this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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the common theme every single time I read about LLM chatbots being used for mental health - having human therapy is great but it's just too expensive for regular people. and that's treated as an immutable fact about society that can't be changed. ("it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism")
human therapy is too costly? OK, make it cheaper, or free, for the patients. it's not widely available? OK, pay the therapists more, and give them better working conditions.
but where will the money to do that come from?
Silicon Valley is spending billions of dollars building AI datacenters. so I dunno, where is that money coming from?
resource allocation is a choice that we as a society, and a species, make. we can make different choices. we don't need to confine ourselves to "well human therapy is expensive, so only rich people can access it, and poor people have to settle for AI slop, but they should be grateful because without the AI slop they'd have nothing at all".
It's not about capitalism:
Human therapy will be more expensive, for as long as we value human time more than machine time.