Comment by utopiah
21 hours ago
Does the analogy hold though?
We had "free clothes" for years, decades now. I don't mean cheap I mean literally free, as in $0.0 software. Cheaper software isn't new.
Also there are still clothe designers, fashion runways, and expensive Patagonia vests today. The clothing industry is radically different from back then but it's definitely not gone.
It didn't kill everything. Some survived but not to the extent that it was.
> The clothing industry is radically different from back then but it's definitely not gone.
Small towns had generations of people who had learned skills in making clothing / yarn. To do the work you needed years of experience and that's all you knew.
Once the industrial revolution hit they hired low skilled workers that could be dumped at a moments notice. It made whole villages destitute. Some survived, but the far majority became poor.
That was one industry. We now have AI at a point to wipe out multiple industries to a similar scale.
I posted elsewhere, but you are looking at the wrong part of the chain.
We have cheap (or free) software for large markets, and certain small markets where software developers with hobbies have made something. If every niche that will never be able to afford a large 6-figure custom software could get slop software for an affordable price, then that establishes a foot-hold for working its way up the quality ladder.