The era of rent-seeking, where businesses profit by adding friction to exploit consumer time, is ending due to Chinese open-source AI models. Citrini Research argues that for decades, U.S. companies like cable providers and insurance firms relied on time asymmetry, using procedures and procedures to frustrate customers at minimal cost. AI, however, acts as a great equalizer, commoditizing time and making deliberate friction unprofitable. Anthropic's blog post lambasted the last gasps of this model, calling for industry-wide coordination against rent-seeking APIs.

Yet, the author contends coordination with rent-seekers is futile; the Z.qwen, MiniMax, and Kimi models are only 6-12 months behind Western competitors, and the world supports Chinese open-source efforts. The author works on the chip design tier of the AI supply chain and sees no monopoly risk there, unlike search engines. NVIDIA deserves returns on their early investment, but the application tier is already commoditized, ensuring open-source forks will proliferate against rent-seeking attempts.