If AI agents take the jobs, who buys the stuff?
AI agents are getting rolled into everything. Companies will use them because they’re fast and cheap. But if agents replace a lot of paid work, people lose income. Less income → less spending → businesses push even harder on automation. Feels like a loop. Cheaper prices help, sure, but not if folks don’t have paychecks. New jobs might show up, but I’m not convinced the timing works. Also, if most gains go to a few owners, their extra spending won’t replace everyone else’s demand. So what actually keeps demand up? Profit-sharing so workers own a piece? Some kind of income floor from “automation dividends”? Totally new markets that soak up all this output? Or maybe real-world limits (energy, compute, regulation) slow things down. I might be missing something—what’s the concrete mechanism here? 4 comments on Hacker News.
AI agents are getting rolled into everything. Companies will use them because they’re fast and cheap. But if agents replace a lot of paid work, people lose income. Less income → less spending → businesses push even harder on automation. Feels like a loop. Cheaper prices help, sure, but not if folks don’t have paychecks. New jobs might show up, but I’m not convinced the timing works. Also, if most gains go to a few owners, their extra spending won’t replace everyone else’s demand. So what actually keeps demand up? Profit-sharing so workers own a piece? Some kind of income floor from “automation dividends”? Totally new markets that soak up all this output? Or maybe real-world limits (energy, compute, regulation) slow things down. I might be missing something—what’s the concrete mechanism here?
AI agents are getting rolled into everything. Companies will use them because they’re fast and cheap. But if agents replace a lot of paid work, people lose income. Less income → less spending → businesses push even harder on automation. Feels like a loop. Cheaper prices help, sure, but not if folks don’t have paychecks. New jobs might show up, but I’m not convinced the timing works. Also, if most gains go to a few owners, their extra spending won’t replace everyone else’s demand. So what actually keeps demand up? Profit-sharing so workers own a piece? Some kind of income floor from “automation dividends”? Totally new markets that soak up all this output? Or maybe real-world limits (energy, compute, regulation) slow things down. I might be missing something—what’s the concrete mechanism here? 4 comments on Hacker News.
AI agents are getting rolled into everything. Companies will use them because they’re fast and cheap. But if agents replace a lot of paid work, people lose income. Less income → less spending → businesses push even harder on automation. Feels like a loop. Cheaper prices help, sure, but not if folks don’t have paychecks. New jobs might show up, but I’m not convinced the timing works. Also, if most gains go to a few owners, their extra spending won’t replace everyone else’s demand. So what actually keeps demand up? Profit-sharing so workers own a piece? Some kind of income floor from “automation dividends”? Totally new markets that soak up all this output? Or maybe real-world limits (energy, compute, regulation) slow things down. I might be missing something—what’s the concrete mechanism here?
Hacker News story: If AI agents take the jobs, who buys the stuff?
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Reviewed by Tha Kur
on
September 05, 2025
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