Costless Sacrifice

McCormick examines how AI-generated abundance (applications, code, writing) devalues signal because the cost of production approaches zero. Draws on King David’s insistence on paying for his sacrifice, Beniger’s Control Revolution thesis, and the job market’s “Tinder-ization.”

Core Argument

When everyone can produce at zero cost, output loses its signaling value. LLM-written cover letters have destroyed the correlation between customization and job offers (down 79%). Claude Code commits are rising exponentially but the relationship between commits and productivity is unclear. McCormick frames this as “going off the gold standard, but for information” — we can print information with no reference to underlying substance. The antidote is paying a real cost: effort, time, and care that shines through and demands reciprocal investment from the audience.

RDCO Relevance

Core strategic relevance for Sanity Check newsletter. The “costless sacrifice” thesis is the strongest articulation yet of why human-crafted content with visible effort creates durable differentiation in an AI-saturated market. Directly validates RDCO’s content strategy of depth over volume. The Red Queen’s Race framing also applies to data engineering tooling — more tools producing more pipelines does not equal more insight.