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New York's 1968 garbage strike buried the city in 9 days and won the workers a few hundred dollars. An anesthesiologist earns more than 8 times a nursing assistant's pay, and ASML keeps 29 cents of each euro while Kroger keeps under 2. What becomes valuable as AI learns to do more of our work?
New York's 1968 garbage strike buried the city in 9 days and won the workers a few hundred dollars. An anesthesiologist earns more than 8 times a nursing assistant's pay, and ASML keeps 29 cents of each euro while Kroger keeps under 2. What becomes valuable as AI learns to do more of our work?
Featuring: John DeLury, Vincent J. Cannato, Naval Ravikant
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Chapters:
(00:00) What becomes valuable as AI learns our work
(00:14) The 1968 New York garbage strike
(00:55) Nursing assistants and anesthesiologists
(01:24) ASML and Kroger
(01:42) Once AI can do a task, so can your rivals
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"If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you."
Naval Ravikant
On a 2-hour walk, I kept asking what becomes valuable as AI learns to do more of our work.
In February 1968 New York's sanitation workers walked off the job to ask for a raise.
A state law passed the year before banned public workers from striking. Their union leader John DeLury led the strike anyway.
In 9 days about 100,000 tons of garbage piled up on the city's streets.
A judge sent DeLury to jail for 15 days.
The fight was over a raise of a few hundred dollars a year.
9 days without those workers left New York buried in garbage. Vincent J. Cannato tells the story in The Ungovernable City.
Plenty of other people could learn to drive a garbage truck, so the workers had little room to push for more.
A typical nursing assistant in the US earns about $42,000 a year.
An anesthesiologist earns more than $350,000.
Both keep patients alive.
Many people can learn to help a patient wash and eat. Few can be trusted to keep a patient unconscious through surgery and wake them up safely, so hospitals compete to hire them.
You could work harder than anyone on the ward as a nursing assistant and still earn about a ninth of the anesthesiologist's pay.
Only one company makes the most advanced chip-printing machines: ASML.
In 2025 it kept about 29 cents of profit from each euro of sales.
Kroger shoppers can buy the same groceries at the store across the street. The grocery chain kept less than 2 cents of each dollar.
People and companies earn the most for work many people want and few can do.
Once AI can do a task, your rivals can too.
What could you offer that isn't available anywhere else?