Earlier quoted context omitted.
automation makes every job scalable, no?
Do you expect we’ll have AGA, artificial general automation?
I don’t see anything stopping that from happening in the very near future.
The only moat left is money?
271–280 of 398 posts
Re: The only moat left is money?
#272> a paid, invite-only social network where every person is verified human and there's no algorithm This seems like an incredibly niche product that only a handful of people are interested in to begin with. It isn't an notable or surprising result that building it resulted in little interest from general audiences.
It also strikes me as being in competition with, you know, a group chat.
i was just about to say, what they're describing is an imessage group chat with your friends.
Re: The only moat left is money?
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, you do you. Clothing is really _fashion_ for tons of people. Fashion is art. People like art.
Yes, I am one of the people who has a preferred tailor who can do more than just let trousers waists out. I also know where the nearest cobbler is. That’s not normal, though. A dead industry often doesn’t entirely disappear, it just shrinks a bunch and comes to rely entirely on enthusiasts or very rare actual need, rather than broad need or appeal. Consider the draft horse breeder, or the carriage driver. There’s a m…
Yes, your message is coming from the pov of economics and business, as makes sense in this thread! That's my mistake, I took your message more sentimentally. I've used tailoring probably 5 times in my life, with the only recurring need being to hem pants.
"There is no money in tailoring" seems right. It's the "not all things need to make maximum $$$" that I speak to. You didn't pick this fight though, I did heh.
My (successful) friend tells me all about how amazing it is to collect very expensive watches. I just need to be a "watch guy" and I'll come to understand. Once my eyes returned from rolling out of my head, I did concede a great point he made: there is no reason for watch makers to exist anymore. The fantastically amazing history and evolution of time-keeping and personal time-pieces is now purely supported by rich people that care to subsidize the art form. And so, maybe I really do aspire to be a watch guy after all... hmm.
Re: The only moat left is money?
#274So, I really felt like more people should be reading Nassim Taleb's Incerto series of books. A lot of the issues that fall out of AI he dealt with in his books like ten years ago. He gives one the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable. If you do something that isn't really scalable, like being a welder or a tailor, then you only have to comp…
> He gives one the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable. You mean like opening a restaurant? Too bad delivery services like Uber Eats totally own the market now. Starting a hotel? Booking.com and Airbnb are there to take your profit margins away!
I think that delivery services give you bigger market, but not intrinsic scale. You're still limited by kitchen size, staff numbers, and raw hours you can put into the food.
You can scale the system (say Subway, or even smaller chains like Burger Fuel), but also reasonably choose _not_ to scale and still do incredibly well (like Michelin star restaurants, or the myriad of hyper-famous-locally Japanese eateries, or Fergburger in Queenstown).
Someone scaling their own restaurant on the other side of the world won't necessarily out compete out (and in the overwhelming majority of cases with have no impact at all). Despite fast food joints all over the place, I still see small cafes, individual eateries, etc performing well (I mean, as well as hospitality can be).
Maybe it's worth expanding the definition of > make sure it is NOT scalable < to include 'make sure it's not automatable'?
Re: The only moat left is money?
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable I guess it also means that if you build something for a niche audience then big companies will never be interested in it.
That's not really a bad thing, IMHO. Many people successfully make a living creating niche products.
I wouldn't say it's not really a bad thing, I think it's a very good thing. There are many people now making incredibly niche products that have very good lives - making more than enough money for themselves doing interesting work engaging with customers that are passionate about their field.
Sounds like a great life to me.
Re: The only moat left is money?
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He gives one the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable. You mean like opening a restaurant? Too bad delivery services like Uber Eats totally own the market now. Starting a hotel? Booking.com and Airbnb are there to take your profit margins away!
I think that delivery services give you bigger market, but not intrinsic scale. You're still limited by kitchen size, staff numbers, and raw hours you can put into the food. You can scale the system (say Subway, or even smaller chains like Burger Fuel), but also reasonably choose _not_ to scale and still do incredibly well (like Michelin star restaurants, or the myriad of hyper-famous-locally Japanese eateries, or Fe…
The problem is that any market can be taken over by someone with deep pockets (or investors making a pile of money). They just make sure they are the "go-to place" for consumers to access the market. By marketing the hell out of it, by making apps, abusing power in other markets (see platforms), etc.
Re: The only moat left is money?
#277So, I really felt like more people should be reading Nassim Taleb's Incerto series of books. A lot of the issues that fall out of AI he dealt with in his books like ten years ago. He gives one the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable. If you do something that isn't really scalable, like being a welder or a tailor, then you only have to comp…
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Re: The only moat left is money?
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems like reasonable advice until you realize you have no idea what will and will not scale in a few years, and there's only so many tailors/plumbers/welders/etc. What it really comes down to is these options as more work gets automated: 1) New jobs doing different things that weren't done before 2) Same jobs but shorter hours so "full time" with a salary to match starts to look more like 4 days, or 5 hours/day…
The point of doing something non-scalable is that you can enter and exit the market fairly easily. You don't need to be a tailor your whole life. You can make a living as a barber, electrician, teacher, or nurse. I'm not saying it's easy ! It's hard as hell. It sucks when your job gets automated. I'm just saying that aiming for something non-scalable means you're not always tilting at windmills, and the game can't be…
All of those professions you've listed require about half a decade of dedicated training to be legally allowed to practice. For example an electrician takes like 7 years to become qualified, that's a full time apprenticeship, and it pays badly in the meantime.
A fact endlessly annoying to electrical engineers who legally can design their houses power system but not work on it.
(I mean I think a barber is quicker, but one of that list is also not like the others)
Re: The only moat left is money?
#279So, I really felt like more people should be reading Nassim Taleb's Incerto series of books. A lot of the issues that fall out of AI he dealt with in his books like ten years ago. He gives one the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable. If you do something that isn't really scalable, like being a welder or a tailor, then you only have to comp…
automation makes every job scalable, no?
If we get AGI and fully autonomous robot assistants, we'll live in a post scarcity world like Star Trek, or somebody in control the robots will use them to enslave all of humanity... so... high variance outcome could go either way.
Re: The only moat left is money?
#280This whole thread is classic HN. Someone uses a random example to illustrate a point, and the rest of the post is about that.