Great Auk
Scarcity drove prices up, which drove hunting up, which drove scarcity up—an extinction vortex that killed the last pair in 1844 for a collector's premium.
Scarcity killed the great auk twice—first by making it rare, then by making it valuable. This flightless seabird once numbered in the millions across North Atlantic coasts, from Canada to Norway. For centuries, sailors harvested them for meat, oil, and feathers. But the killing blow came not from hunger but from economics.
By the early 1800s, great auks had become scarce enough to interest collectors. Museums competed to display specimens. Wealthy Europeans paid escalating prices for eggs and skins. Each purchase raised the price of the next, because fewer remained. Fishermen who once killed auks for food now hunted them for profit—and the rarer they became, the more profitable hunting grew.
This is the anthropogenic Allee effect: a positive feedback loop where scarcity increases value, value increases exploitation, and exploitation increases scarcity. The spiral accelerates until it hits zero. On July 3, 1844, fishermen killed the last confirmed breeding pair on Eldey Island, Iceland—reportedly for a collector willing to pay premium prices.
The numbers tell the extinction story: researchers estimate that harvesting 210,000 birds annually from a population of 2 million would have driven extinction within 350 years. Actual hunting pressure exceeded this rate substantially. The final population collapse happened in decades, not centuries.
Business sees the same dynamic in collectibles and luxury markets. Hermès limits Birkin bag production, creating waitlists that themselves become status symbols. The secondary market prices bags at 2-3× retail because scarcity drives value. NFT collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club followed identical logic—10,000-piece artificial scarcity, FOMO-driven purchases, prices reaching millions. When the feedback loop reversed in 2022-2024, BAYC floor prices collapsed 90% from their peaks.
The great auk reveals when scarcity-value loops turn destructive. Hermès controls its production—the scarcity is managed, sustainable. But when the resource being exploited cannot control its own supply, the extinction vortex takes over. Illegal wildlife trade follows great auk economics: rhino horn prices rise as populations fall, incentivizing more poaching. Bluefin tuna populations decline while sushi prices rise, funding larger fishing fleets.
The mechanism also appears in real estate markets where housing scarcity drives prices up, attracting investors who buy properties not to use but to hold, reducing available supply, driving prices higher. Unlike the great auk, cities can build more housing—but zoning restrictions often create artificial scarcity that mimics the extinction vortex.
What distinguishes survivable scarcity from extinction-level scarcity? Control over supply. When the scarce entity can regulate its own availability (luxury brands limiting production, cities approving new construction), the feedback loop stabilizes. When it cannot (wild species, existing housing stock, exhaustible resources), the loop accelerates until the resource is gone.
The great auk's lesson is not that scarcity destroys value—it's that uncontrolled scarcity destroys the source of value. Every market built on genuine scarcity faces the same question: who controls the supply?