Thoughts on Art, Atrophy, and Economics

Every Gold Rush Ends

People used to buy albums and sell albums when music was expensive. Because of that, it created more musicians who looked at "making it" as a gold rush. It was its own economy. It gave musicians incentive to be the best. Good musicians could make it as a band, or if you were good, people would seek you out and you could play for multiple bands, or record on an album. You had gigs. As music got cheaper to consume the industry took a hit. Trickle down economics: the good flows down and so does the bad.

But art moves. If that doesn't work, go somewhere else. Where is the new creative landscape? For me, I moved from music to tech after the iPhone boom of 2010. Mobile apps and mobile web were hot back then. It was the new gold rush. But all good things must come to an end. Software, like music, has become a lot cheaper thanks to LLMs. It's the same thing repeating. But where is the new frontier? AI creates, but it's not a platform to build upon in the same way a physical device like the iPhone was. Are there any new devices or platforms?

Artists unfortunately have to compete

Whether they like it or not, you do something because you feel like there's an audience for it. It's called incentive. It doesn't have to be money, it could be attention, but if you have no reason to do something, you probably wont. The outlier is religious expression. History is full of religious art. Granted, much of the best Renaissance art was commissioned by the Catholic Church. So they were basically artist grants. For everything else, however.. there's the church of the secular economy. What does it want? What will it commission you to do?

Everyone is an Artisan

What do I mean by Artist? By now you probably figured out that I'm not referring to a man with a paintbrush and a canvas. I'm describing an artisan.

An artisan is a worker who practices a trade or handicraft. (Merriam-Webster)

That's a lot of people who don't work with a paintbrush. Anyone who does anything can be considered an artisan. And artisans also need to compete. There needs to be incentive for them to create or practice their craft. Today, Sept 2026, Gen AI is flooding the digital space with its own solutions, products, and works of art (translated as content). More efficiently, but worse than a human being. Efficiency mostly wins, it's the American way. Ask the farmers.

When Cheap Wins, Skill Leaves

Let's talk about Atrophy now. When something becomes cheaper, skill goes down. It doesn't make the hard skills less important. That is the paradox. Gardening and eating organic are generally more favorable than mass produced processed foods. I don't need to tell you that. The music created by a human musician has more value to us than the sounds SUNO can produce. (Although I've met some people who disagree). We know what an AI-generated website/app looks like today vs one where humans were involved. Tastemakers. But again, where things are abundant, they are cheaper.

Eventually, you will probably not garden, you will not eat well, and you will not code from scratch. Because you, as part of this system, want convenience.

Here's where it turns. Everything up to now is something the market did to you. Nobody asked if you wanted music to get cheap. Nobody asked you about AI. But the part where you stop gardening, stop cooking, and stop writing your own code? You do that part to yourself. The system sets the price. You still pick the convenience. And that's the only half of this you control.

Hard Things are Hard

Eating better is hard. Hiring people is hard. Going outside and seeing people is hard. Starting something new is hard. And these things get harder the longer you don't do them.

We like doing easy things. But easy things become hard later. Hard things get easier over time. It's just how nature works. Why do certain people do hard things when there are easier solutions? Well, because they're too cheap to pay for the easy way. Probably.. In my opinion..

If you want it done right...

You want quality. You can't find it. You do it yourself. You see all the simple options being worse for you or your family, and you eventually get fed up. You also look at the hidden fees associated with convenience. The streaming service you paid for that pulls content down on a whim. Your health declining with the shitty foods you eat. The endless subscriptions that we pay for every day. And now we have AI! What feels like the culmination of all of this. Where we get stuck in an endless loop of "Not quite my tempo". It doesn't produce what a human can, it produces a version of it. You want to use it, because you're a warm-blooded American, but the output is always a little off. And with every prompt you're reminded that your best digital ideas can be used to train the models your competitors use.

You realize, you don't want that. You wake up one day and realize that you're paying money to other people constantly to live worse. You have an epiphany: I think I'm too cheap for this. It's not that you can't afford it, it's that you don't want to. You want to buy things that last. You want to pay less a month. You want to produce things yourself because making your own stuff, while harder, is less expensive. Let's not forget about the quality control aspect.

I'm fortunate to live in an upper-income neighborhood. I also cut my own grass. Why, when you can afford landsacpers? Well, because the landscapers do a worse job. And because I only had to buy lawn equipment once. I also get exercise and sunlight when I cut my lawn. Jesus, am I just getting old?

Cut Costs

Even if it looks like things are going well for you or the economy at large, don't believe the hype. Use the "good times" to cut costs. Pay off that car. Start a garden or find ways of eating better. Find clever ways to lower utilities. Play an instrument, buy a cheap one. The satisfaction you get will enrich you and others. Stop paying other people for them to take things away from you. As best you can.