For example, a person could write a shareware game over a few weeks or months, sell it for $10, buy advertising at a $0.25 customer acquisition cost (CAC) and scale to make a healthy income in 1994. A person could drop ship commodities like music CDs and scale through advertising with a CAC of perhaps $2.50 and still make enough to survive in 2004. A person could sell airtime and make speaking appearances as an influencer with a CAC of $25 and have a good chance of affording an apartment in 2014. A person can network and be part of inside deals and make a million dollars yearly by being already wealthy in a major metropolitan city with a CAC of $250 in 2024.
The trend is that work gets harder and harder for the same pay, while scalable returns go mainly to people who already have money. AI will just hasten the endgame of late stage capitalism.
Note that not all economic systems work this way. Isn't it odd how tech that should be simplifying our lives and decreasing the cost of living is just devaluing our labor to make things like rent more expensive?