Hard to take seriously from a guy who has Facebook, Google, and Twitter on his CV.
I fail to see your point. He's very well traveled is all.
I'm guessing his soapbox has a nice cushion from his previous jobs.
You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass
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Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass
#32This is a real threat that is not discussed enough. If labor could be completely automated, then the value and political power of workers tends to zero.
I feel like the people who post this sentiment have never done any plumbing, electrical wiring or really just any sort of actual creative manual labor. Show me the robot that can plumb a new sink in, or brick up an old doorway... Because I'd really like to buy it, those things are hard and time consuming!
Couple years ago you could have made the same argument about talking computers and here we are.
Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass
#33And this is why blog posts shouldn't ever get on HN's front page... they're usually embarrassing.
Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass
#34Honest question, if large portions of labor are automated or marginalized who ultimately buys the goods and services that companies produce? Markets depend on consumers having purchasing power. It seems economically rational to keep the average worker making just enough to afford goods and services over the long term.
We can see this logic reflected at times in business history. Ford paid workers double the daily wage so they could afford the cars they built and Costco pays employees 50% more than Walmart. They're not doing these things out of the goodness of their heart but out of greed to increase long term profits.
Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass
#35This post seems to be haphazardly proposing that big tech will inevitably make everyone's lives miserable. And by working for them, you are enabling this. It offers no constructive alternative and the author (yes, I know who he is) seems to have no issue with Google hosting their email. It's hard to take this too seriously (even if there is some legitimate worry here)
It's certainly been making my life miserable, at least in recent years. And the trend for the future doesn't seem rosy.
Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass
#36I partly agree, but where this analogy breaks down, and what the neofeudal rulers are too shortsighted to realize, is that if lower classes don't have income to spend, there will be nobody to buy their products, and the entire economy collapses. Proposals to address this like UBI are a pipe dream.
Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass
#37This post seems to be haphazardly proposing that big tech will inevitably make everyone's lives miserable. And by working for them, you are enabling this. It offers no constructive alternative and the author (yes, I know who he is) seems to have no issue with Google hosting their email. It's hard to take this too seriously (even if there is some legitimate worry here)
We are over a decade into Big Tech already making everyone's lives miserable (the malicious wielding of social media is something even the mainstream knows about now). His alternative of not working for big tech is literally the only way out of this.
There is some nuance in what "not working for big tech" means though. The general gist is to not take work making tools that can foreseeably be used to hurt people and the social fabric at large. Reject "disruption." Don't take money to make your life worse. That sort of thing.
Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass
#38This is a real threat that is not discussed enough. If labor could be completely automated, then the value and political power of workers tends to zero.
or as a former Google executive likes to call them, "the eaters"
Wonder if that inspired: The tomb of the eaters - in caves of qud.
Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass
#39I couldn't disagree more. Throughout history, higher productivity leads to a higher quality of life for everyone.
Yes, the transition can be painful and some people will lose out and face hard career changes.
But overall, the multiplicative power of investment only increases, helping to make everything cheaper, and everyone richer.
People focus too much on their own small part of experience - like Claude Code replacing CRUD developers. Without appreciating that the LLM revolution (and broader AI like AlphaFold) also includes PhD students that don't need to lose time programming tooling, interns that might have spent their time on tooling that can now use LLMs to learn faster and actually contribute to their fields, disadvantaged students that can learn more directly and in a personal way, without it being dependent on their physical location.
All of this means you get more experimentation, more ideas, and more successes.
Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass
#40Hard to take seriously from a guy who has Facebook, Google, and Twitter on his CV.
a) On such a topic I would trust someone who has worked there even more than someone who only experienced how these companies work from the outside.
b) I'd argue that decentralization of power and knowledge has always been a main driver for George Hotz¹²³ and possibly a reason why he is no longer at Facebook, Google, Twitter.
¹) https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2025/10/06/alway...
²) https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2023/11/04/disru...
³) https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2021/06/10/a-cir...