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Comment by rc_mob | Hacker News Reader

None of what you say is true to real life

AI is making working from home much easier than ever before. You don't really need to live in a city to have a tech career now, and it will accelerate. We don't really need so many office workers going forward in cities. Almost anything they decide to do instead, will more productive in the economy than being a useless cubicle monkey thats no longer needed because AI can do it better.

ok, but if AI is doing it better, then they won't be working remote, they'd be just unemployed.

Sure, they'll be unemployed until they chose to do something else that people will pay for. Like I was reading some guy is making downloads for Minecraft and making great living in it (science fiction a few decades ago). Worse case scenerio, move to the country side, and homestead. Thats how people survived wars and famines. Surely they can survive a tech transition.

How much money is your homestead making?

Probably not much. But even if it's zero, it's still better than falling behind in a City. The profit margins of being a wagie living in a city, is just a few hundred dollars left over a month, if that. Statistics back this up. Almost all of the money goes to rent and basic necessities now. Most people are broke! In a relatively wealthy country like Canada, something like 10 million / 40 million have food insecurity. 2 million regularly go to food banks. They're trapped by the system, and failing city life and rising inflation. If anything homesteading would be preferable as it would give some independence (own their land) and better shot at food security.

So how much money is your homestead making?

Thirty healthy laying hens will produce about 21 to 24 eggs a day, which can gross you roughly $262 to $300 a month if sold at $5 per dozen. 10 bee hives, making 8,000-10,000 dollars a year profit. Supplement that with even a part time manual labor job, or a remote tech job.

I'm noticing a lack of actual numbers, only guesses. What were your homestead's total income and total expenses in 2025?

You're still overlooking some glaring issues in your scenario.

How many tech workers can affoard such a homestead? How many will be able to afford it once millions try to go down the same path after the economy crumbles?

Is running a profitable farm so simple that anyone can do it after watching a few YouTube videos? It seems to me that if it were so easy, so many farmers wouldn't struggle and give up farming.

If there are suddenly several times as many egg farms as before because of all the career changers, will eggs still be sold at $5 a dozen?

How will all of these homesteaders compete against the scale of conglomerates in an increasingly automated industry?

> move to the country side, and homestead

So, work from home, but you'll need a new home.

What will even pay for it? Not the proceeds from your old home which now nobody wants to buy.

Basic economic education has failed an entire generation, if not more.

If there is a surplus of labour, will that increase wages, or depress them?

Doctors are only able to charge that much because there are so few of them. With AI, mean average wage of programmers will drop, because you don't need as many of them (thats the idea anyway)

So that person making downloads for minecraft, whats going to happen if there are 10x more people doing it? will their income overall go up, or down?

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