Comment by motoxpro
3 days ago
I think this is always the mindset of people who are on the “correct” side of the previous technological regime.
Placing artificial constraints on output is always a mistake to me.
For example in music you used to have only a small amount of output because studio time was very expensive so you needed a record deal which only came about by an exec picking you. It meant there was some sort of quality bar on the radio, but it also stifled the creativity of everyone who couldn’t get into the studio.
Fast forward and the radio (or pick your curated channel) still exists but no one listens to it because there is an infinite amount of quality (and not quality! which is OK!) music that got created that fits the taste of the artist that was previously locked out.
More people are trying to be artists, but there are also more artists (music) than any time in history making a living.
Lack of scarcity is good. Universal opportunity means more completion, which makes it difficult, but artificially locking out all the people who who would love to compete is not the solution.
Maybe it’s not a good goal to get a billion people to like you or be on your platform, maybe just having a small handful is OK, and finding a small handful that value your work is now possible for a lot more people even if it makes it harder for a ton of people to value that same work.
> Fast forward and the radio (or pick your curated channel) still exists but no one listens to it because there is an infinite amount of quality (and not quality! which is OK!) music that got created that fits the taste of the artist that was previously locked out.
> More people are trying to be artists, but there are also more artists (music) than any time in history making a living.
> Lack of scarcity is good. Universal opportunity means more completion, which makes it difficult, but artificially locking out all the people who who would love to compete is not the solution.
I agree that some lockout is bad. But I was arguing for an optimal point in betweeen, not the other extreme like you mentioned, which is everyone being able to do everything.
Take the App store. It's a pretty low bar to get in. Anyone can publish an app on a mobile phone app store and as a result there are hundreds of low quality apps for everything and even maybe 20 decent apps and it's a frustrating experience to use because you have to browse through thousands to find one....
I wouldn't use the word lockout. But SOME barrier to entry is good. No barrier is as bad as a huge barrier.
You're talking about only the distribution here rather than production, which is a bit different. e.g., making music in a bedroom or using AI to create software increases the total amount of music and software in the world without tackling the question of who sees it.
I'll try to answer that part as well.
Of course, the content/product/output should be legal, but otherwise, who are you (or I) to judge what is quality? Is Wordle not quality because it's not GTA 6? Should I not be able to make a cool flashlight app because one already exists on the phone? I'd much rather a lot of false positives here than false negatives.
Ideally, you have almost no barrier and the proper discovery mechanisms. Allowing everyone to compete. This happens everytime increases in output happen. iPhone video -> more videos -> better discovery mechanisms on Youtube/TikTok/IG. Easier website hosting -> more websites -> web search.
That's why the biggest companies in the world (Google, Meta, Spotify, TikTok) have super low barriers becasue they realized they can't tell what good quality is or not. Most people complain that those platforms should be MORE open, not less. Ironically, I would argue the App Store is a great example of artificial scarcity (one app store with one forced business model) leading to a lower quality experience.
But again, this is all distribution, I can't see a world where I would ever want the creation of positive things to be made more difficult.