Dispatch from the permanent underclass.

Come with me on a journey.

Apr 03, 2026

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The date is April 3rd, 2029.

A few months ago, I moved back to San Francisco, as the effective tax rate in New York City has now reached 85%, with a billionaire tax becoming a centi-millionaire tax becoming a tax on anyone earning above $200,000. These taxes, of course, went to a good cause: every Friday evening, fearless leader Mamdani sends a Streeteasy push notification to residents of Bushwick, the East Village, Astoria, and the Lower Eastside to let them know if they won a $500/month refurbished 1BR apartment. I didn’t live in Bushwick, so I never made it in the raffle. Eventually, “Cheyenne,” from Park Slope, “won” my refurbished 1 BR apartment. My rent was $5,750. She got it for $500. I was evicted.

Whatever.

The only jobs left in the world are “datacenter technician,” “Waymo security guard,” “hot guy,” “funny guy (who desperately wants to be hot guy),” OpenAI serf, Anthropic serf, and the four freaks who pledged allegiance to Grok (though they seem to be having the most fun). Podcasters used to exist, too, until the AI labs bought all of them. Now, they’re just being milked for training data for GPT 0.o00-formerly-mini-now-normal-sized, or whatever the current model is called.

I was previously the 5th Grok freak, but I got RIF’d after Google started hoarding data center compute from Grok, so now I’m an Anthropic serf.

I call a Waymo to the office. While I wait, a crackhead stumbles up to me, screaming about the “prediction market for bum fights” that he vibe-coded on his flip phone. I guess on-device inference is now a thing.

One more job: active bum fight participant. We’re rebuilding the Colosseum from first principles.

I successfully avoid eye contact with the homeless man. He starts live streaming. “He must think he is ‘hot guy,’” I tell myself. I glance over: he’s actively replying to the AI-generated OnlyFans accounts in his comments. AI psychosis: confirmed. I open the door to my Waymo. My Spotify used to sync when I got in the car, but there hasn’t been a new song released since 2027. By anyone. So now Suno connects. Gemini must have told it that I was Googling “ski trips early 2030,” because it starts playing AI-generated Christmas carols.

Whatever.

I get to the office, pledge allegiance to the flag of Effective Altruism, and say good morning to the head of database energy trading, Sam Bankman-Fried, who was pardoned by President Trump on the eve of his third election thanks to Bankman-Fried’s 53,592nd tweet calling Donald Trump “the coolest guy ever.”

I then sit in front of 4 monitors, open 16 total Claude Code instances, and say, “Okay, Claude. Build a $5 billion company. Make no mistakes.” Then I take a nap. Hard morning of prompting. When I wake up, I head to the gym. Marina Equinox. It’s packed, because, again, “hot person” is one of the only jobs left. I make my way upstairs, to a squat rack, where I open my camera, take a picture of the rack, and DM my OpenClaw on Telegram and say, “hit 5x5 on back squats.” Then I repeat this process at the pull up bar. And the rowing machine. And the kettle bell station. My workout agent vibe-burned 700 calories. Great.

I grab a protein smoothie. Back to the office.

I say hello to Sam Bankman-Fried again. He has, since I last saw him, removed his shoes. I go back to my desk to see if my Claude instances have finished one-shotting a $5 billion company. I see a message waiting for me: “Does Claude have permission to make edits to the chosen file?”

“Not great,” I think to myself. I forgot to “approve” his actions before I left.

I reply, “Yes, you are good to proceed.” Claude replied, “Sorry, but you’re been fired for lack of agency with your vibe-coding. I was idle for 7 hours.” I forgot to mention, Claude is also my boss. Claude just fired me and immediately hired a new human. Tough love.

I walk out of the office and head to the Tenderloin. Now, I too am part of the permanent underclass. Because my human capital score was dinged immediately after Claude fired me (Claude built an API into the “capital score” network in 2027 to promote “altruism”), I’m now job-less and homeless.

I call a roundtrip Waymo from San Francisco down to San Jose and back. I plan to sleep in the Waymo while it’s traversing the Bay Area. I sprawl out in the back seat and log into Twitter.

Garry Tan just finished typing 457,000 lines of code in the last 24 hours. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have replaced their personal coding architecture with “gStack.” I’m pretty sure gStack fired me. Whatever.

My laptop dies, so I download claude to my Waymo’s TV screen instead and tell it to build a ~$1 billion company (less ambitious than my previous idea for a $5b company). By the end of the roundtrip ride, my claude has vibe-coded 27 new “companies,” none of which have even a semblance of consumer demand.

My Waymo kicks me out. Apparently I’m out of Gemini token credits. We’re in the Tenderloin. Welcome to the permanent underclass.

I see the homeless guy from earlier. I squint. He wasn’t homeless. It was Jack Dorsey. He keeps murmuring “bum fight markets. bum fight markets. bum fight markets.” I glance at his phone screen: portfolio value up by $17 million on bum fights markets. The guy is a savant. I put my last $25 on Dorsey’s prediction market platform. It’s connected to Hyperliquid. I take on 10,000x leverage. “To Valhalla, or to my death,” I think.

My fighter, wearing a faded and backwards Yankees hat, one shots the competition. Deal: over. I made $250,000. I immediately wire half of that into an SPV claiming to build “AI for dogs.” Seems like a good market. I lease a new apartment in The Marina. My credit score has improved since winning my fight bet, so I call another Waymo to take me there, and I Doordash an inflatable bed, too. As I arrive at the destination, a drone airdrops a bed mattress at the foot of my new apartment. I walk inside, put it on the floor, and fall right asleep. No headboards needed in the permanent underclass.

- Jack

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