# Scarcity and Cyberspace
## DRAFT-1
### Sam Williams, November 2nd, 2020.

At the birth of democracy, the masses gained political representation. The vast majority did not, however, gain freedom from capitalistic servitude and its experiences of suffering.

During the twentieth century numerous countries experimented with communism as a potential solution to unnecessary economic suffering. These efforts failed. The main reason for this failure seems to be incentive incompatibility. We humans are animals whose ancestors lived in a world characterised by deep scarcity. We evolved in an environment where greed pays, and now we cannot turn it off.

2020 is a moment in time in which the main ideologies have all failed and crumble. The inertia of the systems keep them running, but few have any real faith in their ability to deliver us a brighter future.

Since the birth of the web, humanity has been continually sucked deeper and deeper into cyberspace. In successive waves, starting from desktop computer use in some workplaces, to shared machines in family homes, to individual laptops, and then to smartphones, the trend is clear: Each new wave of technology brings the machines to more people, and raises the bandwidth between the brain and the machine. In 2020, we appear to be in the vicinity of the tipping point at which more people spend more time in cyberspace, than in physical space.

At least the next two waves of cyberspace-brain interaction technologies are clearly on the horizon: VR and BCI. There is no reason to believe that reality’s subsumption to cyberspace will slow, and every reason to believe that it will increase. Eventually, it seems clear that humans will be connected so tightly to machines — and subsequently to cyberspace — that they will inhabit cyber experiences that are indistinguishable from physical reality. Given the exponential pace of technology, this future may be nearer than we think.

In cyberspace, unreal experiences can be summoned at extraordinarily low cost. Further, it costs no more to create and deploy idillic experiences, than it does experiences of suffering. Once generated, experiences in cyberspace can be scaled to almost arbitrary populations, at practically zero additional cost. It is clear that cyberspace has radically different scarcity dynamics than physical space. These dynamics could, if we choose it, distribute beautiful and fulfilling experiences to all people.

The early days of cyberspace seem to have played with the joy of infinitely replicable experiences of happiness. Singing hamsters, dancing baby gifs, free and open discussion forums amongst likeminded individuals. But as time has progressed, the landscape of cyberspace has begun to represent a theithdom: where the owners and rulers of places in cyberspace exploit their visitors to maximise physical-space profits. Rather than existing to free users of suffering, the cyberspace we have development thus far exists largely to hook them, dominate their attention, and profit from their exposure to ever-more targeted marketing.

It is within grasp that cyberspace could become a utopian dream — minimising suffering and negative experiences, while helping humans live fulfilling lives on a scale that is not possible in the physical world. We will need to adjust course radically, however, if we would like to see this future.

One of the components of this altering in course, I believe, is the creation of a permanent collection of all valuable information — knowledge, experiences, computer programs, etc. — open to all, controlled by nobody. By building such an open, ownerless data lake, we can ensure that places in cyberspace can never be subject to the scarcity dynamics of the physical world.