> It sucks if you’re a rent seeker, but I’m enjoying this post-IP world

Oh yes, this new world is terrible for rent seekers. It's like the kum-bah-yah free software world Stallman might have imagined. Information wants to be free and all. Can't stop the signal. Very counterculture. Like the Adobe clone apps.

Except for the closed SOTA model weights, out of reach hardware, and the resulting $200 subscription rent now paid readily both by anybody trying to create something new, and anybody who wants to rip it off. That particular flavor of rent seeking is booming.

I myself am a "rent-seeker" in an alternative sense of "I seek a way to pay for my own continued shelter via my creative output" and it definitely seems like it's gonna suck for me.

The problem is that many of us seek employment from rent seekers. It's all great in theory, but not fun in the in-between times if you're trying to pay your own rent and find placement and nobody wants to bring anyone new on board because they can't find ways to make it profitable.

If an asset doesn't exist to hold value, how do you "protect" expertise? How do you differentiate it? How do you justify investment if someone else will steal anything of value you create?

For a short while, it's great, but in the long run, it makes it difficult to financially invest in building software with either time or money.

It's fantastic for the rent seeking AI providers. They can squeeze users any which way the want and if anyone so much as utters a peep of complaint, they can be banned for life without recourse.

> Instead of someone being able to just lock the knowledge away, now we can all have it

Uhh I think you're missing a tiny 3 trillion dollar detail. I understand though, something that small and inconsequential is easy to overlook.