Why are you happy that people are out of a job here? You still suffer the ills of the product, now infinitely more incessant, at a marginal cost of $0.
I think it's reasonable to be happy that someone is not getting paid to do something you hate. In fact, if you're suffering unwillingly, you probably want as few people as possible to benefit.
I don't know which of "5 randos getting a living wage by spamming me" and "Altman getting filty rich by spamming me" is worse. I'm inclined to say the latter, though of course it's quite close.
Wish SV would stop thinking anything that makes money is great, no matter the crap it inflicts on people. Guess I'm asking for way too much.
I don’t think so. Marketers don’t send X amount of spam because X is the right amount of spam they want to send. They are limited by how much money they want to pay in salaries and management, which defines how many people they can hire to send spam.
If the people they employ today suddenly became twice as productive, the company wouldn’t fire half of them - they just would enjoy twice the profit. The same applies to AI.
Having tried to start a business and known other business owners, I will die on this hill: sales and marketing are not "acts of malice". Without salespeople we wouldn't live in the world we lived today.
This is like the irrational hate some developers have for recruiters, despite them finding jobs for many people that they otherwise would never have known about.
Marketing is fundamentally aimed at changing people's opinions. This can be done
1. covertly (why do you need to do it covertly? Would people mind if they knew? Doesn't that indicate you're doing them a disservice?)
2. overtly, against people's will. (Again, doesn't that indicate you're doing them a disservice?)
3. overtly, with their consent (express or assumed). How often have you seen this happen?
The "indicates" vs "shows" distinction above deals with the edge case of "interacting with covert/unwanted marketing is actually good for them, even if they don't know it". I dare you to make that argument...
The logic in 'Without salespeople we wouldn't live in the world we lived today' doesn't really support the point you are trying to make.
Consider that without thieves we also wouldn't live in the world we live today. That should not be read supporting theft, only an acknowledgement that it exists and that we have designed our lived environment in response.
> This is like the irrational hate some developers have for recruiters
It's not like that. As a business owner, be honest with us and yourself: just how much of sales and marketing you did was just bullshit? Exaggerated claims bordering on lies? Manipulative patterns? Inducing demand?
Approximately all marketing is that. It is that because it works, and those who refuse to do it get outcompeted by those who don't. Doesn't mean the world should be like that, or that I'd like to be subjected to it.
I also question the "we wouldn't live in the world we lived today" bit. In a competitive environment, marketing is a zero-sum game[0]: there's only so many people around, with so much money and time available; most of the marketing spend ends up being used to cancel out the efforts of the competition, and that race can consume all surplus of a company. Red Queen's race and all.
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[0] Or negative-sum, if you account for externalities.
> Having tried to start a business and known other business owners, I will die on this hill: sales and marketing are not "acts of malice". Without salespeople we wouldn't live in the world we lived today.
Are we supposed to silently suffer because capitalism says so?
Spammers and salespeople are pretty much on the same level as criminals in my book. Heck, whenever someone calls me for some sort of unsolicited survey or similar, I think "these people have such low standards, they would also sell heroin on the street if they had any source."
Suffering is "the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship".
Having to delete the occasional marketing or sales email that get past your spam filter is hardly any of these. Annoying or frustrating, yes. Suffering? Really?
I am absolutely serious. Any employment has opportunity costs: a person who writes and sends out cold call spam e-mail for 8 hours a day is a person who could be spending those 8 hours on something else, but isn't. Yes, switching jobs is not very easy, and it's stressful but humans, thankfully, are not (yet) a species of highly-specialized individuals, with distinct morphological differences that heavily determine the jobs they potentially can or can not do.
