[lelanthran]

> Generally the demand for software engineers has increased as their productivity has increased, looking back over the past few decades. There seems to be effectively infinite demand for software from consumers and enterprises so the cheaper it gets the more they buy.

I see this fallacy all the time but I don't know if there is a name for it.

I mean, we make used fun of MBAs for saying the same thing, but now we should be more receptive to the "Line Always Goes Up" argument?

[kasey_junk]

Jevons paradox and it’s not a fallacy. It’s an observable behavior. The problem is it’s not predictive.

[lelanthran]

> Jevons paradox and it’s not a fallacy. It’s an observable behavior. The problem is it’s not predictive.

I was referring specifically to this point, which, IMHO, is a fallacy:

>>> There seems to be effectively infinite demand for software from consumers and enterprises so the cheaper it gets the more they buy.

There is no way to use the word "infinite" in this context, even if qualified, that is representative of reality.

[ambicapter]

As counter-anecdata, I have a family members that are growing businesses from scratch and they constantly talk to me about problems they want to solve with software. Administrative problems, product problems, market research problems, you name it. I'm sure they have other problems they don't talk to me about where they're not looking for software solutions, but the list of places they want software to automate things is never-ending.

[falloutx]

There consumer internet is mostly cropped up by white collar people buying stuff online and clicking on ads. Once the cutting starts, the whole internet economy just becomes a money swapping machine between 7 VC groups.

The demand for paid software is decreasing cause these AI companies are saying "Oh dont buy that SAAS product because you can build it yourself now"

[dasil003]

SaaS is not just software though, it’s operationalized software and data management. The value has increasingly been in the latter well before AI. How many open source packages have killed their SaaS competitors (or wrappers)?

[rowanajmarshall]

As much as I appreciate the difference between literal infinity and consumers' demand for software, there's just so much bad software out there waiting to be improved that I can't see us hitting saturation soon.