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points by 10111001 3 days ago | 0 comments

> A lot of the fired then make a Discord and casually replicate the company's product.

And what's going to be the result of that? Can the market really support that many competitors comfortably, and/or are you setting yourself up for business failure or Chinese-style involution and 996?

See, I want a comfortable happy life, not a stress-filled one of maximum market efficiency. AI + capitalism doesn't look like it's going to provide the former.

[–] Viliam1234 2 days ago

I could imagine that someone's plan could be like this: "Our current company has more managers than developers, and the software development is very ineffective because we spend a lot of time in meetings, doing various bureaucracy, and changing things over and over again, because the managers insist on making technical decisions, etc. We could do the same thing with a fraction of the workforce, and also work from home instead of renting an expensive place in the middle of an expensive city. Then our product could be cheaper and we would could still work less and have higher salaries."

Whether this is realistic or not, I can imagine some people actually believing it.

[–] Buttons840 3 days ago

The market can't support it. The value of software will trend towards zero.

The less society spends on developers, the less valuable software is. If the day comes that we employ zero developers, then software will be worth zero dollars.

And yet, software will still be fulfilling an essential part of society, it just wont be a thing people are willing to pay for. So AI will still be around, and will still be essential (because somehow we have to maintain all this software), and AI will get better and better.

Eventually any knowledge work will be worth zero. Including the C-suite--especially the c-suite!

[–] samudrijan 3 days ago

There’s a flaw in your logic. The value of software doesn’t derive from how much you spend on developers. It’s a function of what customers are willing to pay for the service/product.

If there is no market fit, 100 man-years is worth $0.

On the other hand, if 10K customers are willing to pay $15/month for a tool that took 30 man-months to build you have a handy $150K/month revenue stream.

[–] Buttons840 3 days ago

If the service/product requires zero developers to create, then why wouldn't customers just use one of the 10,000 clones that are free?

[–] what 2 days ago

Most people aren’t interested in vibing and maintaining their own bespoke apps.

But also they probably want to use this app on their phone and other devices. So the either have to make it a web app, become a server admin and pay for hosting. Or they have to buy a Mac and pay for the developer program and hope they pass App Store review so they don’t have to reinstall every days.

[–] 10111001 3 days ago

> Eventually any knowledge work will be worth zero. Including the C-suite--especially the c-suite!

1. I don't think the "c-suite" is knowledge work.

2. If "any knowledge work will be worth zero" what will workers do? Manual labor? That's a horrible regression.

3. I think the direction AI is taking us is world where the only thing that will be worth anything is ownership (basically being rich), and you either own stuff or you don't. And all the ladders to get from no ownership to ownership will be pulled up.

[–] filoeleven 2 days ago

I, for one, enjoy my free water and electricity, which are all free because they're an essential part of society.

[–] solyin 3 days ago

Except, they're the ones holding the money. So they can farm their job off to an ai and retire to their yachts.

[–] toyg 3 days ago

No, what they will do is redefine (again) what is worth paying money for.

We don't need to buy movies, eat avocado, drink wine, wear new clothes, drive shiny cars, etc. We do it because we have been conditioned, over the centuries, to desire what rich people would want. Every time something becomes cheap (e.g. having a watch), capital owners simply redefine it so that it can be sold again as expensive (e.g. having a luxury watch).