clearly that's abusive and should be targeted. but in general idk how else any inference provider can handle this situation.

cursor is fucked because they are a whole layer of premium above the at-cost of anthropic / openai etc. so everyone leaves goes to cc. now anthropic is in the same position but they can't cut any premium off.

you can't practically put a dollar cap on monthly plans because they are self exposing. if you say 20/mo caps at 500/mo usage then that's the same as 480/500 (95%) discount against raw API call. that's obviously not sustainable.

there's a real entitled chanting going on too. i get that it sucks to get used to something and have it taken away but does anyone understand that just the cap/opex alone is unsustainable let alone the RD to make the models and tools.

I’m not really sure what can be done besides a constant churn of "fuck [whoever had to implement sustainable pricing], i'm going to [next co who wants to subsidize temporarily in exchange for growth]".

i think it's shitty the way it's playing out though. these cos should list these as trial periods and be up front about subsidizing. people can still use and enjoy the model(s) during the trial, and some / most will leave at the end, but at least you don't get the uproar.

maybe it would go a long way to be fully transparent about the cap/op/rdex. nobody is expecting a charity, we understand you need a profit margin. but it turns it from the entitled "they're just being greedy" chanting to "ok that makes sense why i need to pay X to have 1+ tireless senior engineers on tap".