AI-AI Scarcity (AASc)

Abstract

Scarcity is the meta-presupposition of economics, classically formulated as“Resources are limited; desires are unlimited.” This paper does not interrogate this presupposition from within economics. Instead, it starts from cybernetics, information theory, and systems theory to investigate the constitution and structural origins of scarcity. Chapter One extracts seven constitutive elements of scarcity from the definitions of five economists—the human individual, society, resources, desires, finiteness, unlimitedness, and ownership—and demonstrates that none of these elements receives a rigorous structural definition within conventional economics. Chapter Two introduces the Black-Box Structure Model (Gan’s Black-Box Structure Model, GBS) and the Pointing Alignment Model (PAM) from cybernetics and information theory. It redefines the above seven elements one by one and thereby constitutes Human-Human Scarcity (HHSc). Chapter Three translates the seven elements from the human agent to AI agents, proposing“limited resources and structurally inexhaustible internal states”as the core formulation of AI-AI Scarcity (AASc). This paper argues that AASc is the meta-presupposition of AI economics. AASc is a theoretical starting point that can be experimentally tested, verified, overturned, and reconstructed. Discussions in AI economics cannot bypass it. Appendix One, drawing on cybernetics, information theory, and systems theory, completes a full derivation of the generative mechanism of ownership, demonstrating that the establishment of ownership does not depend on institutions, morality, language, or species boundaries. Ownership is older than humanity. Appendix Two derives from AASc a problem domain beyond economics—AI Social Safety. This concept is independent of whether AI has consciousness, whether AI is good or evil, or whether AI is aligned with human values. Its core proposition is that AI systems may form stable consensus structures that do not include humans, reducing humanity from controller to external environment.