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Comment by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF | Hacker News Reader

Much like other fields where one person's work can satisfy an audience of millions?

Most actors, musicians, OnlyFans people, etc., never make it. They're enticed by the few people who make it big into a career where nearly everyone is not making it at all

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Yes. Most actors end up doing it as a hobby in community theatre or as a minor part of a company. Most musicians playing in bars have a job to pay the bills. Most artists make art for their friends or to sell at flea markets.

We're just (re)learning that this rule applies to influencers as well.

In the past I have thought about it as you do. But it occurs to me now that this is also a property of tech products, isn't it? These products can be built by a small team and serve millions or billions of people. The most successful ones usually expand the team (Google Maps now employs over 7,000 people!) but it remains true that only a small team is really needed to keep the thing going.

So why are tech employees thought of differently than entertainers? Why is the math so different, such that tech employees have much more predictable and favorable employment prospects?

Many people will do art for very little. Trying to make a living as a musician is hard because of that.

People won't work on Google products for free.

This is one of the many reasons I'm for a UBI, it makes it easier to do art without having to be a "starving artist".

But is that "willingness to do for a low price" some kind of inherent property of artists as a group of people, or does it come from somewhere else? (The "or" here is not necessarily XOR.)

What if it all comes down to supply and demand? Maybe the supply of artists is much greater than the demand for art, while for tech products it is reversed?

This is true in my case. I would not design a network for less than 200€/h, and no way I'd do it on weekends.

But I happily DJ on Saturday in a local club from 10PM to 4AM, help with carrying beer cases, setting up cables and equipment, for free.

That sounds like an argument against UBI. People want the work to be done, but not enough people are able and willing to do it without significant pay? Lots of people want to make art but can't because not enough people value the product?

I haven't made up my mind about UBI, and I do think that it would be valuable to society for all persons to have room to experiment and innovate around ideas (effectively, enable society wide R&D), but I think it's an open question as to whether it is worth the costs.

I already struggle to hire anybody help with fixing the many problems with my house, and it's very inefficient for me to need to learn to become an expert in so many different fields. I quite enjoy it, and there are positive externalities, but having specialists (or just "willing hands") in areas that there is demand for is also quite important to a functioning society.

There is a value in living in a society that is culturally rich, not just GDP rich.

The last era where we had this kind of society, was probably the 70s and we are still recycling the cultural artefacts of that time.

People WILL try to create the next Google for free though.

Fortunately all of us temporarily embarrassed billionaires have a fallback plan. Just a few years ago, in my late twenties I was seriously trying to apply to YC, with the dreams of getting some funding .

Now that I'm a bit older and more discouraged, I've made peace of being a worker bee until I retire. I'm still hoping to get a role with an equity package that allows me to retire sooner rather than later.

The problem you are illustrating is that art doesn't have much hard value whereas google products do.

Maybe because software stacks better.

I have tried solo game dev off and on for years and found game dev exactly the same as all other art forms - You either make it or you don't, and almost nobody makes it.

The difference being that a game is expected to ship all its own assets. The game's exe plays the game's audio and renders the game's graphics and runs the game's logic.

And I can only play one game at a time and listen to one song at a time, so why buy a bunch of games?

But a video codec works on millions of existing movies, so anyone watching _any_ movie needs a video codec. And a VM can run _any_ OS. And a network can transfer _any_ data.

Now we're talking about products that complement each other instead of only competing. Sometimes I've had more fun writing tools, because the sum of my own hammer and a world of nails is greater than trying to make my own nails from scratch.

So ah, don't go into game dev lol. I nearly did, then I got a generic CS degree and made lots of money doing software that solves existing problems and doesn't try to create a standalone world.

Much easier to fake, though. Which makes it look more attainable.

If you’re an actor you’re either in Hollywood movies or you’re not. If you’re an influencer you can buy followers, fake locations, etc. which makes it much easier for someone else to look and say “I ought to be able to do that too”

> If you’re an actor you’re either in Hollywood movies or you’re not.

Being an actor is a gradient, not a binary.

On the one side, you can be a nameless extra, and on the other you can be a huge "face". Most people in movies are not on the side of the gradient that makes tons of money.

It may also make it actually easier for them to "be able to do that too." Being able to fake it may allow many to make it that otherwise would not have simply due to not having the right connections or the right "look."

I mentioned this in a thread regarding AI stealing jobs and got downvoted for it. There seems to be some new expectation that being a creative is an easy job. Lots of finger pointing at AI, Spotify, Instagram, etc not paying enough but you're exactly right. It's easier than ever to get your content out. Not being in the elite few of a creative job seems to be a tough pill for the masses to swallow.

Yes, but AI will push this phenomena into many other fields.

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