Corporations don’t exist to hand out jobs — completely agree. They hire people because human creativity, judgment, and problem-solving generate more value than they cost. That’s the foundational engine of economic growth.

But saying “companies don’t create work to hire people” assumes the amount of work is fixed, like slices of a pie. History tells a different story. Every major leap in technology — electricity, assembly lines, computers, the internet — didn’t eliminate work overall. It created whole new industries, new products, new forms of demand, and millions of jobs that never existed before someone imagined them.

The real question today is: will companies use automation to expand opportunity, or will they let fear and short-term profit pressures shrink their vision to whatever fits after payroll cuts? Treating workers as a cost to minimize is the fastest way to shrink your own future. Redeploying them to innovate, build, support customers, and explore new markets is how productivity becomes prosperity.

Humans haven’t become too expensive. What’s become too expensive — at least in the corporate mindset — is patience. Investment. Shared success. The belief that people are not just an expense line, but the actual source of value creation.

If we want a thriving economy, the answer isn’t fewer workers. It’s smarter, more meaningful roles that turn technological progress into shared wealth rather than shared precarity.

It’s definitely true that a lot of companies are cutting workers right now — and that creates real anxiety about where things are headed. But I think the narrative that “humans have become too expensive” flips the real issue upside-down.

Labor isn’t what’s skyrocketed in cost. CEO pay, shareholder expectations, and relentless targets for profit growth are. Companies keep raising prices even while laying off thousands, not because they can’t afford workers, but because they prioritize margins over stability for the people who actually create value.

The biggest missed opportunity here is that automation doesn’t have to be a replacement strategy — it can be a redeployment strategy. When new technology lets humans spend less time on low-value labor, companies can empower them to drive innovation, serve customers better, develop new products, and ultimately create more wealth. That’s how productivity gains should work.

But too many businesses think like accountants, not builders. They treat labor as a line item to subtract, instead of a force multiplier. They cut payroll and congratulate themselves for “efficiency,” even as they shrink their own future potential.

AI and automation could give us shorter weeks, better jobs, and broader prosperity — but only if we stop treating human well-being as an inconvenient expense and start seeing workers as the engines that turn technological progress into shared abundance.

The future isn’t precarious because humans are too expensive — it’s precarious because profit has become priceless, and imagination too cheap.

The Internet Archive’s fundamental duty is to preserve human knowledge — to ensure that cultural, scholarly, and historical materials are not lost to time, obscurity, or commercial impermanence. Preservation does not mean competing with publishers, nor does it mean undermining legitimate markets. It means ensuring that when something ceases to be readily available, it can still be found, studied, and remembered.

If a book is commercially available, widely distributed, and maintained by its rightsholders, then it is not in danger of disappearing. There is nothing for the Archive to “preserve” in that case; the responsibility lies with publishers and distributors. For such works, the Archive’s role should be standby stewardship — maintaining a secure, non-public copy to ensure continuity of access if and when availability lapses.

In contrast, for works that have fallen out of print, lost their commercial distribution, or exist in fragile physical form, the Archive’s duty is active and urgent. These are the works at real risk of vanishing, and preserving them — including through controlled digital lending — serves the public good and the historical record.

This approach strikes a balance between copyright compliance and cultural preservation:

The Archive would withhold digital access to works that are actively in print or licensed.

It would, however, retain preservation copies in its secure collections.

And it would make these available again only if those works become unavailable through ordinary channels.

By adopting this preservation-first, access-conditional model, the Internet Archive fulfills its mission without infringing upon the rights or revenues of living markets — ensuring that the world’s knowledge remains safe, even when the commercial world moves on.

This is progress. The USB-C cable and charger is no longer new tech, and cheap versions that work well enough are readily available. Devices should start advertising the recommended wattage and let stores stock chargers sorted by that.

I ran a dedupe on my drive and eliminated 8 redundant copies of the goatse guy.

#SaveWaterWithGoatse

The C-Suite is filled with ignorant people who have made a career out taking credit for other people's work.

Now they want to pretend that the "AI is writing the code" just because a developer is making use of it.

All AI is doing is giving CEOs an excuse to called yet another group of workers, "unskilled."

Teachers are paid for 40 hours per week. And not well. Current starting salaries are enough to afford to live in a ditch.

They teach 5 classes per day. They get 1 period free when students cannot come into their classroom. Plus 1 hour before school and 1 hour after school when students can come in.

The system thinks grading papers and preparing lessons are free services that teachers provide.

The system will do anything but hire more teachers so that they each can have 3 periods per day and spend the rest of the time grading, prepping, and helping students during their paid hours.

Don't worry, the skilled trades will be devalued as well. They already are.

Companies just don't want to pay proper wages and will make every lame excuse they can to justify it.

Most people who work full time struggle just to pay rent.

OpenSSH is the best known OpenBSD project, but they also makes pf (used in pfSense, OPNSense, etc.), OpenBGP, OpenNTPD, OpenSMTPD, OpenIKED, LibreSSL, etc.

Came for this comment.

They aren't "irresponsible."

They have to pay their rent and put food on the table. If business owners paid living wages, people wouldn't be playing games just to survive.

There are no shortage of stores you can go into today where these "job creators" have one poverty wage employee working.

That's all this is about. Skilled labor thinks they're worth money. Unskilled labor can be paid minimum wage.

It's long past time for developers to unionize and stop playing the game of letting rich people oppress workers by demeaning them to justify poverty wages.

pay for them.

You pay for 40 hours a week, you get 40 hours a week.

as if 2 voices cried out in terror and then were silenced.

virus and malware have been doing this forever. The difference is that they are very small programs so they can do this instantly.