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Comment by mvdtnz | Hacker News Reader

Is there something about therapists that makes them inherently noble and not prone to the same incentives as everyone else?

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The implication was that the low salary selects for people who value helping people more than they value money.

Indeed says that therapists in Toronto, Canada make about CAD $55/hour. That's not FAANG level nor what you'd expect for an MD, but it's not what I'd call low, either.

That said, I certainly don't see therapists as profiteering, in the sense of trying to convince people to pay for therapy they don't need. They might plausibly feel threatened by AI, but they'd absolutely be justified in calling out examples like those in TFA.

Hmm, how is that calculated? Therapist I'm currently seeing is $150/hour, on the outskirts of Toronto (cheaper cost of living / office space), and is empathically not on the high end of training (i.e. no PhD etc). I've never ever seen one below triple digits, so the notion of average, in Toronto, being $55 doesn't seem right.

Ahh, here we go; Indeed.com includes "Stretch Therapist", Occupational Therapist, Respiratory Therapist, Weight Gain Therapist, Massage Therapist, Care Co-ordinator, and everything else that includes the term "Therapist" in it.

$55/hr in Toronto… not to mention the overhead to pay for the building and support staff, the fact that you can’t bill for 40 hours per week, and the mentally demanding nature of the job listening to people’s mental shit all day.

Hot take: Therapists should earn more than most software devs.

Therapists are definitely the reason for many software devs not burning out. Or burning out slowly enough to earn a retirement.

The implication is that it's insane to simply apply a "everyone wants to grift from you" angle to anyone who as an expert without any evidence or analysis.

I didn't say "grift". Of course therapists are going to warn you against technology that replaces therapists for a fraction of the cost, regardless of how effective it is. That's just human nature. There's nothing wrong with self-preservation, we just need to be on the lookout for it.

Given the incredible gap between demand and supply in many places, I think many therapists would welcome a stopgap solution for people on waiting lists or struggling with costs. And they would not feel their livelihoods threatened one bit. That is, if they trusted that stopgap to at worst do no harm.

There's an inherent limit in how many people they can be treating - even group therapy sessions will be limited by number. As such, there's not many "exploits" that they can use to gain more and more power/money. Also, the job is far more likely to attract people that are interested in helping rather than exploiting people. People that want to exploit others are going to want to expand their audience.

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