Snapshot · The a16z Show
Kalanick argues that automation lowers prices, creates consumer surplus that humans spend on new things, generating entirely new job categories that don't exist today.
Where this was said
At 39:55 · chapter starts 39:25
A host raises the jobs-versus-tasks distinction and the fear that automation could hollow out employment. Kalanick's response is a confident restatement of the pro-automation abundance thesis. When food gets automated, prices fall. Robots don't have bank accounts — so all the value flows to the humans in the system. Those humans then have more money to spend on other things, generating demand for new goods, services, and jobs that don't yet exist. He's explicit that he's not making a naive 'everyone eats 10 hamburgers' joke — he's making a structural argument about surplus creation. The caveat is the one genuine risk: as long as humans retain things that robots cannot replicate, it's 'go-go time.' He references his previous prediction on the show — the plumber paid like LeBron James — and extends it to a thousand job categories we haven't yet named.
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