI will bring to us all. That word is abundance. We are told that AI is going to make everything cheaper, so cheap that everyone can have anything. It is going to make everyone more productive. It is going to give people more time, more access, more opportunity, more creativity, more of everything.

And maybe some of that is true.

But I think a lot of very wealthy people are genuinely confused by the public skepticism around AI. They wonder why students are booing AI speeches at graduation and why communities are pushing back against new data centers. They seem to look at the reaction and say, “Why are people so afraid of this? Don’t they understand that we are trying to build a better future for them?”

The skepticism is not just about the technology. It is about who controls the technology. It is about who benefits first. It is about whether the same people promising abundance have any real interest in sharing the parts of life that are scarce.

That is the part the abundance crowd does not seem to understand. A lot of Americans have spent enough time on the lower rungs of society to know exactly how the people at the top often look down at everyone else. They may not say it out loud in public. They may have better PR teams. They may wrap it in language about innovation, access, opportunity, and the future.

But every once in a while, the mask slips. And when it does, people notice.

So when the same class of people tells everyone, “Trust us, AI is going to create abundance for you,” or “you’ll just buy intelligence on tap, like water,” a lot of people hear something else.

They hear, “We are going to own the machines, own the platforms, own the models, own the data, own the distribution, own the capital, you’ll just pay us forever for it, and this will be wonderful for you.”

You can see why someone might be skeptical of this kind of message. The reality is for most Americans, the price of everything has gone up. The cost of living has gone up. And they’re not really seeing the fruit.

The other problem with abundance is that it is not possible for everything. We can create abundance in some areas, but not in all areas. Technology can make stuff cheaper, faster, easier, and more accessible. But there will never be an abundance of floor seats at a Knicks Finals game. There will never be an abundance of first-class seats on a flight. There will never be an abundance of the best restaurants, beautiful views, country clubs, beachfront property, or the quietest places in the world.

Some things are valuable because they are scarce. Some things are valuable because not everyone can have them at the same time.

I think about this a lot through climbing.

When I was growing up rock climbing, I remember when you could just pull up to the crag and get on any three-star classic climb you wanted. You could show up with a friend, rack up, tie in, and spend the day on the wall in the sunshine, testing your limits on something real. That experience is not just the grade of the route. It is not just the rock. It is the place, the weather, the person holding the rope, the feeling in your hands, the little bit of fear before you commit, and the quiet satisfaction of topping out because you actually did the thing. You cannot digitally recreate that in a way that is true to the reality of being there.

The same is true of a perfect powder day at Highlands Bowl in Aspen, when the snow is right and the mountain feels open. Anyone who has had one of those days knows exactly what I mean. It is not just skiing. It is the air, the light, the effort to get there, the first turn, and the fact that you were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

Now you can scarcely go anywhere without being mobbed by crowds. The routes are crowded. The trailheads are crowded. The mountains are crowded. The beaches are crowded. The restaurants are booked. The secret spots are on Instagram. The world did not run out of entertainment. It ran out of quiet access to the things that make you feel alive.

You can make a beautiful television and tell people they can watch the game at home. And to be fair, watching sports at home is better than it has ever been. The picture is incredible. The camera angles are incredible. You can get highlights, stats, replays, and analysis instantly.

But that is not the same thing as sitting on the floor.

You can build a ski simulator. You can build a VR mountain. You can put someone in goggles and give them a pretty convincing version of a run. Maybe someday it will be amazing. But anyone who has ever been on a real mountain, on a perfect day, when the snow is right and the crowds are thin, knows that the simulation is not the thing.

The thing is the thing. And the thing is scarce.

It is the same with the concert you will always remember. You had to be there. You can stream the album. You can watch the footage. You can generate a synthetic version of the artist, the crowd, the lights, the set list, the whole thing. But you cannot manufacture the real thing and make it abundant in the same way for everyone.

The best things in life are free, as they say. The next best things are really expensive.

That is where the abundance conversation starts to feel silly. Let’s say AI does create some future where the basics are easier to provide. Let’s say food, education, entertainment, and basic services become much cheaper. Let’s say people work less. Let’s say people have more free time.

What do people do with that free time? They try to do the things that are not abundant.

They travel. They go to games. They ski. They climb. They golf. They eat at the restaurant everyone wants to eat at. They go to the beach town that only has so many houses. They try to get into the room, the club, the event, the school, the neighborhood, the experience.

And then the price of those things goes up because they cannot scale. You cannot solve that with another GPU cluster. You cannot prompt-engineer more oceanfront. You cannot vibe-code another Madison Square Garden floor. You cannot create infinite quiet mornings on a mountain with fresh snow and no lift line.

So we end up in this very strange place where the world may become abundant in the things that are easiest to digitize, automate, and distribute, while becoming even more brutally competitive around the things that cannot be copied.

That is not an abundant utopia. It’s just a more comfortable waiting room.

And this is also where the conversation about work gets more complicated. People love to say that if nobody had to work, everyone would be free to pursue meaning. Maybe. But work is often where people discover meaning. Structure, obligation, contribution, even in small ways, matter to people. Strip all of that away and hand people infinite entertainment, and I am not sure you have created the paradise you think you have.

And once people get bored, they will want the real things. The scarce things. The human things. The things that require place, proximity, access, and status.

Those things will still have a line outside.

So when wealthy technologists talk about abundance, I think people hear the missing sentence.

They hear, “There will be abundance for the stuff we can manufacture, but scarcity for the things we still want for ourselves.”

That may sound cynical, but it is not irrational.

People are not stupid for distrusting the sales pitch. They are not backward for wondering whether AI will mostly enrich the people who already own everything. They are not anti-progress for noticing that the people promising a frictionless future often have no intention of giving up their own frictionless lives.

It sounds like someone trying to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. People are right to ask a few questions. And when the people at the very top promise abundance for everyone, the public is right to be skeptical.

Because people do not only want more content. They do not only want faster apps. They do not only want cheaper summaries, automated workflows, AI tutors, synthetic media, and infinite generated slop.

They want dignity. They want meaning. They want to contribute.

They want to know that the people building the future do not secretly see them as a crowd to manage, a cost to reduce, a labor force to replace, or a mass of outsiders waiting beyond the velvet rope.

That is the trust problem AI has.

It is not just that people fear the machine.

It is that they do not trust the people holding it.