The Physical World Remains Expensive | Generated by AI
Question: One of the conflicts in the world is that on the internet most information, free chatbots, YouTube, blogs, etc. are free, but travel, flight tickets, highways, and trains still require payment.
Answer:
This contrast you pointed out is real and reflects two very different economic realities.
Why most internet content became (close to) free
- Marginal cost is almost zero: Once a video, blog post, song, or AI model is created, giving it to the 1,000,000th person costs almost nothing (a fraction of a cent in electricity and bandwidth).
- Network effects & winner-takes-most dynamics: Platforms make money by collecting attention at scale → advertising, data, premium upsells. They are willing to give the core product away to grow the user base very fast.
- Open-source culture & reputation economy: Many developers, researchers, writers share work for status, future job offers, consulting gigs, donations, or just passion.
- Venture capital & growth-before-profit logic: For many years companies could burn billions to capture market share first (YouTube, TikTok, most AI chatbots today).
Result → huge amounts of high-quality knowledge, entertainment, education, and even code/tools became effectively free or very cheap for the end user.
Why physical movement (travel, transport) stays expensive
- Marginal cost is high and real:
- Every additional passenger on a plane requires fuel, a seat, cabin crew time, airport handling, etc.
- Every car on a highway causes wear, congestion, pollution, and needs road maintenance.
- Trains consume electricity/diesel, need drivers, track maintenance, signaling systems.
- Very high fixed + operating costs: Airplanes cost $100–400 million each, airports billions, high-speed rail lines tens of billions. These costs must be recovered.
- Limited supply & physical constraints:
- You cannot instantly add another runway, another train path, or another 10,000 hotel rooms in a popular city.
- Airport slots, airspace, landing rights are scarce and rationed.
- Energy & materials are not free: Kerosene, electricity, steel, concrete, lithium for batteries — all have real commodity prices that have not collapsed like digital storage & bandwidth have.
- Safety & regulation overhead: Aviation, rail, road transport have extremely strict (and expensive) safety, security, and environmental rules.
Core economic tension / “conflict”
We live in a hybrid world:
- Digital realm → close to post-scarcity for information & many services (music, knowledge, basic chat, images, code snippets).
- Physical realm → still very much scarcity-based (land, energy, metals, time, attention in physical places).
This creates visible unfairness / cognitive dissonance for many people:
- “I can learn anything, talk to an expert AI, watch any movie for free or $10/month… but I still cannot afford to visit my family 1,000 km away or travel to see cherry blossoms in Japan.”
It also drives political & social debates:
- Should governments make more transport “free at point of use” (like some city buses/metros)?
- Should we tax digital advertising profits more heavily and subsidize physical mobility?
- Is the digital abundance partly happening because we under-price or externalize the costs of physical resource use and carbon emissions?
In short: the internet made copying & distribution basically free, but physics, energy, land and safety did not become free. That is the root cause of the contrast you feel.
References:
- None required for this conceptual explanation.