March 27, 2026
New boss, new bill?
The Last Gasps of the Rent Seeking Class
AI was supposed to free us—now folks say we’re just paying new tolls to billionaires
TLDR: A fiery post says AI will smash old “rent-seeking” middlemen and calls out closed-model moats, while comments clap back that the rent just moved to pay‑per‑token chatbots. Readers worry costs, power, and time will shift from call centers to cloud bills—raising who-pays-who stakes for everyone.
The viral post torches America’s “rent-seeking” era—those companies that profit by wasting your time—and crowns AI as the great time equalizer. It even dunks on a top AI firm for calling for “coordination” against model copying, cheering that China’s chatbots could erase the moat. But the comments? They set the place on fire.
The loudest chorus insists the rent didn’t die—it respawned. One user snorts that we’ve traded phone queues for token toll booths, paying by the word to talk to giant language models (LLMs—basically super chatbots). Another adds a gut-punch: “I’m poorer, so yes, I price-check Uber and Lyft constantly.” The vibe is less “AI Robin Hood” and more “new landlord, same rent.”
Drama spikes when a commenter compares the future to self-driving taxis: we stop paying drivers and end up paying Big Tech more. Viva la revolution, but with surge pricing. Skeptics pile on the DIY myth too—sure, AI can help you hack together your own tools, but who has the time (or the weekly token allowance) to rebuild everything? And the doomsday cherry on top: the power bill. “These chips won’t work for free,” one quips. Cue the meme: from press 2 to wait to insert token to speak—did we really break the system, or just install a sleeker coin slot? Learn more about rent-seeking.
Key Points
- •The article argues many U.S. businesses have profited by adding friction that exploits consumers’ time constraints.
- •A Google Duplex demo is cited to show how AI could automate phone-based tasks like restaurant reservations; the author claims Google later removed the video.
- •The author states third‑party reservation marketplaces arose and suggests restaurants or first‑party systems began charging as models automated interactions.
- •The AI supply chain is described as five tiers: electricity, chip manufacturing, chip design/software, models, and applications, with concern focused on the model tier.
- •An Anthropic post about distillation attacks and a call for industry coordination is cited; the author contrasts this with fast-moving Chinese models (Z.ai, Qwen, MiniMax, Kimi) said to be 6–12 months behind.