The HN discussions you linked to:

1. 10 points, 15 comments

2. 9 points, 17 comments

3. 44 points, 84 comments

That’s not exactly that many doomsters. The first two were barely discussions and the third was a retrospective asking “why didn’t it happen”.

I don’t even really understand why it would be notable that people had that view in the light of mass layoffs. Look at the discussion around Vimeo layoffs:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707699

(471 points, 512 comments)

Plenty of discussion about the negative impacts in the long term. But it didn’t involve Elon Musk so people didn’t get weirdly defensive about it all.