Everyone wonders where the productivity gains of the internet are (beyond the obvious "amazon and aliexpress exist") and I think so much of it is in these very

Everyone wonders where the productivity gains of the internet are (beyond the obvious "amazon and aliexpress exist") and I think so much of it is in these very difficult to explain places. I'd argue that elite climbing is a post-scarcity activity. I suppose it always was... in a way, the question starts to become, how accessible can we make it, and to who? Paradoxically both the "decolonizers" and the "imperialists" (e.g. capitalist maximisers) are likely to be unsatisfied with the idea that it's basically a status economy now; people share tricks voluntarily because they love the work and the cred of introducing something novel and sharing is worth more than having secrets. Climbing is bought and paid for in climbing reputation which is only very loosely related to the "real" economy. When a broader range of humanity is introduced into reputation economies that can look like demand destruction since it suppresses demand for certain kinds of easily measured economic activity and replaces it with activities and value that are harder to measure (not primarily $ denominated). [All this ends up looking like people getting pissed off because ideologically unaligned people benefit from climbing just getting easier, which in general terms IMHO should be looked at as a good thing because human capability is increasing. Yes there will still be a lot of hocking gear and sponsorships in the meantime, reality is messy].