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A sizable portion of the blue collar economy collapses too if the white collar portion stops having money to spend or suddenly has an influx of time to do some of the stuff the blue collar workers were doing for them like lawns, home repair, painting etc.

Its all tied together. The current system cannot function if unemployment goes double digits.

The idea is to break the middle class. Blue or white collar it doesn’t matter. A politically active middle class is a danger to the designs of Silicon Valley ghouls.

"Blue collar workers and service industry workers aren't in immediate danger of being replaced by AI"

I wouldn't be so sure about this; robotics is advancing rapidly. I do think there'll be a substantial market for "human-made" products and services as luxuries, though, so at least some humans will retain these jobs.

I'll believe that when I can get a robot plumber or electrician to come to my house for less than what a senior SWE makes per hour. Until then, it's just an empty promise.

Blue collar workers such as plumbers are in danger of being replaced by robots, but not any time soon. But by the time this happens, enough people from more vulnerable fields will have been forced out that a "solution" will have been found. The "solution" is much more likely to be dystopic than utopic though.

> Blue collar workers and service industry workers aren't in immediate danger of being replaced by AI, so there is a cushion period in which there is still a large number of people who have jobs.

There will just be a lot more workers competing for those blue collar and service industry jobs in the future which will drive down their wages.

The issue isn’t every other CEO having access to the “make game” button, but who will buy that game when the customers have access to their own “make game” button?

Good point. Except, the problem is that at AI prices similar to current ones, it would cost someone thousands of dollars to make the game for himself.

Luckily for us China based companies are pushing the price down and bringing it to those who can afford a decent hardware. Which might not be everyone, but enough people to make it matter.

The day AI goes good enough to work in place of a principal engineer, and 10.000 people get fired, is the day when 10.000 new 1-person companies will appear that will make you whatever software you want at a fraction of the cost the big companies want to rent it to you.

Software is becoming a true commodity. Data, Hardware, specialised knowledge, good taste and engineering practices, and connectivity. Those might be key points that might keep people on a certain infrastructure, not just the software.

Well, people often play games not because they are the best game, but because their friends are playing it and they want to join in the experience. This seems to have more to do with marketing than game or code quality, and marketing is not exactly cheap.

> The problem for the CEO is that every other CEO will be able to do the same thing, so what will be the distinguishing factor?

No, the problem is, no one will need the CEO. They'll press the button on their own.

Not to mention “labor they don’t understand” is only possible with specialization and modernity.

Back when everyone was a farmer, yeah sure everyone understood the job

I think that even back in early farming days, there were usually some guys who were good at using spears and didn't know much about farming who would go around taking part of the farmers' output. If the farmers were relatively lucky, the guys with the spears would stick around and defend the farmers from other guys with spears in a long-term arrangement of trading protection for material goods instead of just roaming around robbing farmers without giving anything back.

Yep.

We call the former “states” and the latter “gangs”. The difference is subtle.

It's possible to be very talented and a crank.