Comment by zackmorris

Ok that's actually very insightful, comparing open source to art.

I got triggered (saw what I wanted to see instead of what was there) because I've been involved with so many projects that failed (say 90+%) that my average hourly "wage" probably comes out to $3/hr over my lifetime. While that's a decent wage in many parts of the world, where I live it means struggle and destitution as a starving artist. "Let them eat cake" comes to mind, because I've never had the baseline stability needed to make the contributions in my heart. So I didn't, I just spent all the years of my adult life working towards other people's dreams, and what people see of me today is the shadow left behind of someone who lost dozens of bets in a row with little to show for it.

I'm concerned that AI encroaching on the last viable artistic endeavors like painting, playing music, writing (and now designing software!) could grind us under the heal of the status quo even harder. Yet people make $100+/hr working at FAANG by standing on the achievements of open source while giving almost nothing back.

I don't see a way out of this, so without some kind of human intervention, we have maybe 10 years left before the sky falls. That could be the start of the New Age (heaven on Earth) or it could be the total subjugation of humanity beneath technology (a living hell). Unfortunately the powers that be have chosen the second route, whether they are consciously aware of it or not.

Is there anything we can do to balance the scales? All I can think of is to withhold our labor. But when AI automates that, there truly will be no recourse. The value of labor will fall towards zero and we could be looking at a luddite revolution where people sabotage tech in a misguided attempt to save themselves. When we could have planned for that eventuality and chosen something like UBI instead.

It breaks my heart, but my heart is already broken. I guess that's why I have moved to magical thinking through stuff like meditation in an effort to manifest the world that might have been. An unsatisfiable ego-driven tech can only be defeated by a conscious soul-driven love.

Like how does one contemplate zen as the world burns? That's what this problem of under-compensation hits on for me. It's maybe the central problem of our time, or at least my time. Separating me from the life I had envisioned. For me, more tech has merely resulted in more suffering at the hands of it.