The income replacement rate does most of the work here. If displaced workers find comparable jobs quickly, the model can flip from taxing automation to subsidizing it.
The math: 100% of the savings, absorb only 10% of the demand you just destroyed.
Rational alone, suicidal together. A Prisoner's Dilemma with no exit. 150K-plus jobs gone already this year.
Here's what no spreadsheet catches: whether the savings were even real. That's not an economics gap, that a broken human system, running faster. AI didn't invent this, it just augments what's already running underneath.
So I'll ask: anyone measuring automation's actual net effect... who's truly accountable for these cuts... is there a real business case... who's measuring this 12 months from now or is it forgotten?
Bottom line: Get your human system honest before you let AI augment it. That's the real install.
The most unsettling part is that no company has to act irrationally for this to go wrong. Each firm can make a sensible short-term decision to automate, while collectively weakening the consumer demand on which everyone depends. This is ultimately an incentive problem, not just a technology problem.
I’ve been laughing about this for years: every tech bro entrepreneur dreams about firing all the staff without realizing that employees are customers.
The income replacement rate does most of the work here. If displaced workers find comparable jobs quickly, the model can flip from taxing automation to subsidizing it.
Sharp breakdown of the AI layoff trap.
The math: 100% of the savings, absorb only 10% of the demand you just destroyed.
Rational alone, suicidal together. A Prisoner's Dilemma with no exit. 150K-plus jobs gone already this year.
Here's what no spreadsheet catches: whether the savings were even real. That's not an economics gap, that a broken human system, running faster. AI didn't invent this, it just augments what's already running underneath.
So I'll ask: anyone measuring automation's actual net effect... who's truly accountable for these cuts... is there a real business case... who's measuring this 12 months from now or is it forgotten?
Bottom line: Get your human system honest before you let AI augment it. That's the real install.
The most unsettling part is that no company has to act irrationally for this to go wrong. Each firm can make a sensible short-term decision to automate, while collectively weakening the consumer demand on which everyone depends. This is ultimately an incentive problem, not just a technology problem.
thank you for writing on this!