"There are certain things that are inherently scarce. For example, there is only a certain amount of beachfront property in California. It is going to be scarce, it is going to be expensive"
About this Quote
Merkle is smuggling a whole worldview into a bland-sounding observation about sand and surf: scarcity is not a mood, its a property of reality. By choosing California beachfront as his example, he picks an asset so intuitively finite that it short-circuits romantic ideas that prices are mostly hype, greed, or policy failure. You can regulate, subsidize, or moralize all you want, the coastline does not stretch to meet demand. The line functions like a scientist’s pocket proof: define the constraint, watch the conclusion follow.
The intent is less about real estate than about economics under hard limits. Merkle, associated with cryptography and nanotechnology, comes from disciplines where constraints are everything: bandwidth, energy, entropy, keyspace. His phrasing - "inherently scarce" - distinguishes natural scarcity from manufactured scarcity. That’s a quiet jab at markets where scarcity is created by cartel behavior, IP law, or speculative hoarding. Beachfront isn’t like that; it’s scarce even in a perfectly fair society.
The subtext is a corrective to techno-utopian instinct. Innovation can make many goods abundant, but it cannot abolish every bottleneck. We can build more housing, yet we can’t build more ocean-adjacent land in Malibu. In an era when people argue about inequality as if it’s solely a distribution problem, Merkle is insisting on the prior question: distribution of what, exactly, when the supply curve is pinned to geography?
That’s why the quote works: it’s disarmingly simple, almost tedious, and precisely because it’s tedious it feels unarguable. It forces the listener to confront limits before they get to politics.
The intent is less about real estate than about economics under hard limits. Merkle, associated with cryptography and nanotechnology, comes from disciplines where constraints are everything: bandwidth, energy, entropy, keyspace. His phrasing - "inherently scarce" - distinguishes natural scarcity from manufactured scarcity. That’s a quiet jab at markets where scarcity is created by cartel behavior, IP law, or speculative hoarding. Beachfront isn’t like that; it’s scarce even in a perfectly fair society.
The subtext is a corrective to techno-utopian instinct. Innovation can make many goods abundant, but it cannot abolish every bottleneck. We can build more housing, yet we can’t build more ocean-adjacent land in Malibu. In an era when people argue about inequality as if it’s solely a distribution problem, Merkle is insisting on the prior question: distribution of what, exactly, when the supply curve is pinned to geography?
That’s why the quote works: it’s disarmingly simple, almost tedious, and precisely because it’s tedious it feels unarguable. It forces the listener to confront limits before they get to politics.
Quote Details
| Topic | Investment |
|---|
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