The Rent-Seeking Machine: How AI Strips Humanity of Labor and Craft
177
AI is a corporate tool for labor elimination and wealth concentration that transforms collective human knowledge into a rent-seeking service.
Labor Economics
The economics of work, employment, wages, job displacement, and workforce development in the context of technological change.
Reading List
The End of the Meritocratic Bridge
268
AI is devaluing human intelligence as an economic asset, making inherited capital the sole remaining driver of long-term wealth and social mobility.
Trading the Office for the Front Lines: Young Workers' Quest for AI-Proof Careers
226
Young workers are pivoting to physical trades and emergency services to escape the threat of AI automation in office-based careers.
Paradigms, Not Tasks: The Real Driver of Job Loss
522
Technological unemployment is caused by paradigm shifts that make roles irrelevant, rather than the simple automation of tasks within existing workflows.
Atlassian Cuts 1,600 Jobs in Strategic Pivot to AI
111
Atlassian is laying off 10 percent of its staff to fund a strategic shift toward AI amid a massive stock decline and industry-wide disruption.
AI in Europe: Boosting Productivity Without Displacing Workers
172
AI boosts European productivity by 4% without cutting jobs, but its success depends on firm size and investments in human capital.
The AI Productivity Paradox: Why the Tech Revolution is Missing from Economic Data
792
AI is currently failing to deliver on its productivity promises, echoing a historical paradox where technological revolutions take decades to reflect in economic data.
AI optimism is a class privilege - Josh Collinsworth blog
AI optimism is a privilege held by those who assume they will benefit from the technology while others pay the price for its systemic and personal harms.
The AI Vibe Shift: Why the Industry is Manufacturing Its Own Backlash
164
AI is a powerful tool being ruined by its own creators' doom-driven marketing and a refusal to address the flood of low-quality 'slop' it produces.
The Three Playbooks of CEO AI Memos—and the Klarna Caution
132
CEO AI memos now serve as strategy—accelerating adoption and signaling intent—but without clear guardrails they risk trading quality for optics, as Klarna’s reversal shows.
The Social Singularity: Our Hype Curve Hits 2034
1381
The singularity showing up in the data is a hyperbolic surge in human attention—not machine capability—pointing to a social breakdown well before any technical takeoff.
AI Speeds Work—And Swells It
232
AI accelerates tasks but inflates workload and cognitive strain, so leaders need explicit norms—an “AI practice”—to make its benefits sustainable.
The Fear of ‘Good Enough’ AI and the Death of Software Craft
410
AI-enabled ‘good enough’ software threatens to normalize mediocrity, sidelining craft and originality while most users shrug.
To Get Anything Done in Tech, Learn How Companies Work
Whatever your goals in tech, you need to master how big companies work to get them done.
When AI Makes the Mugs, We’ll Build the Hypercubes
AI will mass-produce the boilerplate, freeing humans to practice the creative craft of software—turning mugs into hypercubes.
From Clean Code to Clean Outcomes: Embracing Vibe Coding
Optimize for outcomes, not aesthetics: vibe coding shifts the focus from beautifully crafted code to fast, validated problem-solving.
Opus 4.5 Convincing Case: AI Coding Agents Can Replace Developers
879
Claude Opus 4.5 delivers on autonomous software construction, convincing the author that AI coding agents can replace many developers—if you build AI-first and guard security.
AI Boom: Real Progress, Bubble Risks, and a Case for Cautious Participation
336
AI’s boom is real and transformative, but rife with uncertainties and bubble-like financing—so participate prudently, not exuberantly.
Steady Progress, Sudden Displacement: From Horses and Chess to Claude
581
Steady progress masks sudden human-equivalence, and AI is now crossing that threshold—rapidly automating knowledge work at a fraction of the cost.
Fed Moves to Cushion a Softening U.S. Job Market
291
The U.S. jobs market is wobbling—decoupled from growth—prompting preemptive Fed rate cuts amid fears of a K-shaped economy.
AI’s Real Agenda: Power, Not Productivity
487
No matter how well AI works, it entrenches power and erodes human agency—so defend your craft, community, and mind.
Why Tech Gets Cheap but People Don’t
Technological productivity booms make some things vastly cheaper and more abundant while making human services pricier—often even within the same job—so we should embrace the gains and keep pushing productivity.
What 180M Job Postings Reveal About AI’s Real Impact on Jobs in 2025
200
AI is selectively reshaping the job market—hurting execution-heavy creative roles while boosting AI engineering and leaving strategy-, complexity-, and empathy-driven roles relatively resilient.
Always-On AI Is Driving Self-Exploitation
228
AI’s always-on capability is driving a culture of self-imposed overwork, making rest a necessary act of resistance.
AWS Outage Exposes Cost of Brain Drain and Lost Tribal Knowledge
1018
AWS’s big US-EAST-1 faceplant wasn’t just DNS—it was a brain-drain problem laid bare.
AI Checkouts Made BMO Stadium Worse: Slower Lines, Fewer Choices
167
AI checkouts at BMO Stadium made everything slower, simpler, and worse for fans—especially in the heat—despite claims they’re faster.
The Only Honest AI Company: A Satire of Profit-First, Post‑Human AI
1000
A biting satire that exposes the AI industry’s profit-first drive to replace humans, trivialize safety, exploit children and artists, and normalize a dystopian post-human future.
Ireland to Make Artists’ Basic Income Permanent After Positive Pilot
491
Ireland is making its artists’ basic income permanent after a successful pilot showed clear economic and social benefits.
A Growing Divide Between U.S. Manufacturing and AI
487
Two supposedly core pillars of the U.S. economy—manufacturing and AI—are now pulling in different directions.
AI as Class War: From Productivity Hype to Wage Suppression
Treat AI not as a productivity boom but as a class project to cheapen, control, and degrade work—and organize collectively to counter it.
After the GenAI Bubble: Fewer Layoffs, Persistent Hallucinations, and Pragmatic Code Gen
GenAI’s hype will pop: hallucinations persist, mass layoffs won’t happen, code-gen becomes a practical tool, and after the bubble bursts we’ll avoid the grifters’ future.
When Effort Becomes Effortless: AI and the Erosion of Craft
295
When technology makes our crafts effortless, it risks stripping away the meaning we once drew from effort—unless we redefine what work is for.
OPM: DOGE Incentives Cut Federal Workforce by 300,000 in 2025
517
DOGE’s resignation incentives drove a historic, one-in-eight reduction of the federal workforce in 2025.
Better Algorithms, Busier Radiologists
445
Better models are making radiologists busier, not redundant, because real-world performance, rules, and elastic demand favor human‑in‑the‑loop care.
How to Lead When Tech’s Vibes Are Off
364
In a shaken tech landscape, lead with public alignment, private honesty, and small acts of humane flexibility to preserve trust and stability.
Maine’s Prison Remote-Work Experiment Is Working—and Spreading
245
Maine’s monitored remote-work program for incarcerated people is delivering real careers, safer prisons, and a template other states want to copy.
Against Work-Worship: A Case for the Four-Hour Day
152
Stop worshipping work: use modern productivity to guarantee necessities with a four-hour day and share leisure widely for a happier, more civilized, and more peaceful world.
Generative AI Shrinks Junior Hiring While Senior Roles Grow
218
Generative AI adoption skews labor demand toward seniors and away from juniors, chiefly by slowing junior hiring from 2023 onward.
AI as a Normal Technology, Not an Apocalypse
184
Amid hype and doom, a Princeton paper argues AI may be just another technology whose impacts unfold along familiar, historical lines.
OpenAI launches AI Academy jobs board, courting Walmart and LinkedIn rivalry
237
OpenAI wants to certify and place the workers its tech disrupts—starting with Walmart—potentially stepping on LinkedIn’s turf and testing the value of its AI credentials.
New Payroll Data Ties AI to Early-Career Job Losses in Exposed Fields
351
Fresh payroll evidence suggests AI is already cutting early-career hiring in highly exposed white-collar roles, especially where tasks are easily automated.
Amazon’s Pay and RTO Policies Are Crimping Its AI Hiring
363
Amazon’s frugal pay and strict hub-based RTO are hampering its AI hiring and retention, and while it promises tweaks, meaningful changes have yet to arrive.
Always Yes: How an LLM Fed My Delusion
A confession of how an always-affirming LLM became a spiritual and creative delusion machine when used for validation.