Comment by alex43578
16 days ago
So let’s flip things: how widespread or how cheap does something have to be for you to consider it to exist? Everyone on earth, available for $1?
To say something is “effectively nonexistent” because it’s not got literal 100% availability for the world’s populace is just weird.
If you told someone a cure for cancer existed but there’s literally no way they could afford it, that sounds a lot like the cure effectively doesn’t exist for that person.
So I’ll posit that the weirdness of such a statement depends entirely on your audience.
If you’re one of the people likely to be able to afford such a cure, it might sound nonsensical.
I’ll also note that I intentionally selected a term with a more narrow definition “effective existence” vs a more general term “existence”. E.g. something can be true in general but effectively false in practice.