The future always starts unevenly. When something new is invented, it’s rarely available to everyone. That gap closes through innovation in how things are made and distributed: cost, materials, manufacturing, logistics.
Software is going through that shift now. With LLMs and AI, the cost and friction of making software has collapsed. Anyone can now create software. The result is a flood of low-effort, low-quality output. We’re calling that slop.
Slop isn’t failure. It’s a milestone. A feature of progress. It means the product is scaling to a broader base. Every mature industry has a slop tier. Fashion has fast fashion. Food has fast food. Consumer goods have budget basics. Furniture has IKEA. Architecture has tract housing. This is how great ideas scale.
Software is no different. Slop means ubiquity, and ubiquity is how you know the revolution is working. Slop is the byproduct of civilization choosing progress over purity. Every frontier eventually industrializes. Every great idea gets commoditized. That’s the price of evenly distributing the future. Not everyone needs to make great products. For those who do, the value is now higher than ever. When anyone can make something mediocre, excellence stands out even more.
Excellence and taste always have inelastic demand.