Software Rot & the Economics of Code: A Conversation with Robin Hanson

Update: 2025-08-07

Description

In this episode, host Damien Filiatrault sits down with Robin Hanson—associate professor of economics at George Mason University, former AI researcher at Lockheed & NASA, and author of The Age of EM—to explore what happens when the worlds of software engineering and economics collide.

What you’ll learn

Software rot vs. technical debt – why Hanson thinks “systems rot” is the overlooked force that eventually dooms large code-bases, and how refactoring only delays the inevitable.
Elastic demand for code – an economist’s take on why AI-powered developers may earn more, not less, as automation drives the price of software down and demand way up.
Population decline & shrinking innovation – a provocative forecast that a falling global population (possibly peaking ~30 years out) could sap economic growth and leave vast layers of today’s software stack unfunded.
Cultural drift and long-lived systems – lessons from languages, legal codes and corporate lifecycles on why some structures “rot” slowly—or not at all.

Memorable sound bites

“One of the key issues in software engineering is that systems rot—and in the end we usually just throw them away.” – Robin Hanson

“If AI makes you ten times more productive, your wages should go way up, because the world’s appetite for software is almost limitless.” – Robin Hanson

“Older firms rot: half the S&P 500 wasn’t on the list 20 years ago. We keep replacing them, so society stays healthy—software may need the same treatment.” – Robin Hanson

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