I wrote this to recite at Bitcoin Brunch in Miami on October 10 of last year. Tomorrow marks Bitcoin Brunch #51.

True scarcity in the digital landscape.

A few weeks ago at bitcoin brunch I argued with a telecom employee who vehemently equated internet piracy with theft. He compared digital piracy to breaking and entering, and stealing physical objects from a person's home. I emphatically disagreed with this! He suggested we agree to disagree. Not until today did I consider that perhaps his moral values prevented his considering my amoral argument about the necessary circumstances for theft. I failed to recognize he and I debated different things.

Our society developed moral values in a world of physical scarcity, both natural and imposed. Too many people who value the imposed scarcity of intellectual media fail to recognize the potential increased utility (or profit) of digital abundance. Many of our notions of right and wrong regarding goods and services formed in such a state and it seems to me our culture, much like our laws, does not adapt as quickly to technologies' impact in changing our circumstances

Imposed scarcity suffers from emergent black markets because government violence can't reach everywhere all the time. Copyrights and patents can't stop people transmitting intellectual media because government violence cannot reach every computer all the time, but unlike the realm of physical goods, intellectual media does not have natural scarcity. It can be shared infinitely without diminishing the original. Information on the internet has natural abundance.

True scarcity cannot come from violence. The reliance on energy to mine bitcoin represents the analog between digital and physical world, the source of true scarcity in the digital landscape.