February 17, 2026
Plows vs. Paychecks: Comment Cage Match
Why I'm Worried About Job Loss and Thoughts on Comparative Advantage
AI won’t take your job? Commenters smell pay cuts and power grabs
TLDR: The author warns that even if AI doesn’t erase jobs, it could slash pay and power while funneling profits to owners. Comments exploded: one side demands heavy new taxes to share gains, another says “adapt or be replaced,” and skeptics blame policy and remote-work whiplash more than AI.
An economist argues we’re in a “cyborg era” where humans plus AI still win, so ordinary folks shouldn’t panic about jobs. The comments immediately turned into a steel-cage match. One camp shouted: jobs might exist but wages and power won’t, with fears of entry-level roles vanishing and bosses scooping up the profits. “Comparative advantage” (the idea that humans still have a niche, explained here) didn’t calm anyone—people said that niche could be tiny, badly paid, and controlled by whoever owns the AI.
The counterpunch? Adapt or get rolled. One hardliner dropped the line of the thread: “Are you going to be the farmer who refuses to buy a plow?” Expect memes of devs hand-coding like it’s 1999. Meanwhile, skeptics attacked the stats: a cited drop in junior tech jobs drew claims it’s really the remote-work boom unwinding, not AI. And the political brawl kicked off: tax-the-robots energy surged, with calls for “radically different taxation” to spread the gains, while others said the real villain is bad policy and a weak economy. Translation: this wasn’t a debate—it was a vibe check. The only consensus? AI won’t “kill all jobs” anytime soon, but it might change the deal—fewer ladders up, thinner paychecks, and a bigger fight over who gets the pie.
Key Points
- •The author argues that comparative advantage can coexist with worse outcomes for workers, including wage pressure and reduced bargaining power.
- •Humans plus AI may outperform AI alone in many workflows, but this does not ensure favorable wages, job counts, or equitable surplus distribution.
- •Comparative advantage frameworks often assume workers have complementary tacit knowledge, which may not broadly hold.
- •Cost-minimizing firms will replace codifiable, routine cognitive tasks with AI as organizational friction erodes.
- •Organizational inefficiency, cited in the “Bullshit Jobs” thesis, is not a reliable buffer protecting jobs against AI-driven changes.