Discussion

Every minute you aren't running 69 agents, you are falling behind

kjgkjhfkjf: > if you have a job where you create complexity for others, you will be found outThis explains the panic. It describes most roles in big tech.

FlyingSnake: People keep rediscovering the Bhagavad Gita in new wayshttps://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/2/47/

beanshadow: > it will continue to improve, but it won’t “go recursive” or whatever the claim is. It’s always been recursive.I suspect "going recursive" often colloquially means that AI systems achieve their exponential growth without human software engineers in the mix. This is a moment whose sudden apparent nearness does justify some of the ramping rhetoric, in my opinion.

sudo_cowsay: Just join the right "communities" or else it might have very different results. A toxic community can exploit you (even if you make more value than you consume).

fragmede: "just"

pu_pe: Even if your goal is to go out and create value for others, your contribution is proportional to what everyone else can offer. If others with AI will deliver that value cheaper, or if what I am good at can be easily automated, it's getting harder and harder to deliver more value than I consume.

keyle: That was my contracting philosophy for 15 years.Create more value than what I cost, otherwise why are you paying me?

7777777phil: Most of what's getting "automated" was never really work, it was headcount that existed because nobody had a good reason to cut it yet. AI gave the reason..

bob1029: > The trick is not to play zero sum games. This is what I have been saying the whole time. Go create value for others and don’t worry about the returns.This strategy is highly effective but it's also difficult to tolerate as an ordinary advanced ape. Watching others play less noble games and obtain easier wins can be discouraging over time.I have found that the less you care about money the easier it is to acquire. Risk aversion, greed and interpersonal drama will kill a good idea way before anything else. I sometimes like to reframe this one as "100% of $0 is still $0".

ramblerman: > You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.I have a hard time interpreting that as what geohotz is saying. If anything it seems to promote rent seekers by telling you - stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system

simianwords: the problem is that there's good stuff in here but expressed in such a compressed way that it can be misused and misread.i completely agree with you and the post you are replying too. both are correct.

minmax2020: Can anyone explain the rent seeker paragraph? Which companies are playing 0 sum game and which are not? Are all big players not rent seekers?

georgehotz: Building tools and services to reduce hassle and friction for others is great. However, what often happens is that you end up creating and building a moat around that hassle. Think about how companies like TurboTax lobby the government to not build electronic tax filing stuff.Cory Doctorow explains the dynamics far better than me in Enshittification. First they turn against their users, then their business partners, then their employees. The layoffs you are seeing are just stage 3 enshittification. If you work at a company like this, my advice is to quit ASAP. At least then you leave on your own terms.

franciscop: Do you think e.g. the AI/LLM boom is all rent seeking? Do you think there's no positive value for the world on the recently announced e.g. MacBook Neo and that it's purely a monopolistic activity? Those are 2 clear recent examples of big players making massive benefits for the world, and I'm okay if they get X% of that value as company valuation.

customname: Wait what's a new laptop doing to push the needle exactly? Genuinely curious

choeger: Is it? If "others with AI" deliver what you consume, it should also make it easier to deliver more than you consume because what you consume becomes cheaper.Maybe a part of the anxiety is the realization that much if what was delivered by well-paid people before AI is actually not something the very same people want to consume?

Finbel: Problem is that "others with AI" aren't producing what I consume, i.e food, heat, clothing, housing and health care.They're just producing what I produce, i.e software.

rvz: Two things.> If you don’t use this new stupid AI thing you will fall behind. If you don’t use this new stupid AI thing you will fall behind. If you haven’t totally updated your workflow you are worth 0.That is a sign that a VC over-invested and is create emotions on social media to manipulate future customers to use their portfolio company. This is a tired tactic repeated and recycled tens of thousands of times over and over.> That said, if you have a job where you create complexity for others, you will be found out. The days of rent seekers are coming to an end. But not because there will be no more rent seeking, it’s because rent seeking is a 0 sum game and you will lose at it to bigger players.This is why many here are realizing the uncomfortable truth about why complexity over simplicity was celebrated. Job security.It turns out that the low hanging fruit at those companies that added close to no value, LLMs were enough to achieve "AGI" internally; (meaning layoffs). The jobs will still be there but the big money just went into CapEx on data centers (and not overpaying knowledge workers).The truth is in the middle.

dzink: To refer back to the trite business book section - making something new is a Blue Ocean Strategy approach. Fighting for existing market share is a bloodied Red Ocean approach that Thiel called “competition is for losers”. So both benevolent and be greedy approaches recommend the same. Make a new puddle for everyone to swim in and you can focus on empathy instead of defense.

ramon156: I care less about receiving the money and more about the implications people have regarding money.For example, when I'd joined a company I did not get any travel expenses. They expected me to pay the 200 euros a month myself. I'd suggested it and they shrugged it off. The company is now firing people and others are leaving.The current company just has a default rate of money you get per km. They don't need to, but they know people want this and will ask about it.Its a small example but it gives you a view of how a company operates

canadiantim: Create value for yourself and don't worry about the returns

rvz: > Which companies are playing 0 sum game and which are not?Anthropic is, DeepSeek is not.

simianwords: > They just say it’s AI cause that makes the stock price go up.slightly naive take when the author recognises that AI will cause productivity increase.

ryanjshaw: You discarded the context within which he made that statement.

chunkyguy: You need to understand the context. The quote in Gita was to motivate the best warrior of the time at the battlefront facing opponents who were mainly his cousins and uncles.In that context the quote is about performing the duties you were born to do without overthinking the consequences.

simianwords: the context makes it even worse. its a strange kind of tribalism that is being promoted here. "do what you are asked to without understanding the real consequences". btw war is actual zero sum usually.

vintermann: There are zero-sum games you can't realistically escape. They're really common. Credentials is a zero-sum game. Political power, influence of all sorts, are zero sum games: if you have more of it, someone else has less. Land ownership is basically zero sum, too.

grensley: I feel a strong impulse to conserve all of your matter towards the inside of a locker.

energy123: Most games are either negative-sum or positive-sum. Very few are zero-sum.

simianwords: i'm fairly certain Cory Doctorow does not understand the economics of Enshittification.companies subsidise their products so that exploration of these products is more feasible due to lower initial costs for the end consumers. the initial consumers don't pay the full price but they are borne by the later consumers once the exploration is done and they have knowledge about that market and business.Cory Doctorow also probably confuses democratisation and enshittifaction - its usually the case that products get cheaper by also marginally reducing the quality. we get cheap goods from China but that's not enshittification - that's just efficiency. as a consumer I'm happy I have the option of paying low prices for products.i wouldn't take this person too seriously because it looks like they don't understand the larger picture

austin-cheney: Yes, but I make it more precise into two points:1. Build tools/libraries that empower superior execution performance. If you can execute faster than others you have more potential free time than them. This is a form of compound interest. I do this for myself but my output is not exclusive to myself.2. Be operational. Create products that are always more durable than what is trendy, but when something does break return a resolution as rapidly as possible, provided excellent regression testing. Be constantly healthy, healing once injuries are found, and constantly aware of new injuries.I find most people cannot do those two things. Most people cannot measure things and a great many people fear novelty.

georgehotz: Not at all. OpenAI / Anthropic are producing tons of surplus value right now! Not to mention how great the Chinese open source LLMs are. And Apple's hardware division has always been fine.Apple's 30% tax for payments in apps is the ultimate rent seeking example though. Want to install your own apps, lol you can't. And if big AI companies follow in the steps of Google/Facebook it's bad for everyone. Let's recognize it and prevent it from happening this time.

root_user: That’s fine. New opportunities to provide value will emerge. If software becomes oversupplied, fewer people will enter that field and move to other areas where value is needed. If you only want to add value in the software space, then yes, it may be a problem.

sl-1: War is often times even negative sum game.

sfink: In general, it's kind of the difference between having a sharp axe vs a dull axe.Though in the particular case of the MacBook Neo, I'm not sure whether we're talking about sharper or duller. Depends on the metric you're using, I guess.

vintermann: Then there are situations where someone for inexplicable reasons make dickish comments.

kindkang2024: > Create value for others and don’t worry about the returnsWhat counts as a return is quite subjective — it goes beyond money. Respect, happiness, meaning — all of these count.Given that, if there are no returns at all, I bet that is not a positive-sum game that could last long. Like if you give and create value for others, but the recipient has no respect for you and you receive nothing — it is not meaningful and will not last long. And you'd better walk away and start worrying about the returns.And to be frank, look at who creates the most value in the world — they also could be the richest. That is no coincidence. Take Elon Musk — tremendous positive-sum deals with people everywhere, and all together, that's what got him to the top.Kudos to all the entrepreneurs who work hard and create deal opportunities that could make everyone win.

risyachka: >> If others with AI will deliver that value cheaper...That's the most interesting thing - in 99.9% they don't. All their value is negated by lowering code base quality, pushing slop to prod ("but code reviews..." - don't help sorry, unless you spent a long time getting to understand a problem - simply reading a solution gives only false confidence that you understood it - you didn't, not fully). E.g. see all the outages at amazon, cloudflare, etc.Quick short term wins lead to big longer term losses - and this is already happening.The issue is - its basically impossible to make decision makers see this as this requires many years of expertise in tech, and it is very not obvious, and sounds like you just don't want to rely on AI to replace you etc etc.While selling AI is easy - "look! it did this feature in 5 minutes! so much productivity".

vintermann: Well, that's not what I said anyway. I just said that zero sum games are common and there are some important ones you're not escaping.

sfink: All of those are only zero-sum if you pick a conserved metric. Land ownership is zero-sum if measured in square meters. But say someone buys up land that is parched, dead, and empty. They use it by planting moisture-retaining crops and windbreaks and growing food, or running a business of benefit to the community. Now overall everyone is a little better off, despite 0 square meters being created.Influence is even more so -- it's common to have situations where nobody is truly paying attention to anyone else. The people with good ideas can't get any traction, and the whole organization just spins in circles, lurching from one externally-imposed crisis to the next. If the people who gain influence use that influence to promote others who are worth paying attention to (and thus they gain influence), everyone benefits. But if you measure that in terms of how many minutes each person gets to speak at the All Hands, it's zero-sum.

pestaa: What are you talking about. Cory literally coined the term to describe this phenomena. He is not confused by the idea of cheaper products with wider appeal. He takes issue with vendor lock-in that is weaponized first against the end-user, then against paying customers, and finally against investors themselves. This is first and foremost a criticism of online products and platforms, not mass-produced gadgets from China.

vasco: > This strategy is highly effective but it's also difficult to tolerate as an ordinary advanced ape. Watching others play less noble games and obtain easier wins can be discouraging over time.A noble man that spends all his time jealous of the things the men without scruples have is not so much far from doing what they did. It's also what the men that did it before him told themselves "why play the right game if everyone else doesn't".

camillomiller: Disagree. You can still get fucking angry at how they’re capable of fooling others because of the skewed incentives we built in our capitalistic society

vasco: Of course you can, you're just way closer to being them. If you're in positions to take decisions that prevent others from doing it, do it without getting mad. If you're not, your getting mad will just make you more likely to join them later on. The cliche version is "hate consumes you".

avaer: It's easy to create value for others and not worry about returns when you have enough money to not worry.Unfortunately for most people, there's plenty of companies willing to take the returns and leave you paycheck to paycheck. That's literally what they are optimized to do.I don't even disagree with the ideal, but I think a prerequisite step to this philosophy is UBI.

simianwords: While I think you are not wrong, these are excuses to continue doing useless things

nine_k: What useless things?

nine_k: Not necessarily UBI; one just needs an adequate day job. Then the hobby could be creating value with no expectation of any direct return: writing a blog, writing and giving away music, writing open-source software, doing any volunteer work, etc.

latenightcoding: >> Go create value for others and don’t worry about the returns.This is just so disconnected with reality. Any new worthwhile project will take few months of full-time work minimum, how many people can invest few months of unpaid full-time work with no guarantees of success. and that's not even considering the amount of time it would take you to acquire the necessary skills.

ingatorp: I mean at this point, for that to happen it definitely isn't a matter of intelligence (it can fix errors later and learn from them), it's only a matter of memory and proper harness. Once memory it's solved for good, then recursive self-improvement is inevitable.

rgun: Do what you are asked to ≠ Your duty.Duty of a warrior is to fight for his country/tribe/side. Duty of a king might be to reduce suffering for his subjects.

xodn348: It's better to be a happy optimist than a smart pessimist.

rvrs: [delayed]

PunchyHamster: The problem is that you have to acquire money first to care less about it

sfink: True, creating value isn't sufficient. But if you're creating value, you don't need that community; that community needs you. That doesn't mean it'll be easy to leave nor that you won't lose a lot by doing so, but it's better than being a leech. Leeches can only survive by finding another victim to suck blood from, and at some point that merry-go-round is going to run out of horsies. Pardon the mixed metaphors.

card_zero: I guess then you disagree with the previous blog post, The Insane Stupidity of UBI, which says free money for all just makes prices go up.

apples_oranges: money is a judgement of value to society and a motivator to only allocate work in a useful way.. wouldn't UBI, even if coupled to actually producing _something_ will lead to a lot of useless stuff being made?

dmantis: Would be great if true, but that doesn't really correspond in reality truly, especially in intellectual products. Ie compare even Linus Torvalds fortune with e.g. snapchat founder. Not even talking about thousands of 0 profit open source projects with millions of installations versus some saas hustler - usually the former provide much more value to society than some guy who is just good at selling stuff.UBI might fuel some useless work, but it also might provide a way to people to be more into creative side of things rather than selling and marketing rat race.

bayindirh: As you know, you can just just do it. It's just that simple.

fragmede: The problem is, it's not. Communities are messy and complicated, and if you take the slightest whiff of toxicity as a sign to leave a community, you're soon going to find yourself without one.

simianwords: Partake in war

JSR_FDED: That's not what he's saying. At a company level he's saying that if they make more profit than they add value they have an indefensible business model and will eventually lose to bigger players.At a personal level you can live your life similarly, add value where you can. You can do that by joining an organization that adds value as well.

SyneRyder: It's an 8GB RAM 256GB SSD laptop with a lower spec'd 6-core chip for $599 USD. Seems overhyped to me, PCs have done that for a while, just not as elegantly. Admittedly it probably has far better battery life than a PC, so that's a genuine advantage.

phendrenad2: [delayed]

nine_k: People volunteer e.g. playing games for free, spending considerable time and effort. The point is that the process is enjoyable by itself.When it starts to feel like work, it starts to feel like needing wages for it.

card_zero: Historically, no. It's like Tennyson: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.

simianwords: i read this> If you have a job like that, or work at a company like that, the sooner you quit the better your outcome will be.AI will render your job to be rent seeking. Like self driving cars will automate away truck drivers - do you not think they need to be laid off because of AI?

cyh555: > Like self driving cars will automate away truck drivers - do you not think they need to be laid off because of AI?geohot is talking about AI has its limitation and that it won't truly replace the human yet. Truck drivers and some people who contribute net positive value are not rent seekers at the moment.AI could render our jobs to be rent seeking, we don't know when.

ivell: > You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action.> stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste systemThat verse is quite famous and the general interpretation as I understand is this.You have control on your actions but not on its results. The results depend not only on your actions but on many other factors outside of your control.Now, one can interpret that it is instruction to "stay in your lane", but I have not seen that interpretation so far in my life in India.

card_zero: So, "have a go, do you best, shit happens, don't worry about it".

duskdozer: >Take Elon Musk — tremendous positive-sum deals with people everywhere, and all together, that's what got him to the top.Ah yes, "tremendous" positive-sum deals like:>Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions...

nathancroissant: As others have said, it's a very optimistic view that can be infuriating to read when you are struggling to pay your bills.I'd also argue it's not very effecicient : we are at our best when we have deadlines and clear targets to reach, and making money to pay the bills can be a very motivating one to stop procrastinating !

devsda: > If anything it seems to promote rent seekers by telling you - stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste systemI was wondering if that would come up and HN delivers without fail. Anyway, you are free to interpret it as you see fit.The guidance was for someone who was struggling with a moral dillema on facing relatives in war and undecided over action. It is not a diktat to work or provide unquestion labor.For anyone who understood the whole story and backdrop of the situation, a reasonable interpretation is- you are responsible for your actions but you cannot control the consequences of your actions due to many factors.- When you detach yourselves from results and you can do your job without anxiety.- do not let the fear over results be an excuse for inaction.Give it a read and decide for yourselves if you are not convinced. Even without the teachings part, the whole story of Gita is actually an epic story/novel with some strong and conflicted characters with elaborate back stories.

shaman1: https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2026/02/27/the-i...from the same author

borski: You misunderstood. All geohot is saying is the same thing Scott Galloway constantly says - your job is to create surplus value. Provide more value than you take, over your lifetime, not over any specific one period, either.The argument is that if you do that, returns will naturally come your way.The issue is that many people never provide surplus value at all; some can't, and that is obviously completely acceptable (people who are disabled, have medical conditions, or who for some other reason cannot). But those who are able and choose not to provide surplus value are who he's talking about.You may not agree, and that's okay, but that's the argument.

arisAlexis: This reads as a typical anti hype article that attracts the people that are fed up with reality. But this framework never works because it's detached from current reality. AI is a big thing and it will eat most jobs weather you call it stupid or you like it.

burnt-resistor: The surest recipe to becoming a sucker and being left with nothing is leaving ownership and properly valuing your contributions to chance rather than respecting essential details. Anyone advising others they should just shrug and ignore it is either a moron or trying to play them.Workers should generally aim to unionize and seek to capture more of their value through worker-owned co-ops.

muyuu: I see your post as a pretty strong refutation of OP's premise.Unless for those who can afford not worrying about money, of course.

card_zero: Yes, although we do measure it in square meters (or acres, or tatami mats).Is there such a thing as "partially zero-sum"? I mean, to express how, unless you get really creative in difficult ways, the supply of land is under pressure due to other people taking all the currently useful parts of it, such as the parts on your island and not underwater.

AnthonyMouse: > wouldn't UBI, even if coupled to actually producing _something_ will lead to a lot of useless stuff being made?The general premise of a UBI is that it's unconditional.If you tried to say someone is required to produce something without specifying what it is, they'll produce whatever is the easiest thing to produce, which will naturally be useless if they otherwise wouldn't have produced anything because the only reason they're doing it is to satisfy the demand of someone not imposing any specific requirements on the output.But if it's actually unconditional then the things produced would only be the things someone wants to produce, i.e. the things worth their time to produce when they're not actually required to spend their time producing it. Those things would tend to be useful because at least the author found them to be and there's a decent chance they're not unique in the world. If you e.g. make an app just because you want to use it yourself, maybe someone else wants to use it too.

sdeframond: Money is a function of demand, availability and leverage. Value is only an indirect part of it: a factor that drives demand.It is easy to find examples of money not being a judgement of value in practice: think about thief or extortion for example, or pushing drugs.

kindkang2024: > Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plansSorry, I don't know the full story behind Hyperloop. But I really doubt he is trying to play a zero-sum or negative-sum game as the article hinted.Setting aside all the disputes — the deals he made with people are positive-sum. Nobody is forced to buy a Tesla, or invest in, or work for SpaceX.And in my personal view, all the article brings is deconstructive criticism — which does not fit my tastes. Maybe because I believe the world doesn't owe anyone anything. In fact, to make money, you have to play a positive-sum game and bring value to others.Those who complain — they can always reject the deal and choose something else. And even better, go offer or support better products in the market and help the best one win.

borski: > In fact, to make money, you have to play a positive-sum game and bring value to others.That is simply untrue; the opposite is the literal definition of rent-seeking behavior, which produces gobs of money, but provides no (or very little, at best) new value to others.

borski: You've constructed a strawman; geohot never argued you shouldn't ever receive returns. He argued you shouldn't worry about them, which is not the same thing. His argument hinges on the idea that creating surplus value will bring you returns, but worrying about what those returns are is pointless; those returns, as you say, could be monetary, happiness, fulfillment, power, etc.And I would argue Elon (himself) stopped creating surplus value quite some time ago; some of his companies still do (Neuralink, SpaceX) but companies like Tesla and Boring are explicitly rent-seeking at this point. Tesla disrupts traditional, rent-seeking dealership models, but it simultaneously utilizes lobbying to secure favorable policies and economic advantages, with the goal being to block out other upstarts and competitors from competing.And no, I do not count either the non-working Optimus or robotaxi as 'surplus value.'

zozbot234: Which of course ignores the obvious point that UBI is all about taking existing resource redistribution and making it less costly and more efficient. Practically all Western countries redistribute income on a massive scale (compared to the default outcomes of a completely free market capitalism) in order to ensure everyone can provide for their basic needs, and that could all be gradually replaced by UBI.This is broadly in line with OP's suggested ethic "create value for others, don't play zero sum games" since capitalism is based on rewarding those who create the most value, whereas zero-sum games are largely political in nature.

card_zero: The inefficiency of the bureaucracy of limiting welfare (or charity) to the poor and needy. I don't know, though, maybe giving everybody's money to everybody cancels itself out.

zozbot234: You're giving money to everybody but then anyone that isn't poor and needy has to pay taxes on their income that more than offset the money. It's taking "the bureaucracy of limiting welfare (or charity)" and folding it with the IRS and the local Department of Revenue.

castral: Ah, well... TIL to not take anything geohot writes seriously in the future.

p697: The whole world is obsessed with openclaw. Some companies are now even evaluating their employees' built agents, the tokens consumed, and the money spent on AI. It's really gotten out of hand.

bayindirh: I know, the comment is meant to be ironic, actually. I was part of quite a few, and some rather large ones (~100 people). I don't leave communities easily, but I decide to do it, I do it for good. I'd rather stay there and be myself.What I found is, when you act yourself and if the community is not for you, the community silently ousts you. Then you can just collect your bag and leave. No drama, no fight.However, most of the time, you can at least affect some of the people and motivate them to be better. Some bad people don't know that they are bad and have their hearts at the right place, so it's worth digging them up and let them improve by supporting them.

armchairhacker: Did you RTFA? The author is predicting that those employees (at least in software dev) will get laid off; so they should get out (or make some other change) for their own sake, because they’re about to lose even “paycheck to paycheck”. You should debate this instead, because if true, it makes your point irrelevant.

DeepSeaTortoise: You can never just use existing resources as long as those end up in places they're no longer accessible to the market anymore.Cash just about never sits just around as long as whoever holds onto it has no current need for extremely liquid assets. Like insurances.I doubt that the ratio of cash that ends up bound up that way to the one that doesn't changes a lot overall.The real problem to UBI is governments creating income via debt, IMO.

bratbag: War against someone who wants my society eradicated provides a lot of value to my people.

simianwords: do you have the intelligence to verify that?

ray_: couldnt agree more with the author! just will try "If you create more value than you consume, you are welcome in any well operating community." to be "equal value"

MinimalAction: All these feel good articles are very ideal in nature, I feel. Not to be the doomsayer, but without a solid backup of resources (be it money, power or some such thing), I find it hard to imagine to be this 'careless' towards returns. World indeed feels like a Red Queen race.

zelphirkalt: Philosophically, I agree, but in reality there are so many leeches, who take take take, their whole life, and in the end they are often better off, materialistically than the people, who provided the actual value.

raumgeist: We as a society would profit from not categorizing everything in terms of its usefulness. Things can and should be allowed to just be. That being said, UBI would probably result in more useful things not less. There are so many cases of jobs and things that seem to just be busywork or outright scams. There are also a lot of things that only appear useful if you never take the time to think about them. A plastic straw that will pollute the environment for thousands of years just so i can have a drink for two minutes? That is useless. Every street in every city being lined by cars that don't move for 95% of the time? That is useless and insane. Imagine what marvelous machines we could have built instead.Also, I find the online discussion around UBI to be quite weird. I don't think anyone serious is advocating for it to be particularly high. In my opinion, UBI should cover your necessities plus some so you can participate in society. This gives everyone the opportunity to take it slow or focus on personal projects without fear. Everything luxurious can not, and should not, be affordable with UBI. This will leave ample opportunity for people to still care about and want to work.Humans will always do. It is in our nature. But not letting people get homeless or starve to death might enable those of us that don't want to do what our overlords deem useful to do the things our society so desperately needs. I don't need some poor fool to cook my burger for me. I'd rather take turns with my friends that now have free time.

randomgermanguy: I think the author might argue, that simply becoming more efficient at creating a rent-seeking mechanism is not beneficial. No matter how well motivated you are to improve your zero-sum game skills, it's still zero-sum.Or something like that.

fragmede: Alternately, he's right and you're wrong.

zelphirkalt: If now only everyone who is talented at crafting software (or any other job that might be replaced), but who is out of a job could magically be as talented at something else, and enjoy doing that other work, then we would have no problem. But one issue is, that often significant time goes into becoming good at what one does. Switching has a very high personal cost in terms of time and having no income for a prolonged time.

zelphirkalt: I wish that argument was trivially true. Yet we see tons of disadvantaged people working the real tough jobs helping the elderly or sick and they are getting precious little in return.And to a lesser degree, I have been doing nothing but providing value. All my projects are free/libre, yet returns have not come my way at all. In fact people who could make returns come my way, for example by offering me a job that I am clearly well suited for, refuse to take a look at these projects.Perhaps the argument is also about non-financial returns, and things like friendships, but I don't feel especially well connected either, even though I try to help anyone I can help in the areas I am active in.I don't think the argument matches reality, unfortunately.

zozbot234: The "real tough jobs" pay little because the marginal job of that kind does not really create that much value. That in turn happens because the most disadvantaged tend to crowd into these jobs, to the neglect of other, more value-creating activities - yet another issue that might be handily addressed by UBI.

borski: Only if you're stuck in the comparison trap. The point isn't to compete about who can offer more value - the point is simply to offer more value (or create more value) than you consume. That's it.What others do is actually irrelevant to the argument.If what you are good at can be easily automated... be curious, grow, and get good at other things you can provide more value in. These are usually adjacent to what you're already good at.Also, the timeline isn't 'the next few years' or 'the past', but 'your entire life.'

missingdays: > What others do is actually irrelevant to the argument.If I used to provide some value X in a day, and that was enough to cover my consumption for the day, but now others are providing the same value X in 5 minutes, it will not be enough to cover my consumption for the day anymore

borski: Sure, but we are not talking about evaluating your contributions daily. Over a lifetime, people find new ways to provide more value. Life is long, and that is how adapting works.We don't all sit at typewriters anymore either, but former typists found other ways to provide value, I'm certain, and didn't just disappear and become homeless (the vast majority of them, anyway).Once upon a time, we had armies of secretaries that secretly (well, not so secretly) were the backbone of every institution. We don't have that anymore either, since computers replaced many of them.Computers were originally people. They also got bested by new technology.None of those people disappeared or became destitute; they adapted, and they found new ways to create more value. (Or, it's possible some ended up working for rent-seeking corporations, which is a different point)

fragmede: Not just if you already have enough money, but it's easy to say if you're as smart as Geohot. For those who aren't, (I'm not), creating that kind of value isn't just hard, it's impossible!