It also makes the competition for knowledge work go international which might increase pay in developing countries but lower it in first world countries.
Higher pay rates exist for two reasons, unfair monopoly positions (e.g. bill gates and the OS monopoly of the 90s, actors/athletes), and because there is complex work that hasn't been deskilled yet. Not much can be done about the former except regulations, the latter is where programmers can change the situation. Demand is everywhere - whether it's fulfilled by cloud labor, or by specialized labor - is the question.
Either way, I think we can agree that immense opportunities exist for startups to profit from this space.
If you equalize wages you also need to equalize the cost of living which is something that doesn't seem to be happening because a lot of people have a lot of money locked up in land etc that they are not going to want to see devalued.
If deskilled work does not cover rent payments then it is not much good to anyone.
Yes, you're totally right - land will get devalued. The older generations in richer countries will lose the most relatively. This is not a bad thing fundamentally (it reverses the rich get richer trend), and is actually what's already happening, but people don't feel it. Every story that is heard about poverty reduction in China is also a story of westerners getting relatively poorer - though in absolute terms everyone is getting better quality of life.
I'm not sure that the older/richer will lose out. They have a lot of political clout that they will bring to bear to keep value in their homes and retirement assets. A lot of this will be hoarded rather than redistributed so demand will continue to outstrip supply in many areas.
Deskilling benefits everyone, is leads to more equitable wealth distribution. The people inventing the assembly lines (hackers) will be paid more than the assembly line worker (cloud laborers), but that's a fair reward for the effort. They won't be much richer (just like mechanical engineers who invent factory equipment) because fierce competition will prevent it (there aren't network/platform effects that lead to gates/zuckerburg).