To start, the first example is moot, as a university is not a competitive entity like a manufacturer. Whether they decide to automate depends on a need to save

To start, the first example is moot, as a university is not a competitive entity like a manufacturer. Whether they decide to automate depends on a need to save money where possible, not survive in a marketplace. Second, you just reaffirmed my point. You are confusing productivity with labor value. By writing a script, you've revolutionized the production of obtaining standard investing data. As such, it requires even less labor. In fact, it now requires no labor, since a machine without any human intervention (save for negligible maintenance costs) can do the job! Why should anyone be paid to--according to what you described above--to do nothing. It's all automated. Now, if investment firm B (my firm) wants to compete, it will have to do the same, since it is spending $X amount to collect the data, while your firm spends $0. This is a pointless cost. As such, it will be forced to do the same to stay in business. Now, firm B no longer requires a warm body to perform the aforementioned task, i.e. it no longer employs someone to enter data. How does not employing someone generate wages for them? By writing your own script, you cancel out your own employment. While true, that the writing of the "awesome" Web 2.0 app (I love yc news, it's full of this stuff) will absorb a fixed amount of labor, thus keeping you employed for the duration of writing it. Once it is completed though, you will be made obsolete. You essentially, wrote your own death sentence. Now don't this is a misguided Luddite speaking, I am a programmer too, and I can sympathize. I want to keep up this discussion.