"In experiments, when subjects learn that others will be excluded from purchasing an identical product, willingness to pay roughly doubles. Pure exclusivity premium. Anonymous, no status signaling possible. The premium is stronger for human-made goods. Human-created artwork gains 44% in value from exclusivity, versus 21% for AI-generated artwork. AI-made goods feel copyable. Human-made goods feel scarce even when they aren’t. People want what other people can’t have. That wanting doesn’t run out, and it sticks to things a person made.
Maybe the point is to wait long enough and AI variety erodes even that. Maybe. But the structural change evidence says income effects dominate price effects by three to one. When basic needs get cheaper, humans don’t say “good, I’m done wanting.” They invent new ways to compare themselves with neighbors. Whether the new wants land on human-made goods or AI-made goods is the open question, and the experimental evidence so far favors humans.
A falling labor share is not falling labor demand. There is a range where labor’s share of income is declining but total labor demand is still rising, because the pie is growing faster than labor’s slice is shrinking. That range may be where we are right now. It would look like “AI is taking over” in share terms while employment keeps growing. The popular argument runs these together and they are not the same claim.
We already see that. Higher income people consume more services. Services tend to be high labor share. Again, that can always flip in the future but this is the evidence we have."
https://www.economicforces.xyz/p/you-are-not-a-horse
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