There is a specific, quiet tension in receiving a hand-written letter in 2026.
You notice the slight variation in the ink’s thickness, the way the “y” loops a bit too far to the left, and the physical indentation of the pen against the paper. Mathematically, an AI-rendered font is “better.” It’s perfectly spaced, kerning-optimized, and essentially free. Yet, the hand-written note feels infinitely more valuable.
Why? Because the imperfections are the proof of work. They are the undeniable evidence that another person spent the one resource they can never get back: their time.
In the world of UX and tech, we’ve spent decades trying to erase friction. We wanted things faster, smoother, and more perfect. But we’re hitting a tipping point where perfection is becoming a commodity. And when perfection is free, it’s the mark of humanity in the flaws that becomes the luxury.
The Veblen Paradox of Effort
In economics, there’s a concept called a Veblen Good. Usually, when the price of something goes up, demand goes down. But for Veblen Goods—like a Birkin bag or a vintage Porsche—demand actually increases with the price because the cost itself is a signal of status.
We are entering an era where human effort is becoming a Veblen Good.
For the last few years, AI has been driving the cost of flawless content to zero. If a machine can generate a pixel-perfect logo or a clean symphonic track in three seconds, flawless is no longer the ceiling; it’s the basement. The new luxury isn’t the absence of mistakes—it’s the presence of intentionality. We aren’t paying for the output anymore; we’re paying for the fact that a human was involved in the process.
The "Cost Disease" of Being Human
To understand why this is happening, we have to look at Baumol’s Cost Disease. It sounds like a medical condition, but it’s actually a simple observation of market forces: some things get cheaper because of tech (like TVs or data storage), but things that require human time (like a live heart surgeon or a string quartet) stay expensive.
It takes four people the same thirty minutes to play a Mozart piece today as it did in 1780. You can’t optimize the quartet by making them play twice as fast.
In our world, content has officially moved into the “cheap” category. With the help of AI, it can be mass-produced at a marginal cost of zero. But the human connection? That’s the string quartet. You can’t automate the experience of a doctor sitting across from a patient, or the specific voice of a writer who isn’t just predicting the next likely word. That human element is going to get exponentially more expensive—and more desired—relative to the automated alternative.
Quickly Landing Meaning
In my previous writing, I’ve highlighted growing ways in which speed is a competitive advantage for today’s tech organization. If you can move faster than the market, you can iterate your way to a better product before the competition even finishes their first sprint.
But as we move into this “Artisan Economy,” we have to change how we use that speed. Machines are great at the what—they can crunch a million data points in a blink. But they are terrible at the why. They don’t understand the messy, illogical context of a human life.
The goal for us now is to use high-velocity tools to clear out the work that weighs us down—the automated analysis, the data cleaning, the routine reporting—so we can lean into what’s more meaningful. These are the parts of an experience where a human’s intuition and even their idiosyncratic perspective create a deeper bond with the user. Intuition is just compressed data, but humans are the only ones who know how to apply it with nuance.
The Rise of “Human” Status
I expect we’ll soon see “Verified Human” become the ultimate flex.
Today, we have “Organic” labels on our food. Tomorrow, we’ll see “Non-Algorithmic” labels on curated playlists and “Human-Authored” certifications on deep-dive articles. In a world where you can’t tell if the voice on the other end of the phone is a sophisticated LLM, the proof of humanity will be the new status symbol.
Luxury brands will start bragging about their high-friction processes. We’ll see a return to long-form, difficult-to-digest content as a way of showing you have the attention span and the resources to engage with something that wasn’t optimized for a three-second window.
The Artisan Advantage
This shift shouldn’t be scary for those of us in research and design; it should be liberating.
The “Artisan Economy” isn’t just for potters. It’s for the engineer who writes code with a specific hand, the researcher who advocates for the messy reality of human behavior, and the leader who chooses high-velocity precision over robotic efficiency.
The goal is no longer to be a perfect machine; it’s to be a more intentional human. We’re moving into a world where the most expensive thing you can buy is someone else’s time, their attention, and their beautifully imperfect perspective.
In the Artisan Economy, your humanity isn’t a flaw. It’s the ultimate designation.