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Comment by mattjaynes | Hacker News Reader

Wow. There seems to be 2 main responses to this. 1) Sadness and depression or 2) Excitement and possibility

I really expected this thread to be more of #2 since historically Hacker News has been full of ambitious founders and founder-like engineers.

The great leaps in automation, especially with the recent AI developments is any founder's dream. To be able to go faster with less friction than ever to create something valuable for the world. Now this is within reach of even more people.

It's an amazing time - for those who choose to see the possibilities.

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We can't and will never have a world with 8 billion distinct businesses that all have zero employees each. So it's nice that you think you might have a shot at a tiny lottery, but personally, I like to see trends that can benefit all of humanity, not just those who choose to start businesses.

Nothing against automation itself, but the idea that it means all of the value of a business can and should accrue to a single person I take issue with. It doesn't matter how evenly spread the probability that a randomly chosen person can become a successful founder is, or what my personal probability is. The total number of such people is necessarily capped at a very small number, and there is nothing to celebrate about at the idea of a future where only a very small number of people can ever enjoy the wealth created by automation.

Or maybe stop worrying about theoretical macro trends and go build something valuable right now?

HN suffers from a higher than average amounts of narcissism when it comes to being "Temporarily depressed millionaires" when thinking they will be the ones at the top of the pyramid. The few here that are near the top of the pyramid seem to forget that their high position tend to forget that position is supported by the base below them and if they don't perform maintenance on the base the entire thing collapses.

Humanity is built on societies and we must treat it so by ensuring we produce wealth and distribute, not extract wealth and horde it.

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