The end of the job market.

Every other tough job market throughout history has always been a changing of the guard, of the zeitgeist if you will. Jobs didn't disappear, they transitioned.

In the aftermath of the 2000 .com era, jobs started going digital. Instead of a bookkeeper keeping physical records, bookkeepers started putting data on a physical hard drive somewhere. But the need for a bookkeeper still existed nonetheless.

Then came the cloud era, roughly starting 2010 or so. Physical hardware started to move into the virtual space, colocated, SaaS, hybrid, etc. Instead of having people working with physical IT, networking, hardware, etc., you started getting software developers, cloud-native developers. Skillset transitioned from physical on-prem IT to cloud-first/SaaS. Subscriptions and the rent economy became big. Again, a transition, not a loss.

Then around 2020 or so, the need went from software/cloud to automation. RPA (robotics process automation), workflow automation, etc. Orchestration, APIs, modernization, i.e., putting together intricate pieces of the web became the next best thing. Again, a transition, not a loss.

Then starting in 2023, generative AI became a thing and vast swaths of white collar work started to become completed automated and now even agentic. The difference here is that while every other stage represented a transition, this one feels very different. I can see it in my job and I can see it in the jobs of my friends, loved ones, acquaintances, and more. The fundamental need for most white collar work is simply disappearing. You still need a couple people in each company, sure, but what companies are clearly (and quickly) finding out is that they can basically eliminate the majority of their employees with very little negative impact.

In the long run, the only people that will truly be "needed" are a couple of people who represent the public image of the company (e.g., those who go on media outlets, branding, personalities, the "face" of the company) and a couple of people at the review layer (those who review the outputs of AI). As much as I hate to say it, with the pace of this self-learning monster that is AI, pretty much everything else can be greatly reduced if not completely eliminated.

• Marketing? Agentic emails, outbound, inbound, chatbots, follow-ups, discovery, lead gen...
• Product? Couple of sharp product folks to guide AI, no need for junior staff who used to do manual coding inputs. API calls connect everything.
• Legal? Agentic AI perusing all legal databases, terminology, API calls constantly surfacing the latest developments and regulation.
• Finance? Almost wholly automatable. No more manual input needed unless there is a strategic change and then a couple of people just to review AI.

You get the point. This market is dangerous. It is deadly. I truly think somebody has to put some guardrails around this or this will crush society as we know it. There is no transition here. This represents a total loss of employment and a societal existential crisis. If you've been through multiple market periods like I have, you KNOW in your heart that this is different than all of the past ones.

I don't know what the outcome of this all is going to be. Billions of highly-educated and competent adults roaming the streets starving and purposeless?

Eventually these people, due to a simple need to survive, will be forced to turn to blue-collar labor. You'll have coders, accountants, bankers, lawyers, data scientists, business analysts with their thin wrists and low bone density all of a sudden start trying to learn how to be an HVAC tech or a plumber. Highly educated people turning to Walmart to be a cashier. People selling their souls to OnlyFans or similar platforms to earn a living.

Then robotics will eventually catch up to the software/data side, and then you're doomed. At this point, all sectors will be crushed, those with money will live off interest or market appreciation or renting out assets. Those without it will have zero opportunity. The robotics piece replacing the blue collar market will still take some time (at least another decade IMO), but eventually this will happen too.

To feed all this automation and AI, thousands of electric substations will be built, thousands of data centers, millions of servers, massive electricity and cooling required, nuclear power required, causing C02 to mass flood the atmosphere, causing heat to be captured at insane levels (I'm in Texas and we have record heat this year). Water costs skyrocket, electricity costs skyrocket, then people start to horde physical goods (like gold) because the digital world is already conquered by AI. Now the only thing that's truly valuable is a physical asset (real estate, gold, land, furniture, whatever).

Government then has to make a choice. They clearly have no intention of stopping this destructive AI/automation wave (which is self-reinforcing so can't really be stopped anyways because it will teach itself). Plus government wants to beat out countries like China meaning it's going to double and triple down, not slow down.

Then people start to starve, jobless, homeless, destitute, overheated due to mass destruction of the environment causing insane carbon dioxide heat capture (above point). Can't have millions of people wandering the streets like zombies, so government says "OK FINE - I'll give you each a thousand per month subsidy to survive. HAPPY?"

Then people take that and fight for the smallest living spaces. Anywhere where there's shelter from the heat. A place to sit down. Back hurts. Need to rest. Rent skyrockets, benefiting the PE firms and investors that own all this commercial real estate, again making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Then you have H1B all trying to escape India, mass-flooding the few jobs that still exist.

Then you have Musk firing half of twitter (now X), basically signaling to the entire corporate world that it's no longer unethical to just fire people en masse. Companies all follow suite afterwards: "I can do this now? Really? I've always wanted to improve my profit margins but I didn't want to be singled out as the unethical one in the market by doing a mass layoff. Now everyone else is doing it and you told me it's okay, I'M GONNA DO IT TOO!!! THANKS MAN!"

Then you have thousands of fired government workers who thought they had a lifetime permanent job also flooding the market.

Then you have mass inflation and lower consumer discretionary budget, causing the competition for customers to escalate to the highest it's ever been. Everyone fighting for the same dollar. Companies can't afford people due to lack of customers and therefore revenue so they turn to AI for operations.

Oh I didn't even mention the mass consolidation wave. Everything eventually owned by a handful of companies like microsoft, google, nvidia, etc. These multi-trillion dollar companies buy up every single competitor and interesting player out there. No more small business. Nobody can resist a $100M+ offer (lifechanging money), so they just take it because the economy is so tough. So they give up the only thing that can realistically challenge the "machine". Those that try to resist get hostile takeovers or complete competitive maneuvering to isolate any incumbent. Players like google play along and refuse to feature them in SEO. LLM players refuse to show them in GEO.

After everything consolidates to a couple of ultra-massive corps, everyone then has to become a little sycophant sucking up to the big ones. Oh please sir Google, give me an opportunity for a partnership. Please!!! No independence. All things controlled by a very select few. All potential resistance and independence is bought out or crushed. Then you have to either be on the good side of the mega titans (who are now in bed with the government) or you will cease to exist entirely.

If you see the big picture, it's hard not to see the writing on the wall. I am generally a very positive person, but something disturbing is going on. And everyone is just trying to go with the flow because first and foremost they need to survive. And so they unknowingly (or knowingly) train AI in their every day jobs, continuously contributing to their own demise.

What forces are there right now that are working to stop this singularity? Or will we all just go with the flow until we are eventually pulverized to dust? Just a stream of consciousness.....