Frontier Token Costs Make It Hard for Low-Purchasing-Power Countries to Compete
Paimaamu · x · 2026-09-20
A quoted thread argues that as long as frontier tokens cost what they do, countries with lower purchasing power will struggle to compete.
The author notes his token spend is equal to or more than an engineer's salary in many countries, even though it's a small percentage of US SWE comp. He wouldn't want to run a software company in Turkey right now, especially with a domestic customer base.
He criticizes the cope of using cheaper models and pretending "it's the same," noting that even with heavy subsidization, serious engineering work is hard to do with a single 20x subscription if you want to use AI well and have proper test and review loops.
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