You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

Perceived Hypocrisy & Privilege

• Many see the author’s “opt out” message as coming from someone insulated by past big‑tech winnings (“fuck‑you money”), making it easy to tell others not to do what he did.
• Some view such post‑success moralizing as hollow without explicit accountability or acknowledgement of others’ lack of safety nets.
• Others counter that insider experience with large tech firms makes his warning more credible, even if he’s complicit.

“Opt Out” vs Real Constraints

• Core criticism: “Don’t participate” is not a real option for people feeding families, paying rent, tied to visas, or lacking savings.
• Several commenters frame it as a multi‑billion‑person prisoner’s dilemma: one worker quitting is symbolic at best; mass non‑participation is implausible.
• Suggested alternatives: unionizing, general/industry strikes, political action, and pushing for regulation rather than individual exit.

Big Tech: Misery Engine or Enabler?

• One camp argues big tech already makes life miserable: addictive social media, surveillance, enshittified services, algorithmic manipulation, political degradation.
• Others emphasize benefits: global information access, cheap communication, navigation, remote work; they argue tech’s harms stem from politics, regulation, and business models, not technology per se.
• There’s broad agreement that concentration of power and weak regulation are core problems.

AI, Automation, and the “Perpetual Underclass”

• Strong worry: if AI/robots can do most labor, workers’ economic and political power collapses; capital no longer “needs” humans as consumers or employees.
• Some lean on the “lump of labor fallacy,” arguing labor continuously reconstitutes around new scarcities; historical productivity gains have eventually improved living standards.
• Critics respond that this can fail for marginalized groups, that AI could undercut all comparative advantages, and that future “jobs” may be undignified or intimacy‑/service‑oriented for elites.

Neofeudalism, Capital, and Demand

• Debate over whether extreme automation leads to “technofeudalism”: a small owner class with self‑sufficient automated production, treating the rest of humanity as surplus.
• Others argue markets require demand; prices and ownership structures would adjust, or political upheaval would intervene, though some doubt revolt is possible under AI‑enhanced surveillance and drones.

Exit Strategies & Personal Responses

• Proposed individual strategies: switch to trades/manual work, move to cheaper countries, go off‑grid or join low‑tech communities, or deliberately work only on tools that don’t obviously harm society.
• Many see these as viable only for a small, relatively privileged minority, not systemic fixes.